About The Founder
Saintessori was founded by Melyssa Mathilde Knowles, a Catholic and Certified early years Montessori Educator and devoted mother who carries a deep passion for nurturing the whole child : body, mind, and soul.
With years of classroom experience and a strong grounding in both Montessori pedagogy and Catholic spirituality, she created Saintessori to offer meaningful, faith-rooted resources that honour the dignity of each child and support their natural development.
🌿Our Beginning
The inspiration for Saintesori came during Melyssa's Montessori training, where she fell in love with the philosophy’s beauty, simplicity, and deep respect for the child. Immersed in the method, Melyssa found herself captivated by its structure and depth.. but also faced an inner tension.
Faith had always been the cornerstone of her life, and surprisingly, it was never mentioned that Maria Montessori herself was a devout Catholic.
This absence sparked a personal search to understand how the Montessori approach could be integrated with her Catholic beliefs.
🌿Faith in Montessori
Like many students, Melyssa's early reading of Montessori’s work had been functional.. focused on finding answers for assignments. But after becoming both a certified Montessori educator and a mother, she returned to Maria Montessori’s writings with fresh eyes.
To Melyssa's joy, she discovered that faith was not absent from the Montessori method.. it had simply been overlooked.
Books like The Secret of Childhood revealed Montessori’s openness about God and the spiritual nature of the child. This discovery was deeply affirming and led her to explore Montessori’s lesser-known works on religion, including The Child and the Church and The Child at Mass.
For Melyssa, this was a turning point: a confirmation that her love for Montessori and her Catholic faith were not in conflict, but beautifully connected.
🕊 The Call to Create
When her first-born son was about six months old, Melyssa began looking for ways to incorporate faith into his daily life through hands-on, sensory-rich learning. This journey led her to Godly Play, and eventually to Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which deepened her commitment to faith-based formation in early childhood.
But as she explored, she noticed a clear gap: while there were some wonderful resources available, truly Montessori-aligned, Catholic materials were rare.. especially ones that reflected the developmental needs of children while staying faithful to the Catholic Church teaching.
It became clear that this was a space that needed to be filled - and so, Saintessori was born.