Annotated Bibliography: Analysis

Playful Learning and Montessori Education by Lillard (2013) explains Maria Montessori’s methods of teaching. Montessori education started early 1900s in Rome and has evolved in schools to follow her curriculum exactly or by taking bits and pieces. “Classrooms contain age groupings spanning three years: infant to three years old, three to six, six to nine, and nine to twelve” (Lillard 2013). The classrooms should have thirty to thirty-five children in them but it is not stated how many teachers are supposed to be in each class. Lillard (2013) discusses how Montessori believed that children should not be rewarded for learning. Instead learning should be the reward. This is why traditional Montessori schools do now have grades or rewards for children
Like Piaget and Vygotsky, she believed that learning was innate and play allows children to follow their own interests and encourages them to learn. The tools Montessori developed were for specific lessons such as music, language, or writing. Instead of playtime, children have very structured free-choice “work” time. Children are allowed to follow their own interests but cannot deviate from the proper usage of the materials. For example, Montessori created three different sets of blocks in order to teach dimensions. These blocks are to be used only for that purpose and are not supposed to be used creatively for building houses or other structures. “The teachers present the materials in a fairly ordered sequence” (Lillard 2013). If the child starts to compare the blocks side by side the teacher may allow the different usage of the materials because the child is comparing different
Erikson’s research was based on Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and H. Hartmann’s research. While training in Vienna Erickson was trained in visual communication and learned configurational attention from S. Freud’s book Interpretation of Dreams (Erikson 1997). He found the book to be “easily transferred to the observation of children’s play behavior and permitted equal attention” (Erikson 1997). Erikson described the different stages of development for infants through preschoolers. The first stage described for infants was the oral-sensory stage. This stage is dominated by ‘to get’ and ‘getting someone to give what is wished for’” (Erikson 1997). Infants and toddlers go through the “sucking” and “biting” stages. Next, the libidination was manifested in oedipal fantasies during the infantile-genital stage. In this stage children would be likely to “dramatize in joining sexual play, including mimicry of adult intercourse” (Erikson