Children’s House Curriculum
Practical Life
For our children the Montessori classroom offers exercises to help satisfy the need for meaningful activity. For the young child, there is something special about tasks, which an adult considers ordinary and routine. Washing dishes, cutting vegetables and polishing silver are exciting to the child because they allow him to imitate adults. Imitation is one of the child's strongest urges during his early years.
Tasks are broken down into simple steps so that the child learns how to button, tie, pour water, wash tables, wash clothes on a miniature scrub board, sweep crumbs from the floor, polish brass, as well as prepare and serve food such as bananas, carrots or celery to their classmates.
The Practical Life area offers many opportunities for the child to engage in tasks that help develop and refine small muscle coordination. These activities increase the child’s ability to concentrate and stimulate the growth of the child’s independence.
Sensorial
The child experiments with the Montessori sensorial materials specifically designed to educate the visual, auditory and tactile senses. These materials help children to distinguish among the myriad of sensory impressions received from the everyday environment. The materials enable children to categorize and to synthesize this new information with what is already known. They further refine the child’s ability to classify objects by color, weight, shape, texture, size, sound, smell and taste.
Mathematics
Many children enter school today knowing how to count to twenty, but having no idea what “one” is in relation to “nine”. When a child indicates that he is interested, we begin by showing him how to count our concrete mathematical materials. Later, when he understands the concrete, we introduce the abstract symbol for one, two, three, etc. Eventually, through the use of our carefully designed materials, the children learn about the decimal system, as well as the process of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Language
Materials throughout the Montessori environment directly and indirectly prepare the child for the acquisition of the skills necessary for communication: verbal expression, visual discrimination and small muscle coordination.
Playing sound games, matching cards and objects, categorizing, and labeling precede formal reading activities. When the children are introduced to the alphabet, they learn the sounds of the letters, which enables the children to blend sounds into words, and eventually, to decode written symbols.
A complete reading system is available to the children, by which they learn step by step how to read and write by engaging in meaningful and satisfying activities.
Geography
Children love to play with puzzles! We have large, brightly colored wooden geography puzzles - each one a map of a particular continent, where children learn to reassemble the pieces, representing individual countries. They can learn the names of the countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America and Australia/Oceania through their use of these puzzles.
Science
Plants abound in our classrooms. Through the care of living things, through puzzles of flowers, leaves and plants, and through simple science experiments, our children absorb lasting impressions about the world around them
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