Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Montessori Method \Mon`tes*so"ri Meth"od\ (Pedagogy)
   A system of training and instruction, primarily for use with
   normal children aged from three to six years, devised by Dr.
   Maria Montessori while teaching in the ``Houses of
   Childhood'' (schools in the poorest tenement districts of
   Rome, Italy), and first fully described by her in 1909.
   Leading features are freedom for physical activity (no
   stationary desks and chairs), informal and individual
   instruction, the very early development of writing, and an
   extended sensory and motor training (with special emphasis on
   vision, touch, perception of movement, and their
   interconnections), mediated by a patented, standardized
   system of ``didactic apparatus,'' which is declared to be
   ``auto-regulative.'' Most of the chief features of the method
   are borrowed from current methods used in many institutions
   for training feeble-minded children, and dating back
   especially to the work of the French-American physician
   Edouard O. Seguin (1812-80).