Montessori Moment: Control of Error

When Maria Montessori designed the Montessori materials, she designed them with something she called a built-in “control of error”. She wanted children to be able to identify their own mistakes or errors and be able to fix them on their own, rather than being told that something they did was “wrong” by a teacher only. The idea behind this was to create a sort of friendship with error rather than a feeling of shame or embarrassment during the learning process. Some of the materials, like the geometry cabinet, have a mechanical control of error. When they child tries to place the shape in the frame, it will not fit unless it’s the correct empty spot in the frame.

Other materials have a perceptual control of error, like the pink tower. The child uses their own senses to notice if the cubes are out of order and then fix them accordingly.

To learn more about control of error, check out this video from AMI here.