Yellowknife (Jul 05/06) - Little people need a little understanding and a little place to explore the big wide world.

But in order for that to happen, Raymond Grant says the NWT needs a school to train Montessori teachers.

"We have applied for accreditation," Grant says.

"And we are looking for possible spaces to put a College for Montessori Educators in."

Grant and several other unnamed individuals have banded together to form the college and are looking towards finding proper funding for their school.

"Montessori educators create an environment for learning - and the children end up teaching each other."

He says that Montessori instructors are not called teachers, but educators because the philosophy is not to teach in the traditional way, but to create an environment that will help stimulate the children's learning.

Montessori schools are unique in that they teach children as young as two years old how to read and write.

It is done, however, with the child's age in mind, Grant says.

"Everything in the school is miniature versions of the same thing," he says.

"Even files are made child-size."

Nothing is made out of plastic and nothing is brightly coloured.

Whatever is breakable in the adult world is breakable in the Montessori school.

Grant says that if they break something, the students learn that it takes time and money to replace it.

Grant says children have amazing minds and are still absorbing and learning new things very quickly.

Grant believes that the people typically don't think of early childhood education teachers as professionals.

He believes that it is because of this that daycare is underfunded by the government.

"If we start to look at it as education and not daycare, the mindset of people will change," he says.

Not only would it be the first college for an Early Childhood Education degree in the North, but it would also be the first of its kind anywhere in the world, says Grant.

Educating Montessori teachers here, he says, would not only give more profile to Montessori schools in the North, but educating teachers would also likely produce more Montessori schools, which would help solve the daycare problem.

"Children who attend a Montessori school are far better prepared for elementary school than those who don't," Grant says.