It was there that she first founded the children's House or Casa dei Bambini. She realised that the style of education in her day wasn't very effective. She believed that using bright, attractive materials, and fun exercises that it would help her pupils to learn by play. Her success led to the adoption of the Montessori method of education all around the world. Her motto was "children teach themselves".
Maria Montessori first went to the U.S.A. in 1913, and this the same year that Alexander Bell and his wife Mabel Bell started the Montessori Educational Association at Washington D.C. in their home. Among her other American supporters were Thomas Edison and Helen Keller. In 1915 Maria got the whole world's attention because of her glasshouse schoolroom, at the Panama Pacific International Exhibit in San Francisco. On this second visit to the U.S. she also lead a teacher training course for the International Kindergarten Union. The government of Spain asked her to go over to Spain to open a research centre in 1917.
In 1919 she began a series of teacher training courses in England. In 1922 Maria was appointed government inspector of schools in her native Italy. But because of the political situation there she was forced to leave Italy in 1934. She travelled to Barcelona, Spain, and was rescued there by a British cruiser in 1936 during the Spanish civil war. She opened the Montessori Training Centre in Netherlands in 1938 and started a series of teacher training courses in India in 1939. She lived a very long life and died in 1952.