‘The Work’ Photographic Study

Andrew Long took these pictures of the children working. He purposely focused on their hands interacting with the materials because our hands are so important to the experience of learning. In a Montessori casa, the children construct knowledge by letting the objects pass through their hands time and time again. In this way, they begin to understand all the qualities of an object: dimension, volume, texture, weight, and composition until they can attribute order and value to it and thus truly “know” it. We thought the images were so lovely, we have hung them in the hallway and invite you to come and see the whole series.