Magda Gerber's RIE philosophy has had great impact on me during my journey as a parent.

It helped my child develop abilities like:

• Choosing her own activities
• Concentration
• Long uninterrupted play
• Problem solving and completing a task
• Expressing feelings, dealing with frustration
• Self-confidence, self-discipline, following rules in the family and society

The key is to respect your child, accept her as she is and not to expect her do things she cannot do. A child is curious, ready to take initiative, learn and explore the world on her own. Trust her inner life and intellect. She should be an active participant in all caregiving activities. The parent should respect the child's play and not interrupt it. This is the time for problem solving, exploring how things work, cause and effect, dealing with emotions. If you take the lead, the child will follow, and it is likely that with time she will become reactive, rather than an initiative person.

The parent is obliged to create a safe environment, that provides proper stimuli for development that the child can explore freely. He should observe his child in order to understand her needs. Part of this environment are the clearly defined limits and expectations.

What a parent can do:

• Safeproof your home or at least the child's play area
• Step back and observe what the child does when she is bored. Does she expect you to entertain her? Whenever your child is playing safely, walk away for a couple of minutes (inform her where you are going and how long you will be gone) and gradually increase this time. Through observation, you will find out how capable and knowing your child is
• Choose carefully a couple of simple toys and materials that you feel are proper for your child's intellectual needs and give her a lot of uninterrupted time for exploration
• Prepare your child to feel safe and relaxed in the environment by explaining in advance what is expected of her. She should be familiar with the limits and how to behave. Children imitate what their parents do, so model behaviours that you desire in your child.
• If your child is playing safely and experiencing a difficulty, don't rush to help her. Give her time to deal with it on her own. You may let her know that you are close and explain what happened, but do not provide a solution. If you have to help, make the minimum efforts and let your child do the rest.
• Allow your child to express her feelings, be frustrated, cry, shout. With time she will learn how to control them. These are not your feelings. Let her know that you are there for her, love her and accept her as she is.

Children learn through play (free and structured). Structured play is goal oriented, involves rules or adult guidance. On this website 'structured play' refers to

to activities that need to be introduced in a certain way. (Example: The caregiver shows how the pink tower is to be built, or different games with Froebel's gifts.) When the child becomes absorbed in this new activity, the caregiver lets her explore and try things out.

During the structured play, when giving a lesson, the caregiver should aim for:

• BREVITY - cut away useless words, count and weight the value of each word.
• SIMPLICITY - speak the absolute truth, use the simplest words.
• OBJECTIVITY - draw attention to the object and the use the child can make of it, not to your personality.

The caregiver should observe whether, how and for how long the child interests himself in the object, he should not insist by repeating the lesson and make the child feel he/she has made a mistake. The lesson follows this pattern: (For example, introducing red and blue color cards) 1. Show object ('Look at this'). Explain ('This is red, this is blue.') 2. Make sure the child has understood ('Give me the red, give me the blue.') and 3. Point to the object and ask 'What is this?'. If the child makes a mistake, the caregiver should smile, caress him/her and take away the colors.

Free and structured play are often mixed. For example, the caregiver wants to show the child how to transfer dry material from one bowl to another. In order to get the child interested the caregiver should provide enough time for free and safe play with the material, then with the tool (spoon) and only after that to proceed with the activity. Free play is the activity the child chooses herself and, in my belief, the best way to be occupied, because it corresponds to her needs and abilities at the time. Watching the child at free play, the caregiver has the opportunity to learn. He should observe what toys and materials the child chooses, how she uses them, what her language and attitude are, how her imagination develops. There's no need to interfere, if the child is playing safely.

At the age 2 to 3 structured play should last less than fifteen minutes, two times a day.

Concentration. Whenever the child is engaged in a safe and purposeful activity (especially something he/she has chosen himself/herself), it is of great importance not to interrupt this process. It is hard for the parent to sit and observe, but remember: by interfering, you are taking away the opportunity for the child to learn how to do something and to know he/she can do it. These small everyday victories build your child's self-confidence for life.

The Montessori education uses special didactic material that controls every error and provokes self education. If the child makes a mistake, he repeats the exercise over and over again with growing interest.

This self-correction helps the child to concentrate his attention upon the differences, and to compare the various pieces. When the child places each piece in its proper place with evident ease, he has outgrown the exercise and this piece of material is of no use to him anymore. The teacher must not interfere in the slightest way, but wait patiently for the child's spontaneous discoveries. Finally, the teacher gives the child the proper vocabulary to describe the properties of the material (smooth, rough, heavy, light, etc). The education of the senses aims at refining the differential perception of stimuli by means of repeated exercises. One should proceed from a few strongly contrasting stimuli, to many stimuli grading them to ones with finer and more imperceptible differences.

Dr. Montessori used a lot of toys and materials with her first little pupils, but with time she developed her own materials. This is a short description of the materials we use in our activities:

• Knobbed cylinders of different sizes, to be placed in holes with corresponding sizes - this material builds concentration
• Pink tower: cubes that differ in all three dimensions
• Brown stairs: square prisms that differ in two dimensions
• Red rods: differ only in length
• Red and blue rods: rods painted in alternating red and blue sections, for counting up to ten
• Beads with different colors for counting up to 100. At the age from 2 to 4 we use beads to count up to 20
• Dressing frames, color tablets, sound boxes, plane geometric shapes, sandpaper slips, clothes
• Sandpaper numbers and letters to train the hand for future writing
• Movable alphabet for the composition of words

All these materials are presented in consecutive activities to help the child gradually develop his senses and intellect.

I have read many studies and parents' stories about the negative effects of screens, and the following points summarize them:

1. Children don't get enough sleep and have difficulty falling asleep
2. Time spent in front of screens is time without movement, they miss active play
3. Children become passive observers. They are not having real life experience, but watching it
4. Screen-time suppresses boredom (one of the greatest imagination stimulants). Kids are kept constantly entertained and overstimulated
5. They stay indoors and lose contact with nature
6. They miss real communication and get lonely
7. Children get false messages at an age when they try to make sense of the world and to build a structured image of it. They need to discover for themselves how things work, not to be shown what someone else thinks is interesting and appropriate
8. They are deprived of the freedom to choose their activities, according to their interests and abilities

So, what can we parents and caregivers do?

1. First, remove the screens
2. Model behaviour: spend quality time with my child, without screens and distractions
3. Allow your child time to be bored and try to entertain herself
4. Go out and study nature. In all philosophies that I cherish, nature is the perfect teacher.
5. Gardening is very interesting to the child, it builds patience, responsibility, and in the end there is a reward - the most delicious fruits and veggies
6. We use our time together for games, communication, play dates, real-life experience. Dinner time is talking time
7. It is important that your child can feel like she can tell you whatever is bothering her and she will find understanding and support.
8. I always try to find active ways to introduce the world - instead of watching birds on TV, we go out, take a photo of a bird and try to find it in the encyclopedia of birds
9. Responsibilities and chores are a normal part of our life and increase the child's self-worth
10. The process is never easy, but we shouldn't give up!

Brain development depends on the environmental stimuli. Each age-appropriate activity should last for no more than two - three minutes, ten minutes combined, a couple of times daily.

The child should enjoy them and participate readily. These exercises are intended to help the child in his development, and should correspond to the movements he needs to make. Remember, safety always comes first and is your responsibility!

I have listed some inexpensive toys that we have at home and use in our activities:

• Balls - soft woolen balls, a semi-inflated beach ball, table tennis balls, a wooden ball; different sizes, weight and material.
• Balloons - great for playing alone or in pairs, a cord may be attached to the balloon for more play ideas
• Beanbags - great for tossing, aiming, throwing through loops, etc.
• Hoops - we place them in different patterns on the floor, like river stones, or throw things through them
• Ribbons and cords - we make lines to walk on, tie cords between chairs, for crawling under or jumping over. Cords must be used under supervision and put away out of reach when not in use.
• Balance board and balance beam - ours is home-made from a small board and a round rod
• Tricycle
• Mini trampoline
• Gymball
• Rope ladder - ours is made out of rope and water pipes, we used pretzel knot
• Slide - age appropriate plastic one, we use it to slide balls, cars and other toys too
• Sensory bags / boxes / path - ideal stimulation for feet and hands
• Climbing structures or pipe structures - if you feel like making these yourself, there are some great ideas, but you have to safe proof them!
• Flashlight
• A bar for swinging

All of these are simple and cheap, and ensure a lot of movement both outdoors and indoors.

The 'sensitive periods' are special periods in the child's development, when she is completely focused on something - she works tirelessly and with great concentration, until the purpose is achieved.

Then the period ends. An obstacle to this inner impulse can result is a strong reaction from the child and leads to changes in her personality which may affect her whole life. 0 - 6 years is the period for adaptation to the environment and that is why the carefully prepared environment is of such importance.

After a life-long observation, Dr. Maria Montessori defined sensitive periods for:

• ORDER (0 to 2): order in the environment, order in the child's movements, order in daily routine. Everything has its own place and the child remembers and expects to find it there.
• MOVEMENT (0 to 6): the child should be left to move freely, to develop at his own pace. 'Mental development and even spiritual development can and must be supported by movement.' (M. Montessori, The Absorbent Mind)
• LANGUAGE - (0 to 2,5 - 3): the sensitive period for words, grammar and sentence construction picked up almost unconsciously; the second period is up to 4,5 - 5 years of age: the child perfects his language, acquires a large number of words from the environment. 'The development of language for example continues spontaneously until the child is four and a half, but we have seen that at the age of two and a half years it is already complete in all its details. Now (the child) expands and perfects it.' (M. Montessori, The Absorbent Mind)
• INTELLIGENCE - (up to 5): the child observes and absorbs the environment through his senses. At first brightly colored objects attract his attention, but at two he becomes interested in minute details. The hand helps the intellect develop, through practice and experience movements become more and more coordinated.
• SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND BUILDING CHARACTER - (after 3). According to Dr Montessori, children in prepared environment develop patience (there is only one object of each material, so they have to wait); help each other, but only if necessary; teach each other; admire the ones who did better; children who are left alone solve problems among each other with ease.
• WRITING - Dr Montessori described the spontaneous writing that happened with children at the age of four after working with sandpaper letters and movable alphabet for a month and a half. The preparatory work was done before that - tracing geometric shapes, drawing, coloring.
• READING - after 4 children construct words with the movable alphabet and begin to read them and realize their meaning. Soon they can read whole sentences.
• MATHEMATICS - in the prepared environment, children gradually absorb the concepts of quantity, numbers and arithmetic operations
• MUSIC - children are sensitive to rhythm and after 3, when their movements become orderly and better coordinated, they easily follow it.

In education our aim is to train the senses. The didactic material used first: provokes auto-education, and second: controls every error. If the child makes mistakes,

he proceeds to make various attempts with growing interest. Self-correction concentrates the attention upon the differences, the child compares the various pieces. We start with a few strongly contrasting stimuli and later proceed with many stimuli grading them to ones with finer and more imperceptible differences When the child places each piece in its proper place with evident ease, he has outgrown the exercise and this piece of material is of no use to him anymore.

We must not interfere or we are to interrupt the problem-solving process. By saying something like 'No, you are wrong. This is how it should be done!' we prevent the child from self-correcting and learning from his mistakes, we discourage him and he makes unnatural effort to remember the correction. He does not train his senses, but depends on someone to tell him how to finish the exercise properly.

The educator should not interfere and correct errors, neither praise nor punish. Prizes and punishments are external motivators, they distract or discourage the child. He should be left free to exercise, as long as he needs to. The child learns through his experience.

'The way to go forward is to have freedom and a sure way, with the means of telling ourselves when we make a mistake' (M. Montessori, The Absorbent Mind).

Froebel created a great systematic education in regards to math, art, beauty, architecture. Through education man becomes aware of the God-like beauty in himself,

and acts with understanding and self-determination to represent this inner law in the surrounding world.

'Education is to guide man to clarity about himself and in himself, to peace with Nature, and to union with God; therefore it is to raise man to the recognition of himself and of humanity, to the recognition of God and Nature, and to the pure, holy life thereby conditioned.' (Fr. Froebel, Education of man)

Nature in its manifoldness is a representation of the unity of God, just like everything the child does should be considered a manifestation of his inner life. This inner self is created by the child alone, in his very first years of life, it cannot be imposed by parents or teachers.

'Therefore education, instruction and teaching should in the first characteristics necessarily be passive, watchfully and protectively following, not dictatorial, not invariable, not forcibly interfering'. (Fr. Froebel, Education of man)

Froebel sees the man as a whole, but also as a part of humanity, Nature and God. All gifts and occupations lead the child's mind from real everyday objects to abstract ideas. Through education the child becomes a conscious observer, discovers beauty and unity in everything. He is a part of that unity.

On this website you can find an easy way to introduce age appropriate Froebel gifts and occupations.