Prepared For Life

The four basic Human Tendencies are exploration, orientation, order, and communication. Seven more follow these tendencies; work, activity, manipulation, exactness, repetition, abstraction, and self-perfection.The first three tendencies which allowed humans to survive were exploration, orientation, and order. Exploration is using one’s senses to explore one’s environment. The early human was given these senses to set out and explore his boundaries. The first human had to also orient himself in his environment to make sure when he set out to explore he would recognize his boundaries and make it back to his shelter. He used environmental clues, rocks, trees, a familiar scent that was associated with his home. By using one’s senses and being fully aware of one’s surroundings, one begins to put objects and items of the environment in order to orient and explore. Today when we explore a map of a certain area, we need to look at the order of streets and their orientation to gain our sense of direction and boundaries.

A child in her formative years is just like the early human. Born into a strange world, with nothing on her body to keep her warm, no means in which to find food, and no ability to create a shelter. As adults we prepare this environment for the child. We provide it’s basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. The child has inner instincts to explore and orient the order of her surroundings.The child quickly adapts to her environment by exploring, which is usually by using all of the senses. The child is absorbing everything in her environment and she will be able to orient herself if there is order and consistency. When something is out of order the child will notice and insist it be put back the way it was when she first saw it. The child is at a time in her life when everything is fresh and new.

Providing a prepared environment for the child helps develop and enhance these human tendencies. Creating a sense of order and giving the child the ability to take care of her belongings, establishes confidence and comfort in the child’s life.

” Communication is a function of order and it is the tendency, along with exploration, that leads the child on to further discoveries in the field of Language. Language grows with human thought.” Children listen to the communication around them. Soon they are communicating as well. When a child is very young they communicate by crying, laughing, facial expressions, and movements. Soon their mouth muscles develop and they are able to use sounds and syllables. Words and then sentences will explode from their mouths and they are communicating with language. If we create an atmosphere of exploration and order, the children will discover different ways of communicating other than spoken language.

Work, manipulation, activity, exactness, abstraction, repetition, and self-perfection are all interrelated with the first four mentioned earlier. The inventions of man are the work of his hands, revealing another tendency of man, that of work, activity, and manipulation.

The sensorial material also offer the opportunity of preparing in the subconscious those elements of mathematics which are basic to process and formulae. Therefore the child is beginning to abstractly explore her environment and able to manipulate the activities and works into something useful to carry with her for the rest of her life. Children love to work. They would rather work than play. The child seems to be in no hurry to finish his work, and will repeat it quite uselessly.

Self-control can also be interpreted as self- perfection. We are all working towards a goal that will satisfy our inner needs to be perfect in our own way. The child is doing this as well. If we create an environment where the child can develop and grow with the Human Tendencies than the child will acquire a satisfaction of self-perfection.