These fables we offer to the child’s soaring imagination. They appeal to the child’s powerful intelligence, to sensitive feelings, and to all characteristics of the second stage of development. — Maria Montessori
To appeal to the ever powerful and articulate imagination of the elementary child, we present fables or Great Lessons through which the enormity of what cannot actually be seen with the eye — such as travel through millennia, through space, or through the planet Earth — is given to the child through an impressive and dramatic spoken story.
Five stories are presented to the children during the first few months of each year to meet the enormous intellectual curiosity of the child. The first is the story of the formation of the universe. The great lessons serve as both a humble starting point for all further learning, as well as a means of placing a grand picture in the mind’s eye of the child, one in which he can place humanity and ultimately himself as a powerful and essential agent of change.
