What this site covers, and what it does not

This page sets out what the site covers, what it does not yet cover and what it will never do, so that a reader can see the gaps as clearly as the pages.

Covered now

Every page exists in English and in Swedish, with the same content in both. Most of the site concerns children aged about 3 to 12. The years from birth to three are covered only briefly.

For parents and carers: Montessori’s stages of development, choosing a school, Montessori at home, common questions and myths, a glossary, further reading, and Ten quiet minutes, a printable sheet for watching your child at home. Every page in this section also has a Plain Language version.
For children: pages for children aged 6 to 9 and 9 to 12, most of which children aged 3 to 6 can share by reading them together with an adult. There are no audio recordings, so a child who does not yet read needs an adult to read the pages aloud.
For educators: training pathways compared, a reference to the classroom materials, the language and mathematics curricula in depth, the Five Great Lessons mapped onto AMI’s curriculum albums for ages 6 to 12, and professional development.
For researchers: the current state of the evidence, an annotated bibliography, a historical timeline, international data and a fuller biography of Maria Montessori.
About this site: the editorial policy, the corrections log and this page.

Learning activities for children

No learning activity exists on this site yet. Two things come first.

An age policy, setting out what the site will and will not offer at each age, measured against Swedish public-health and school guidance.
A public standard for learning software: a list of requirements, each one testable, that a family can check against any app, including the site’s own.

The first activity is planned for children aged 9 to 12: a simple timeline strip based on The Story of Everything. It will be released only after children have tried it through an independent partner, such as a university department, working under that partner’s own ethics responsibility. This site will hold no data about any child, and no school the author is connected with will take part. No learning benefit will be claimed for any activity before an independent study has tested it.

Activities for children aged 6 to 9 will be considered only after Sweden’s new school curricula have been issued and read.

There will be no screen activities for children under six. This is by design, not a gap: for younger children the site offers material for adults, things to print and activities with real objects. For children aged 3 to 6, this would be reconsidered only if Swedish public-health or preschool guidance changed, and then only with a public explanation.

Any activity the site does build will have no accounts, no tracking and no rewards, and will store nothing on a device unless the person using it switches that on.

Languages

Every page is in English and Swedish. No other language is offered yet. If other languages come, they will follow two tracks.

Sweden’s national minority languages: Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani chib and Sámi. Swedish law requires public bodies to protect and promote these languages and to give particular support to children’s use of them (lagen (2009:724) om nationella minoriteter och minoritetsspråk, section 4). This site is not a public body and that duty does not bind it, but it adopts the aim. Translations into these languages would be made by people, in partnership with each language community, not by machine. Finnish would come first.
Languages chosen by reach: other languages widely spoken in Sweden, chosen by how many readers they would reach. These pages would be machine-translated, then checked and corrected in full by native speakers, and every translated page would say so.

Nothing has been translated yet.

Swedish law also gives public bodies a duty to protect and promote Swedish Sign Language (språklagen (2009:600), section 9). Here too the site adopts the aim voluntarily: any video in Swedish Sign Language would be made by Deaf signers and reviewed by Deaf reviewers, with no avatars or captions offered in its place.

Plain Language versions are labelled by their format, not by who they are for. At present they exist for the section for parents and carers only.

Not yet covered

Pages addressed to young people aged 12 to 18 themselves. For now, this age group appears only in material written for adults.
A section for adults, including young adults aged 18 to 25 and what adult life might take from Montessori’s ideas.
Peace education, and the wider strand on emotional life, nature, movement, music and art.
A page on kindness and the evidence: what research says about self-compassion and related approaches.
Plain Language versions of the sections for educators and for researchers.
Testing the Plain Language pages with the readers they are written for. Until that has been done, whether those readers find them easy to understand is untested.
Video in Swedish Sign Language.
Any language other than English and Swedish.
Any learning activity on a screen.

Never

Accounts, logins, newsletters, comments or anything else that asks a visitor who they are.
Advertising, sponsorship, anything for sale, or recommendations of products and vendors.
Analytics or tracking scripts, or cookies or similar storage used to follow visitors.
Points, badges, streaks, levels, leaderboards or praise used as rewards, for anyone of any age.
Holding data about any child, or using a school the author is connected with as a test site, a partner or an example.
Ranking, certifying or recommending schools.
Presenting the evidence on Montessori education as settled, in either direction.
Treating any organisation as more authoritative than the evidence it can point to.