Montessori For Children |Curriculum

Our curriculum

Our curriculum is designed to build a strong foundation in social, emotional, physical and academic development. This approach encourages a child’s independence, self-motivation, and decision-making skills.

Our activities are carefully crafted to capture the moment of readiness in each child, and cater to individual needs. Both inside and outside the classroom, children develop respect and courtesy, co-operation and self-control while growing their own individual talents, interests and abilities. Preschool children experience intense periods of change, both cognitively and socially. The teacher, always observant, responds with appropriate lessons to support each child’s individual growth, interests and capabilities. The academic materials presented, are designed to stimulate a child’s senses as well as respond to their need for order and a sense of mastery within the world.

We guide each child to “to do it by myself,” thus satisfying the child’s basic need for independence. Additionally, by helping children believe that they are capable, competent, and confident, we help create positive attitudes toward learning that last a lifetime.

Our classroom is equipped with a full complement of Montessori educational materials that attract the child's attention and engage their natural desire to learn. Our Montessori materials provide the child with the opportunity for hands-on learning with concrete representations of concepts which are essential for the development of a strong foundation of understanding. Each student learns in a calm and orderly environment that is prepared to meet the cognitive, physical, social and emotional needs of children from 3 to 6 years of age.

Practical Life

The Skills of Daily Living

The practical life area of the curriculum is the bridge for young children between home and school. Practical life activities allow the young child to perform adult activities. The aims of the practical life materials are independence, a sense of order, sequencing, concentration and coordination. Practical life lessons include care of the person (buttoning, zipping, tying); care of the environment (cleaning, polishing, padlocks, watering, food preparation); small and gross motor development (pouring, cutting, balancing); and social development (interpersonal skills, grace and courtesy, conversing, participating in a group).

Sensorial

Exploring the World through the Five Senses

Children come to know and understand the world they live in through their five senses. The Montessori sensorial materials, such as the pink tower, geometric solids, sound cylinders and colour tablets help a child to understand and internalise the concepts of size, shape, colour, taste, touch and sound. These materials build the foundation for developing skills in the areas of music, geometry, mathematics and language.

Language

Our language area is designed to enrich a child’s vocabulary, to establish a personal interest in reading and reading comprehension. The language curriculum progresses from oral language activities and pre-reading work to writing and ultimately to reading comprehension. The materials for written language introduce the child to the letters of the alphabet and their sounds. The child then goes on to compose words and sentences using the moveable alphabet, through a variety of materials and methods.

Children learn the phonetic sounds of the letters of the alphabet, reading phonetically, acquiring a repertoire of phonograms and sight words and eventually expanding their reading abilities. Our goal, besides enabling the children to gain the acquisition of reading and writing, is to help our children become confident communicators. Once a child has gained the ability to read and write they will find that they can now explore the areas of science, geography, botany, biology and zoology independently.

Math

Lessons presented in the practical life and sensorial curriculum lay the groundwork for the child to begin to explore the world of math. The concrete math materials enable the naturally mathematical mind of the child to journey from the concrete to the abstract through manipulation and experimentation. Children first explore the concept of quantity starting within a number space of 0-10 then learn linear counting up to 20 and later on up to 100. The Montessori materials build on each other and soon children begin to combine quantities for the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. At the end of their time in our classroom the children are introduced to the decimal system with gives them the opportunity to deal with numbers up to 9000. Still here the strong emphasis of using concrete materials makes math fun and lets a child develop a clear understanding for amounts rather than to scare them with the traditional approach.

SCIENCE

Even our youngest child can experience the delight of hands on science. Our purpose is to give each child a clear impression of their physical world. Children are introduced to simple science principles such as; float and sink, magnetic/non-magnetic etc... They learn to distinguish between living and non-living. Simple physics/engineering of building and strength concepts are introduced..... and so much more....

Botany, Zoology, Geography, History

These areas of our classroom fascinate the children. Many fundamental concepts are grasped. From what is our planet, an understanding of our solar system, land and water, the continents and civilizations through time. Zoology and botany are taught/self taught through life cycles and classification. History is an important step for the child to understand the concept of evolution of our planet and its inhabitants. Geography is refined to the definition of earth; land and water which leads to the knowledge of the 7 continents, countries and it’s many different environments.Our children quickly realise that our planet is large and very diverse. In all these areas of the classroom the children will affirm the knowledge learnt by making maps, flags, booklets and models. Many activities have a choice of media, this allows the child to vary their skills and have the freedom to choose in what form they would like to learn.

Music

Music is a crucial aspect in our programme and is a daily activity during our mat time. This is complemented by our teachers playing the guitar and ukulele. Once a week we get special support from a music teacher who accompanies our songs on the piano. Each child has the opportunity to perform in our concerts which take place twice a year and are performed on our stage for parents, friends and extended whanua. We also perform poems, plays and speeches all linked to the previous terms topics.

Physical education

Our large garden allows great opportunities for our children to develop their gross motor skills while climbing, swinging, sliding, balancing and jumping. We are fortunate to have a hall to use in wet weather conditions for yoga, running games, obstacle courses and dancing or free play.

Art

Each child is encouraged to use their creative imagination through trial and error. From the beginning their work with Montessori sensorial materials helps refine their sense of colour and other distinguishing characteristics of art. Within the classroom we have art history cards. All children gain important fine motor skills through many activities in the classroom eg, mosaic, stamping, painting, cutting, collage that enable them to refine their ability to make art. We take small groups to the art room most weeks and have prepared art activities that endorse their topic work. For example we may make icebergs and place penguins on them when learning about Antarctica, make toucan masks when looking at the rainforest or mold clay into Mexican Haciendas when looking at homes from around the world.