The prepared environment serves as a third teacher, empowering the child to be more independent.

Dr. Maria Montessori said “the organisation of psychical life begins with the characteristic phenomenon of attention.”

Sensitive periods refer to "an optimum period of time when the human being is particularly sensitive to certain environmental stimuli..."

The absorbent mind is "a unique kind of mentality that allows the first plane child to absorb knowledge quickly and effortlessly."

The four planes of development provides a framework for Montessori's vision of developmental psychology.

In the early part of the twentieth century, Dr. Maria Montessori began researching human development at a housing project in Rome.