Our Classrooms & Curriculum
Our Classrooms & Curriculum
The child centered, carefully prepared environment of our classrooms provides children with tangible activities designed to enrich and enhance their curiosity and love of learning.
When you walk into one of our classrooms you can expect to see, groups of children focused on individual activities carefully moving around their space. You can expect to see guides presenting material and activities one on one, or in very small groups surrounded, by soft classical or jazz music and quiet, but excited chatter of little voices focused on, commenting on and questioning the work they have chosen.
The prepared environment is separated into 8 learning areas.
Practical Life
Practical life focuses on real-life tasks prepared so that children develop their independence, coordination, and concentration. These activities which are interesting and pleasing to the eye, explore daily activities such as eating, dressing, and cleaning. The classroom guides present these tasks to each child prior to independent use. These tasks explore caring for the environment and care of self. The activities encourage personal responsibility, awareness of community, grace and courtesy, common sense while promoting self-esteem.
Sensorial
The purpose of Sensorial Material in Montessori is to refine the five senses, which are tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory and gustatory. Each activity was designed specifically with a single sense in mind. The designed material is so focused and simple. These sensorial experiences are so important at the primary level as children are most receptive to developing their senses during ages birth -6.
Language
In a Montessori classroom, children will be introduced to the sounds and feel of letters at first, with the sandpaper letters. Learning the sound of the letters allows the child to blend and read words instead of having to memorize words as it’s done traditionally. The sandpaper letters also aid the child to form the letters properly when writing, without attempting to draw them like pictures. Children will build on top of this first activity and move on up to parts of speech and story writing by the time they are ready for 1st grade.
Mathematics
In our classrooms, children are presented with tactile, concrete material for recognition of numbers and will build on that knowledge to move on to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Fractions, introduction money and time are activities that are presented as well. Children become creative by creating their own math and math word problems, which they present to their peers and guides. Mathematics in a Montessori classroom is pure Magic!
Science
Children explore the life cycles of a plant, butterfly, frog and chicken with live specimens in our classrooms. They have hands on experiences of watching plants grow from seeds, watching tadpoles grow into frogs in classroom habitats, watching butterflies immerge from cocoons and they watch baby chicks hatch from eggs in, in class incubators.
Geography
Exploring the world around us is an important aspect of our curriculum. Dr. Montessori spoke of the importance of guiding children to understanding the world around us from the Universe to the individual. The study of planets, earth, continents, countries and cultures are enveloped with a sense of connection and belonging. Our classrooms allow children to explore this world through globes, maps, land and water forms and more!
Art
Children explore the world of art though individual expression and presented art history with a component of fine art. This allows children to express themselves as freely as they would like through art, while exploring the history and significance of renowned artist and movements.
Peace
The Peace table in our classroom offer children a safe space to resolve conflicts and a space to calm themselves when necessary. We encourage and guide children to come to the table and take turns speaking in order to resolve their conflicts as well as express their emotions. It is imperative that children are guided towards conflict resolution through respectful, verbal communication which will bring peace to all parties involved.