Program

Arrive on Monday June 30 (check in by 6:00 pm)

Depart on Monday July 7

The basic needs of newborns and new mothers

Sensitive, gentle care of both mother and newborn in an environment that fosters the development of their knowing each other through their senses. They need an environment that provides a positive experience for meeting each other and falling in love. 

The sensitive period of relationship and orientation

The sensitive period of order is a critical time when newborns need to feel safe and secure. During this time, newborns rely on consistent sensory cues, such as their mother's smell, voice, and rhythm, to navigate their environment and build relationships. Disruptions, such as frequent separations from the mother or overstimulating environments, can negatively impact the newborn's emotional development. Skin-to-skin contact and "zero separation" are vital in the early days and weeks after birth. This uninterrupted closeness facilitates emotional regulation, promotes breastfeeding, and reduces stress responses in both mother and baby.

The different cries and ways of communicating

Newborns have different cries to communicate different needs. They may cry due to hunger, a wet diaper, or simply because they are wanting to be held. They are capable of much more communication than we typically realize. Crying can also be an expression of frustration from not being understood. Newborns are people with feelings and who have valid reactions to various stimuli. 

Sensitizing ourselves to newborns

Sensitizing ourselves to newborns involves recognizing their capabilities and individuality, and understanding their communication cues, thus increasing our knowledge of their competencies. 

Practical work and material making

Practical work and material making are essential components of any Assistants to Infancy Montessori (AIM) program. Through working with our hands we find ourselves grounded in our nervous system and focused on the materials that are appropriate for the child we offer them to. This work enriches our study of their basic needs. Adele Costa Gnocchi, who led the AIM School, believed that hands-on experience and observation were crucial for understanding child development and effective teaching. Students in the AIM program were required to complete a two-year practicum that included working in various settings such as foundling orphanages, hospital labor and maternity wards, and in family homes with children under three. The practicum was supplemented with afternoon sessions where students reflected on their experiences and connected them to Montessori's ideas. Material making was a key component, allowing students to create developmentally appropriate materials for the children they worked with. 

Working with new mothers in a Montessori way

How can we help mothers find their own way forward supporting them to trust themselves and the child in their arms? “Help me do it myself” and “Every unnecessary assistance is an obstacle to development” were mottos spoken often by Maria Montessori. This delicate time requires a very specific kind of help. 

Newborn assistants in Rome from 1947 to 2011

The newborn Montessori work  in Rome was done with the leadership of Adele Costa Gnocchi, one of Maria Montessori’s most important collaborators. In 1927, Costa Gnocchi opened La Scuoletta, the Little School, in Palazzo Taverna to study children aged three to six using Montessori’s scientific pedagogy. The school remained open during the fascist regime, one of only two Montessori schools in Italy not closed by Mussolini. After WWII, the school became the first in the world to apply Montessori’s vision to children under three. It was a destination for observation by people from all over the world, who came to witness Costa Gnocchi’s work with small children. In 1947, Costa Gnocchi opened the Assistants to Infancy Montessori (AIM) School in Palazzo Vidoni. The AIM School offered a specialization for educators to work with newborns. Anna Gambacurta Di Palermo, Rita Carusi, Rosamaria Muzzarelli, and Letizia Varrone came through this specialization and served families and their newborns in Rome for many years.

Montessori and Costa Gnocchi’s writings about Saint Francis

“It must not be said that such attempts were too bold to draw from a narrow understanding of the new sciences still in development: every great thing is born on failed attempts, and on imperfect works. When St. Francis of Assisi had the revelation that he had to rebuild the Church, he believed that it was the church of his town that had collapsed; and he began to carry stones on his shoulders in order to rebuild it. Only later did he realise that his mission was to renew the Catholic Church in a spirit of poverty. But the St. Francis who naively carries the stones, like the one who brilliantly leads to a triumph of the spirit, are the same person in two different ages. Thus very similarly we have believed that by transporting stones from the hard and arid experiment of the [geometric] cabinet to the ancient and collapsing school, we could rebuild it. We have looked at the results of materialistic and mechanistic science with the same hope with which St. Francis looked at the fragments of granite that must have weighed on his shoulders.   

                                         Maria Montessori (1909) translated by Karin Slabaugh

To apply for the retreat please send an email to

 info@montessori-for-life.org