This is the Montessori glossary for UK families who are home educating with Montessori, or thinking about it, and keep running into Montessori vocabulary that feels like it belongs in a teacher-training manual. You do not need to memorise any of these to begin. The vocabulary settles in naturally as you observe your child and set up your home.
To keep each page a reasonable size, the glossary is split into two alphabetical halves. Use the links below to jump in. Every other article in this knowledge base links here on first use of a specialist term, and the link will land you on the entry you need.
Browse the glossary
The full glossary lives across two pages. Each entry is self-contained, so you can land on any single term from a link in another article and get what you need without reading the whole page.
- Montessori glossary A-M: absorbent mind, album, AMI and AMS, Casa, control of error, Cosmic Education, deschooling, deviation, Erdkinder, freedom within limits, going out, Great Lessons, the guide, horme, isolation of difficulty, key experiences, the moveable alphabet.
- Montessori glossary N-Z: normalisation, pink/blue/green series, planes of development, practical life, the prepared adult, the prepared environment, presentation, sensitive period, sensorial, the stereognostic sense, three-period lesson, work, work cycle.
Three terms to start with
If you are brand new to Montessori at home, three entries will orient you quickly. Everything else can wait until you need it.
- Absorbent mind: how children from birth to roughly age six take in their environment effortlessly. The reason the prepared environment matters so much in the early years.
- Prepared environment: the thoughtfully organised space that does the teaching. Can be one shelf in the living room, a corner of the kitchen, or a dedicated room.
- Sensitive period: the windows of intense, joyful learning that every child moves through. These are windows, not deadlines. There is no cliff.