Along with the need for mastery of his environment, the young child needs to engage in spontaneous activity. Montessori children often repeat an action for the pleasure of doing so, long after the need for the action ceases. If a child lifts up a chair and carries it back and forth across the room, it is not the concern of the teacher that he tire himself. He does not continue to carry the chair to be useful, but merely to satisfy in himself a need for expression. The spontaneous activity of Montessori children appears...