In any case, the Montessori mother, with the newly acquired apparatus spread out before her, needs to gird herself up for an intellectual enterprise where she will need not only all the strength of her brain, but every atom of ingenuity and mental flexibility which she can bring to bear on her problem. She will do well, of course, to fortify herself in the first place by a careful perusal of Dr. Montessori’s own description of the apparatus and its use, or by reading any other good manual which she can find. The booklet sent out with the apparatus gives some very useful detailed instructions which it is not necessary to repeat here, since it comes into the hands of everyone who secures the apparatus. One of the main things for the Montessori mother to remember is that the teachers in the Casa dei Bambini are trained to make whatever explanations are necessary, as brief as possible, given in as few words as they can manage, and with good long periods of silence in between.
Much of the apparatus is so ingeniously devised that any normally inventive child needs but to have it set before him to divine its correct use. The buttoning-frames, and the solid and plane geometric insets need not a single word of explanation, even to start the child upon the exercise. But the various rods and blocks, used for the Long and Broad Stair and the Tower, are so much like ordinary building-blocks that, the first time they are presented, the child needs a clear presentation of how to handle them. This can be made an object-lesson conducted in perfect silence; although later, when the child begins to use the sandpaper numbers with them as he learns the series of numbers up to ten, he needs, of course, to be guided in this exercise.
With these rods and blocks especially, care should be taken to observe the Montessori rule that apparatus is to be used for its proper purpose only, in order to avoid confusion in the child’s mind. He should never use the color spools, for instance, to build houses with. Not that, by any means, he should be coaxed to continue the exercises in color if he feels like building houses; but other material should be given him--a pack of cards, building-blocks, small stones, anything handy, but never apparatus intended for another exercise.