Montessori Mondays - Real Life Pictures

Within a Montessori environment is an active pursuit to keep materials and objects as real as possible thus most materials are made of wood or stainless steel and children use water, paper, rice, and beans for practical life work. Another big, but sometimes overlooked, goal for Montessori environments is to provide as many real-life pictures or real looking illustrations of people, animals, and objects. The idea behind real life pictures is to ground a child in reality and introduce symbolism at a very basic level. To clarify, Montessori was not opposed to imagination and creativity, but believed that children first need to be able to have a clear grasp on what reality is to create a solid paradigm for learning about the world before creating their own variations on the world. Real life pictures are one of the most basic forms of symbolism that many of us take for granted, but small children are naturally drawn to real life or real looking pictures. When reading a book with toddlers, one that shows real life pictures of animals almost never needs text. The children are absorbed in the image. However, many books with cartoon illustrations that show animals out of proportion or color are often more driven by the text and, in my experience, tend to be less popular. This is not to say eliminate all illustrations and art from your child's world, but instead provide real life pictures for everyday learning and introduce art in activities such as "matching like images."