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Teaching materials 1920s
Conceived and commissioned by Maria Montessor, Wood, dimensions variable.

Manufactured by Baroni e Marangon, Gonzaga, Italy (est. 1911). Collection of Maurizio Marzadori, Bologna. Photo: Carlos da Silva

While studying for her medical degree at the Regia Università di Roma Sapienza–the first woman to qualify there–Montessori developed a particular interest in the creative potential of children with learning difficulties. From systematic analysis of these children’s play, she devised an activity-based teaching method that used material objects to stimulate their senses, and she believed that children should be allowed to explore these materials at their own pace. Montessori’s 1909 publication about her innovative methods developed an international following, which led to the establishment of schools based on her philosophies around the world.

These vintage Montessori materials are part of the exhibition Century of the Child, on display at MOMA Museum.

Maria Montessori

Didactic plaques found in the National Tile Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. Top image is a geometrical schema of a pentagon followed by a geometrical schema of a pyramid. Photo by Eve Torrence.

WAR IN OUR HUMAN TRENCHES

The captions shows the dramatic encounter, in the liver, of our unsung heroes, the immune cells, and an invading parasite, the trypanosome. Each side bears an impressive arsenal of chemical weapons that will define at the end the unset, or not, of the Sleeping Sickness. 

via: FEI Company

Springer Medicine
Springer Medicine is part of Springer Verlag, a global publishing company. They have created a series of magnificent anatomical illustrations to accompany their medical publications.

Photo caption: Abdominal cavity, computer artwork. The spine is at right, with the aorta, the main artery of the body, at its left. At upper centre is one of the kidneys, which filter waste products from the blood. To its left is the spleen, which is part of the immune system. At centre is the small intestine, with the large intestine at left. Arteries are red, veins are blue, nerves are orange and lymph vessels are yellow.

via: sciencephoto

Margaret Lowenfeld (1890-1973)

Margaret Lowenfeld trained as a paediatrician. She pioneered child psychotherapy and play therapy, and invented several object-based techniques that became important for research and therapy between the 1940s and 1970s. These tools are still used.

Lowenfeld grew up in an affluent London family. She completed early medical training in 1914 and worked in a London hospital during the First World War. In 1918 she joined a medical mission to Poland which cared for civilians whose homes had been destroyed in the war. Meeting traumatised children shaped her career. Lowenfeld returned to England and opened a free walk-in centre for ‘difficult’ children in West Kensington, London, featuring toys and play areas. The centre trained child psychologists and expanded to become the Institute for Child Psychology. This small, independent research institute struggled successfully through the Great Depression and the Second World War. When the National Health Service was created in 1948, Lowenfeld’s institute became a non-profit corporation offering training and child psychotherapy services to local government health authorities. Lowenfeld died in 1973. Government funding was cut and the institute closed in 1977. Lowenfeld’s students and those inspired by her work continue to help children today.

Lowenfeld used miniature toys in sand and mosaics of coloured tiles when working with children. A trained therapist talked to a child about the design he or she was creating. Lowenfeld argued the therapist could enter the child’s non-verbal imaginative world. Such ideas were original and widely criticised. Some psychoanalysts had developed contrasting theories about children’s toys and fantasy worlds, but Lowenfeld downplayed similarities to psychoanalysis. She argued her techniques could be used by psychoanalysts and those who disagreed with psychoanalysis. Some anthropologists found Lowenfeld’s techniques useful in illuminating cross-cultural differences.

via: sciencemuseum

Pedagogical Sketchbook by Paul Klee

Pedagogical Sketchbook is a book by Paul Klee. It is based on his extensive lectures on visual form at Bauhaus Staatliche Art School where he was a teacher in between 1921-1931. Originally handwritten – as a pile of working notes he used in his lectures – it was eventually edited by Walter Gropius, designed by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and published in 1925 as a Bauhaus student manual (Bauhausbucher No.2, as the second in the series of the fourteen Bauhaus books) under the original title: Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch. It was translated into English by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (in 1953), who also wrote an introduction for it.

Along with other Bauhaus books such as Theory of Color (by Johannes Itten) and Point and Line to Plane (by Vasily Kandinsky), Pedagogical Sketchbook is a legacy of teaching methods on art theory and practice at Bauhaus Staatliche Art School.

via: Faber&Faber

Blackboard drawings by Rudolf Steiner

ph4re:

Pictograms by Warja Honegger-Lavater

Warja Honegger-Lavater (28 September 1913 - 3 May 2007) was born in Winterthur, Switzerland. She was a Swiss artist and illustrator noted primarily for working in the artist’s books genre by creating accordion fold books that re-tell classic fairy tales with symbols rather than words. - wikipedia

more books via: browardlibrary

(via ushishir)