One of the greatest ideas of child’s development that was coined out by Dr. Maria Montessori is the absorbent mind. In her work, she stated that the most important years of children lies from birth to the age of six. This is when the child is considered having the ability to teach himself and eventually construct his whole personality.

The absorbent mind refers to the ability of one's mind to absorb information and sensation from the world surrounds it. The child's mind works like a sponge which simply absorbs as much information as it can from the environment. By absorbing information, the child acts for the need of survival. Once he is born, he has limited abilities as well as having no meaningful language at all.

But gradually, from the environment he can absorb and learn how to do many complex things as well as speaking in the language mostly used by his environment. This process is natural, without any force, thought, or even choice. It is simply there within the child's development.

There are two phases of absorbent mind which occur from the age of zero to six years old. The first phase is known as the unconscious mind phase. This phase is responsible in contributing the child's unconscious absorption to any information from his surroundings and is used to construct and create himself. The child's ability to start walking, talking, able to feed himself for example, are acquired in this phase. In unconscious mind, the child's mind is not yet formed. Here the child only absorbs impression unconsciously in which zero to very limited instruction will be understood. Each impression that is absorbed is superimposed upon the previous one. It causes the child to combine all of the multiple experiences that he had previously to refine what he have learned and gain knowledge of something new. One other unique characteristic of this phase is that, even though there are many stimuli from the environment that may be absorbed by him, the child mostly response only to human stimuli, not other things around him. Moreover, in unconscious phase the child also incorporates the information he absorbed from his surroundings into his psychic life. It is not just remembered, it is part of his soul in which eventually this information is used to prepare the child to enter the next phase, the conscious mind phase.

During the conscious mind, the child starts to construct his mind consciously. Everything he learns in unconscious mind is perfected. This is where the child is ready to learn from instruction and practice. The conscious mind starts around the age of three. Here,

is more specific. Everything that he does is more purposeful, therefore, his way of 'absorbing' the information also shifts from unconscious impression to intentional interaction through senses. The child tends to have a major shifting from a dependent human being to someone who is significantly wanting to be independent and having freedom. He really wants to master his environment by touching and feeling everything. The key of this phase is the statement "Let me to do it myself". Thus, it is the adult responsibility to provide adequate opportunity for the child to explore real life practical lesson that he does by himself, with the adults reduce their size only to become the observer. By doing this, the child will fully unleash his capability to construct his mind and eventually the adult he is to become.