How to Enroll Your Child in a Montessori Pre-K Program: A Step-by-Step Guide
– Dr. Maria Montessori
Montessori Primary School program focuses on creating a nurturing and stimulating environment for young children, typically aged 3 to 6 years. The school emphasizes a multi-age classroom setting, fostering collaboration and peer learning among students.
In this setting, children engage in various activities that blend practical life skills with sensory exploration, social interaction, and academic development. Practical Life activities help children learn essential skills from everyday life while promoting independence, coordination, concentration, and a sense of order.
Through this holistic approach, Montessori Primary School aims to instill a lifelong love of learning in each child.
The teachers introduce engaging manipulative materials to the children, sparking their curiosity and passion for learning. Through these materials, students explore one-to-one correspondence, numerals, the decimal system, and fundamental mathematical operations. They immerse themselves in phonics, spelling, writing, language, and reading skills. Geography lessons come alive with puzzle maps, landforms, and the fascinating study of different countries. The curriculum beautifully weaves together botany, zoology, science, art, Spanish, computer skills, and music, creating a holistic educational experience that inspires young minds.
At this stage of development, children are eager to engage in more detailed learning experiences. Maria Montessori referred to this as the “sensitive period” or “absorbent mind,” when young learners rapidly acquire knowledge through exploration and repetition.
One of the key benefits of our Montessori Primary Program is that it allows children to progress at their own pace while encouraging creativity and independent thinking. Because of this, students can repeat activities as many times as needed to master a skill before moving on to more advanced lessons.
Our teachers are not the center of the room as in a daycare classroom. She is an observer first. She observes the task each child is doing and gives lessons to encourage more enriched curriculum after mastery of a previous lesson. The room is set up from left to right starting with the Practical life. This is important due to our society is set as a left to right society. For instance, we read and write from the left to the right. In the Practical life section, children are not only learning life skills, but are also working on fine motors skills, getting ready for the more advanced writing. In addition to these, lessons are very appealing to the child which helps in developing longer focus periods.
The second section is the Sensorial section. Children learn by using their senses and this section is for heightening those senses. It is also the beginning of future geometric tasks. The materials are very visibly pleasing for the visual learner, as well as pleasing to the touch for the tactile learner. This section helps the child be aware of their full environment which in turn opens their minds up to more advanced thinking.
Once children show the art of focusing, then they advance into the Language, Math, and Cultural sections. Even when they continue into these sections, they will still work on the Practical Life and Sensorial works. This is important for the children’s fully enriched development. For instance, children may have an academic ability for more advanced work, but still not quite developed fully with their fine motor skills of writing or cutting. Having these sections constantly interchanging allows children to develop at the rate appropriate for them. In the Language section, children work with phonetic sounds and handwriting skills getting ready for future reading and writing. This is done with very visually pleasing concrete materials.
In addition, as they explore into reading, children learn the beginning, basic parts of speech through stories and concrete materials.
Math is taught from a global view such as what is a number and place value using concrete materials, to a more specific view in the abstract such as facts.
In the Cultural section, children learn Zoology: the basic animal groups and parts, Botany: parts of plants as well as environment appreciation, and Geography: learning all the continents and their parts as well as specific landforms. In addition, there is a Peace curriculum that promotes understanding and respect for themselves and others and Art appreciation. Majority of the educational experience for this level is in the concrete form, meaning use of materials to understand the concept.
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