montessori method

​

To fulfill the goal of bringing out a child's full potential, the Montessori classroom is carefully prepared to provide opportunities for children to be independent and achieve "ownership" of their environment.  It is a rich, ordered stimulating space that is filled with enriching, developmentally appropriate materials that encourage the child to be creative and make their own work choices.  

​

The teacher presents lessons to children first through movement and the senses (concrete) then moving towards abstraction, critical thinking, and creativity. When children are curious and ready for their next challenge, they are guided to the next lessons. Learning is developed in the following areas, and integrated as much as possible:

 

• Practical Life: the cornerstone of Montessori. Here children practice real-life experiences to take care of their self and the world around them, such as sewing, washing, buttoning, and preparing food.

• Sensorial: materials serve to develop and perfect the child's senses.  Each material isolates a single quality, sense or impression (i.e. size, color, weight, smell, taste, shape, etc.)  After the child sufficiently experiences the materials concretely, language is added (longer, shorter, darkest. lightest) and she enjoys comparing, classifying, matching and sorting.  The skills acquired here directly translate to abilities needed for more advanced learning.  Thus the sensorial materials prepare the mind and body for reading, writing, and math.

• Language: An example of something a child might work on in the Language area is tracing letters made of sandpaper while he says and hears the corresponding phonetic sound.  Later he'll "build" words with the moveable alphabet.  Here again he is using his senses as well as concrete materials to absorb and refine information.  All the Montessori language activities cultivate the child's oral, auditroy and visual discrimination, reading skills, writing mechanics, as well as an appreciation of literature and poetry.  The child has the contents of language in her mind; the materials help her organize and clarify her understanding. 

• Math materials assist the child in experiencing quantity and symbol in a tangible form.  They include excercises for numeration from 0 to 10, linear counting from 1 to 1000, categories of the decimal system (units, tens, hundreds, thousands) and basic operations such as addition and subtraction.  The child learns these principals physically by tracing a sandpaper number with his fingers, carrying large heavy cubes made of 1000 beads, extending his arms wide to move the longest "ten" number rod, or stretching out a long chain of beads and counting them.  Thus the leap to abstraction is grounded in the concrete.

• Cultural studies, geography, history, science, nature and art which dovetail with the main four disciplines and are presented in the same manner.