Community Montessori School

The Fundamental Needs of Human Beings 

During the primary years, the child first experienced the fundamental needs of human beings through the geography folders. The pictures discovered in the geography folders indiacte the various ways that people supported their lives. he saw pictures of the different foods, dress, housing, terrain, and other interesting aspects about peoples around the world.

When the child comes to the elementary, we want to impress upon him that people have not always lived in the ways we do now. Long ago, they had different houses, different travel, different clothes, and different foods. In this way, we extend his understanding back into time so he understands that changes have taken place. We also bring awareness to the idea that as population increases, people have grouped together to make their livings forming larger societies. In the cooperation that goes on in these larger societies, people have found an easier way to live and they have managed to better thier lives.

When we introduce the basic needs in the elementary classroom, we emphasize that humans must first meet their fundamental needs of food, clothing, shelter and defense in order to carry on. Because these needs were met, we exist today. When talking about the needs of people, we introduce the Fundamental Needs chart, pointing out that we had to meet the needs for survival. We had to find housing, food, transportation, clothing, and a means to defen ourselves. 

Once these needs are met, people are free to meet their spiritual needs. Cooperative groupings of people in societies and eventually civilizations allowed for meeting spiritual needs. This cooperation allowed for the sharing of work and more leisure time. Still, everone cooperated to the group.

To fully understand these ideas, we take the child back to the beginning so they can have a picture of the whole and understand the development that occurred. The first chapter is related to the natural environmnet and it begins with the creation of that envirnment-the creation of the earth. We presented this to the children in the story of God with No Hands. After that story, came the story of the Coming of Life. In this story, we talked about the work of the plants and the animals as a preparation for another coming-the coming of human beings.

These three stories show all of the elements working together to create an environment where life could sustain itself. From the life of the plants and the animals, early humans could then sustain themselves. The stories and materials that we present are only impressionistic because we do not know exactly when the earth was created or when life came to be. Different theiries exist, but new theories emerge with new times and dates. When we begin to talk about early people, again it is a time when we cannot say for sure when it happened. No written recors for prehistoric peoples exist. Artifacts give us an understanding and suggest a certain way of life of early peoples. Again, no definitive answers exist.

We know that early human beigns had an intellect, a will, certain human tendencies, psychological characteristics, and certain needs-all things that humans of today hold in common with the people of the past. So as we tell the stories to the children about early people we give them the credit that is their due, as they met thier needs with very little to help them other than their basic intellect. We can ask the children to imaginge what it would be like to go out and make a living on the land without benefit of everything invented today. Once these stories are told, they are followed up with stories of human beings addressing their spiritual needs.

Artifacts in the classroom indicate the times when people had leisure time and when they did not. When the child knows about meeting basic and spiritual needs, he can look to these artifacts in a different light. He might appreciate a once thought rudimentary design on old clay. He might consider how these people fired and applied design to the pots. What did they use for paint? What did they use to apply it? What do the shapes on the artifacts represent?

We want the child to begin to think about early people and different societies and to understand that they possessed the same intellect as we do. Although they were less developed, they were no less intelligent. We must help him feel a sense of gratitude for what early peoples accomplished. We want to underscroe the idea that people could do more because they formed cooperative groups that shared the work. we hope the child will come together with others to work in groups as the early peoples did realizing that more can be accomplished when working together.

The purpose of the history curriculum in the Montessori classroom is to introduce the children to all of the warly peoples that have existed. We sow a few seeds and make the child aware of a few aspects. Their interst and reasoning mind will take them where they want to go.

Children naturally choose the Fundamental Needs of Human Beings cards. These picutre and text cards show the physical and spiritual needs of human beings through key points in history. These times include: Early Man, the Eguptians, the Greeks, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Modern Man. The needs represented are: Nutrition, Clothing, Communication, Shelter, Defense, Land Transportation, Water Transportation, Physical Health, Religion and Philosophy, Art, and Social Acceptance.

The children choose a packet and place the picture cards horizontally on a table or rug. The text cards are placed to the side in vertical column. The children will look at the pictures of different shelters for the time periods mentioned previously. The children then read from the list of cards until the match is found describing the picture. With this work, children are able to see the progression of the needs throughout time.

While the children are working on this material, the guide can impart new pieces of information. these cards often ignite interest into these time peroids and the guide can share other bits of information on these time periods, the needs being met or of the people meeting them. Children have often made their own material based on this work. They might choose a fundamental need and look at it during a different time period or through a different culture.