The Mind and the Hand

Mrs. Silvia Carbone-Singh holds the AMI diplomas for the Assistant to Infancy and Primary levels. She has taken courses at Bank Street School of Education and New York University towards an Early Childhood Certificate. At the National University (UNAM), Mexico she completed a course, Exploring the Brain, for children with special needs. She became an AMI trainer for the Assistants to Infancy level in 1993. Since 1995, she is the Director of Training at the Instituto Montessori de México A.C.

In her article 'The Mind and the Hand' Mrs. Carbone-Singh discusses the close relationship between language, thought, mind, and intelligence. As she points out, 'Montessori herself, when talking of the hand (Absorbent Mind, Chapters 14, 15) always united hand and word, hand and language.' (...)

..."If the hand therefore thinks, if the hand has been able to build, to create music, painting, science, then how should the child educate his hands? The child is not born with a special ability, he has to learn and develop. During the first year, the child's brain is building its structures and function step by step following the maturation of the nervous system. Only when a certain maturation in the nervous system has occurred, can the child move his hands and his thumb in opposition to the index finger. When the hand of the child is able to move intentionally then its education begins. The child uses his hand in the environment to imitate the movement of the adult.

Maria Montessori also talks about the child's tendency to imitate. She says that this imitation is not passive because the child first internalises the movement he sees, then processes it and finally expresses it in his own movement." ...