CURRICULUM

Practical Life

Practical life is the most basic and essential area of Montessori development.  There are four goals of the practical life curriculum that make it a foundation of the child’s day to day life:  concentration, coordination, independence, and order.

Children of all ages find something challenging and satisfying in practical life materials.  The success of our program depends upon this foundation.  Through practical life, the child develops a work process that is freely chosen, undertaken with self-discipline, using physical skills in an intelligent way.  Some examples of practical life materials include flower arranging, table washing, wood polishing, apple slicing, and button sewing.

Sensorial

Young children explore the world through their senses.  The Montessori Sensorial curriculum allows for the development and refinement of all five senses.

Sensorial exercises are done with an extensive set of materials, each of which isolates one sense and expands upon it: color, shape, weight or pitch are matched, graded and named.

Language and Math

Cognitive work in language and math develops from concrete sensorial materials that the child uses, forming the foundation for the use of symbols.  The child will first be introduced to each sound and number verbally before using the written symbol that represents it.  In this way the child moves from concrete ways of understanding to the more abstract concepts that follow. 

Arithmetic, geography, reading and writing, grammar, music, art, science, and geometry are developed in gradual stages from the concrete sensorial to the abstract conceptual through sequential materials and exercises and repetition of these exercises.  Each child works from his/her own choice at his/her own pace, successfully completing self-correcting materials, while the guide, through observation, works to give lessons that seamlessly provide the next step of growth.

Cultural Studies

Cultural studies include sciences, zoology, botany, physical and political geography, biomes of the Earth and the study of world cultures.