Sensitive Period

In the essay I will define the term sensitive period and explain how the teacher’s knowledge and understanding of these periods determines his/her preparation and custodianship of the prepared environment. The understanding of the sensitive period plays a vital role to the significant of a child’s development at the early age of his environment. Montessoriobserved two special powers that appear to aid children in their task of development as individual in the first plane: children appear to go through periods of concentrating on specific capacities, and their minds seem to operate differently from ours. She referred to the time frames involved in the child’s development of a definitive ability as sensitive period. (Montessori, 1996, p.25)Each sensitive period is period of a child special sensibility and psychological attitudes. This period is usually intense and prolonged activity which does not lead to fatigue or boredom, but instead leads to persistent energy and interest. A transitory state once realized,, the sensitive period disappears . Sensitive period are never regained, once they have passed. The first main period of a child sensitive period is the sensitive period for order. Sensitive period for orders begins from birth at 18 months to 2.5 years and extend tothe age of five. Children usually seek for consistency and repetition. There exists a passionate love for established routines. For example in (Montessori in Angeline 2005) ,Dr. Montessori recounted in that Piaget once played a hiding game with one of his children , hiding an object under a pillow , having this child leave the room, moving the object to another pillow, and then asking the child to find it . When the child did not see the object under the first pillow, the child gave up. Piaget then showed the child how he had moved the object , and repeated the procedure. The child exactly the same way, whereupon Piaget lifted the second pillow and asked,” Did you see I put it here?”(on the