蒙台梭利哲学认为，年幼的孩子还不能清楚地区分现实与想象，涉及到想象的活动应该推迟到孩子在现实中打稳了基础之后。在蒙台梭利班孩子的任务和活动是具有现实性的。蒙台梭利说儿童玩玩具的乐趣是一种错误（It is a mistake for children to amuse themselves with toys），如果没有与大小、数字相联系的智力兴趣，孩子不会真正长久的对玩具感兴趣。
皮尔斯（Joseph Chilton Pearce）在《奇妙的儿童》一书中写道：
"用想象的素材填满概念的缺口，忽视所有的差异，这是孩子游戏的本质。重要的原则是：表面上是游戏，实质上是学习（The child's mind plays on the basic conceptual brain set without altering it.）。
游戏的现实，就像成人的现实，既不是世界、也不是心智头脑（mind-brain），而是加上心智头脑的世界（It is the world plus mind-brain.），孩子的智力开始作用于自己与世界的想象转化（The child's intelligence becomes invested in his imagined transformation of self and world.）。这方面极其引人入胜，他的意识沉浸在想象中，现实成了游戏，对孩子而言，时间总是现在，地点总是这里，行动的总是我，他还没有能力具备成人关于想象和真实世界的观念。他只知道一个世界，他所置身的游戏就是真实的世界，他不是在生活中做游戏，游戏就是生活。"
很遗憾没有看过蒙氏的英文著作，看的都是翻译成中文的。不过，“It is a mistake for children to amuse themselves with toys”这句话在我看来，还是符合蒙氏的理念的，如果是我的话也许会倾向把mistake翻译成误解而不是错误。无论如何，下面这段《童年的秘密》中关于神游的描述，还是映证了这句话的：
抱歉没看过中文版的<童年的秘密>, 这里是英文版的一段在"观察与发现"这一章节里一段关于"玩具" 的: TOYS
Although the children in our first school could play with some really splendid toys, none cared to do so. This surpriesed me so much that I decided to help them play with their toys, showing them how to handle the tiny dishes, lighting the fire in the doll's kitchen, and placing near it a pretty doll. The children weree momentarily interested but then went off on their own. Since they never freely chose their toys, I realized that in the life of a child play is perhaps something of little importance which he undertakes for the lack of something better to do. A child feels that he has something of greater moment to do than to be engaged in such trivial occupations. He regards play as we would regard a game of chess or bridge. These are pleasant occupations for hours of leisure, but they would become painful if we were obliged to puesue them at greath length. When we have some important business to do , bridge is forgotten. And since a child always has some important thing at hand, he is not particularly interested in playing.
这是Maria Montessori的观察所得, 并没有抵触玩具, 可不可以告诉我"神游"这一段具体在哪一章节, 谢谢!
一位华德福学校和公立学校的老师写的文章因她本人没有当过蒙特梭利老师可能对别的华德福老师会有用吧, 要看这篇文章发表在哪里. 在美国言论自由. 事实上在美国现在有很多公立学校设有蒙特梭利班..
