AMS cheat sheet

Four planes of development: 0-6 (absorbent mind, sensitive periods), 6-12 (reasoning, imagination, culture), 12-18 (social/emotional, valorization), 18-24 (independence, service).

Absorbent mind has two phases: unconscious (0-3), where impressions form the psyche without deliberate effort, and conscious (3-6), where the child actively organizes impressions.

Sensitive periods are transient windows of intense, effortless interest; the classic ones are order (0-3), language (0-6), movement (0-4), refinement of senses (0-5), and small objects/social interest (around 2-4).

Human tendencies (order, orientation, exploration, work, manipulation, repetition, exactness, abstraction, imagination, communication, activity) are universal drives that the prepared environment must serve.

Normalization is the observable outcome of concentrated work with freely chosen activity: discipline, sustained attention, and sociability emerge rather than being taught.

Three-period lesson structure: naming (presentation), recognition (recall by pointing/identifying), and recall (retrieval of the name); the third period is only attempted after the second is secure.

Polarization of attention is deep, self-chosen concentration; it is the primary indicator of developmental health and the aim of the practical life and sensorial curriculum.

Freedom within limits: the child chooses activity, but limits are the environment, the material's purpose, the group's needs, and non-interference with others' work.

Practical life exercises fall into four groups: preliminary movements (carrying, rolling a mat, opening/closing), care of self, care of the environment, and grace and courtesy.

Control of error is built into the material or process (spill tray, marked water level, matching outlines), so the child self-corrects without adult judgment.

Sequence of movement is the teaching content: the adult presents slowly and in isolation of difficulty, then withdraws; the child repeats for the process, not the product.

Isolation of difficulty examples: one sponge size, one pitcher, one type of bean; a tray limits the work area and defines the activity's boundary.

Indirect preparation links practical life to later academics: pouring builds wrist control for writing; polishing builds left-to-right sequence; transferring builds pincer grasp.

Grace and courtesy lessons are short, scripted role-plays (how to greet, interrupt, offer, refuse, apologize) presented to individuals or small groups, then practiced.

Real, breakable, child-sized tools are used where safe; fragile materials teach care and control, and the environment provides a broom, dustpan, and cloths at child height.

Food preparation (peeling, slicing, spreading, serving, cleaning) integrates practical life with language, math (sharing), and cultural subjects.

Sensorial materials isolate one quality (size, color, form, texture, sound, weight, temperature) while other attributes are held constant.

Materials are presented in a graded series (pink tower 10 cubes, brown stair 10 prisms, red rods 10 rods, cylinders in four blocks) with a built-in control of error.

Three-period lesson applies to sensorial naming; comparatives and superlatives (thick/thicker/thickest) are given after discrimination is established.

Key materials by sense: visual (pink tower, brown stair, red rods, knobbed and knobless cylinders, color tablets), tactile (touch boards, fabric box, baric tablets), auditory (sound cylinders, bells), olfactory (smelling bottles), gustatory (tasting bottles), stereognostic (geometric solids, mystery bag).

The bells (13 bells, 8 white/5 black) teach pitch matching and grading and lead to the musical scale; sound cylinders teach loud/soft matching and grading.

Sensorial work prepares for mathematics through seriation, one-to-one correspondence, and base-ten awareness (long rods, decimal quantities implied by graded series).

The geometric cabinet and cards teach plane figures and their relationships; the constructive triangles teach equivalence and area conservation before formal geometry.

Stereognostic sense is trained by the mystery bag and geometric solids: identifying form by touch alone, without sight.

Language sequence: spoken language (vocabulary enrichment, conversation, naming), then writing (sandpaper letters, movable alphabet), then reading (phonetic object box, pink/blue/green series).

Sandpaper letters teach letter-sound correspondence (not letter names) with a three-finger trace and the sound spoken; vowels and consonants are distinguished by color (often pink/blue).

Movable alphabet work begins with encoding words from known sounds; the child composes before decoding, because analysis of sounds precedes synthesis into reading.

Pink series = three-letter phonetic words with short vowels; blue series = blends and consonant clusters; green series = phonograms and spelling patterns (ai, ee, oa, sh, ch, th).

Metal insets develop pencil control, lightness of touch, and left-to-right/top-to-bottom directionality as indirect preparation for handwriting.

Grammar is introduced through the grammar symbols (noun black triangle, article light blue triangle, adjective dark blue triangle, verb red circle, preposition green crescent) and the grammar boxes.

Function of words lessons proceed from article/noun, adjective, verb, preposition, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, interjection, then parsing and sentence analysis.

Vocabulary enrichment uses classified cards (nomenclature) in three-part format: picture, label, picture+label, supporting classification and reading.

Number rods (1-10) teach quantity and the names of numbers; sandpaper numerals teach symbol formation; cards and counters pair quantity with symbol and show odd/even.

Decimal system materials: golden beads (unit, ten, hundred, thousand), large number cards, and the bank game teach place value, exchange, and the four operations concretely.

Operations sequence is typically addition and multiplication with golden beads, then subtraction, then division; each operation moves from concrete material to abstraction.

Teen and ten boards teach the teen numbers and the tens; the hundred board and hundred chain extend linear counting and skip counting.

Bead frames (small and large) and the stamp game are abstraction bridges between golden beads and written algorithms.

Memorization materials (addition strip board, subtraction strip board, multiplication bead board, division bead board, finger charts) build fact recall after concept understanding.

Fraction insets introduce fractions as parts of a whole; equivalence, operations with fractions, and decimal fractions follow in elementary.

Geometry and measurement link math to sensorial: constructive triangles and geometric cabinet support area, equivalence, and naming of figures.

Geography sequence: land/water forms (island, lake, peninsula, gulf, isthmus, strait, cape, bay), then continent maps, puzzle maps, and political/physical maps.

Land and water form trays and cards teach the paired forms with a control of error (matching labels and definitions); the globe is presented as land and water first, then as continents.

History begins with the child's personal timeline, then the day/calendar, then the clock, then long-term timelines (life, human history); the black strip and clock of eras visualize deep time.

Botany: parts of the plant (root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit, seed) taught with nomenclature cards; leaf shapes (botany cabinet) and flower parts extend classification.

Zoology: five vertebrate classes (mammal, bird, fish, amphibian, reptile) with parts-of-animal nomenclature (head, body, limbs, tail) and external characteristics.

Science includes the three states of matter, sink/float, magnetic/non-magnetic, living/non-living, and the needs of plants and animals; experiments are presented as demonstrations with a control.

The cultural curriculum is delivered through the Great Lessons in elementary (coming of the universe, life on Earth, humans, communication, numbers) and through classified cards in primary.

Sun and Earth relationship (day/night, seasons, rotation/revolution) is taught with the globe, a lamp, and the sun/Earth model before written explanation.

Art area provides real media (clay, paint, crayons, collage, chalk) with an accessible supply and a defined cleanup routine; process is valued over product.

The art shelf is sequenced from simple to complex: drawing, then painting, then collage, then printing, then clay modeling, each with its own tray and tools.

Music sequence: silence game and sound discrimination, then rhythm (walking, running, skipping to a beat), then pitch matching with the bells, then notation.

The Montessori bells (13) enable matching, grading, and naming of the scale; the tone bars and staff board connect pitch to notation.

Singing, movement, and instrument exploration are daily; the silence game trains attention and auditory control, not just quiet.

Cultural arts include textiles, weaving, sewing, and traditional crafts presented as practical life extensions with real tools.

Art appreciation uses reproductions and classified cards (paintings, artists, styles) for vocabulary and observation, not copying.

Movement and dance are integrated with music and grace and courtesy; body awareness and control are the developmental goals.

The prepared environment has child-sized furniture, open low shelves, a defined work space per activity, and materials arranged left to right, simple to complex.

The three-year mixed-age group (3-6) enables peer teaching, role modeling, and continuity; the guide loops with the cohort where possible.

Ground rules are few, stated positively, and enforced consistently: respect for self, others, and the environment; walking, quiet voices, and returning work to the shelf.

The guide's role is observation, preparation, and presentation; direct teaching is brief and followed by withdrawal to allow independent repetition.

Daily schedule protects a long uninterrupted work cycle (typically 2.5-3 hours) for primary; interruptions fragment concentration.

Material rotation is driven by observation, not a calendar; a material is returned to the shelf when the child has mastered it or lost interest.

Grace and courtesy, community meeting, and conflict resolution (peace table/rose) build the social cohesion of the group.

Record keeping and observation inform the guide's next presentations, and the environment is adjusted to match the developmental needs observed.

Observation is systematic and non-judgmental: record what the child does, the duration, the repetition, and the errors, without interpreting or labeling.

Observation tools include running records, time sampling, event sampling, anecdotal notes, and checklists; each serves a different question.

Records track presentations given, materials mastered, and next steps; the guide uses them to plan individual and small-group lessons.

Assessment is formative and criterion-referenced against developmental milestones and material mastery, not norm-referenced testing.

Portfolios (work samples, photographs, dated notes) document growth over the three-year cycle and support parent conferences.

The three-period lesson doubles as an informal assessment: failure at the third period signals the need to return to the second.

Confidentiality and objectivity are professional obligations; records are factual, dated, and stored securely.

Parent communication is scheduled, evidence-based, and focused on the child's developmental progress rather than comparison with peers.