1. Principles and practices

Background

What is Montessori education? For more than a century now, the child-focused approach that Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian physician, developed for educating children has been transforming schools around the globe.
As soon as you enter a classroom, you know that something different is afoot. Montessori classrooms are immediately recognizable. You will see children working independently and in groups, often with specially designed learning materials; deeply engaged in their work; and respectful of themselves and their surroundings.
The Montessori Method fosters rigorous, self-motivated growth for children and adolescents in all areas of their development—cognitive, emotional, social, and physical.
When a child is given a little leeway, he will at once shout, ’I want to do it!’ But in our schools, which have an environment adapted to children’s needs, they say, ‘Help me to do it alone.’
DR. MARIA MONTESSORI, THE SECRET OF CHILDHOOD

In Mexico, accessing to Montessori educational model is a luxury that many people cannot access, since the cost of these educational centers is too high.
Currently there are many manuals and audiovisual tools that help these parents to be able to apply this methodology at home, however, one of the most important elements of this education is the adaptation of spaces with specific characteristics, this implies an economic barrier since furniture also it has a high cost.
That is why my final project will be an interactive furniture module, that is open source and that any Fab Lab in the world can manufacture, so that those parents who seek to teach their children using this methodology can do so by accessing low-cost furniture.

My project is focused on children from 3 to 6 years old. The goal is for the furniture to be useful for different activities such as reading, studying, resting and storing objects.

The prototype can be controlled through a mobile application to customize the color and intensity of the lighting

Copyright 2022 Jose Manuel Diaz Bello