Dupage

Classes for 3-6 Year Olds and Kindergarten

DuPage Montessori School classes for 3-6 year olds are ideal for children who participated in our Classes for 15 months to 3 Year olds and for children who are just beginning their Montessori education. In these classes, children ages 3 to 6 years learn the order of the environment and develop their foundation in practical life and sensorial experiences.

Educating children of different ages together provides unique opportunities for individual development. Younger children are fascinated by the activities of older children and learn from them by imitation and interaction. Older children experience leadership and mastery of their environment as they initiate activities and take on more responsibility. Both younger and older children enjoy a sense of achievement and build confidence that lasts a lifetime.

Because children benefit from continuity in their learning experiences, our classes for 3-6 year olds help children develop learning and social skills as well as understanding of themselves and others. This knowledge is the foundation that children will build on when they enter elementary classes.

Kindergarten Program

The DuPage Montessori Kindergarten Program is from 8:30 - 2:30 p.m. This Kindergarten Program is a part of the 3 to 6 year olds classroom, in which the Montessori teacher instructs her kindergarten students who work with confidence and enthusiasm their final year in this classroom. The children take on leadership roles and learn skills to prepare them for First grade.

In the afternoon from 12:30 until 2:30 p.m. the teacher gives advanced presentations and individualized instruction to the six to ten children in her kindergarten class.

When children graduate from the DuPage Montessori Kindergarten Program, they are typically working at a first grade or higher level. Many of these children enter our DuPage Montessori Elementary Program to continue their accelerated progress.

All programs are five days a week during the school year. Half day and full day programs are available. Extended hours are available from 7:30 to 6:00 p.m.

In the Kindergarten year, we also introduce the Junior Achievement program. Trained volunteers come in to give presentations and workshops on various topics i.e business, economics, community. The children learn about helping, working, earning and saving.

Reading Program

Our school is also unique in that we have created our own materials to support our phonics reading program. Making the transition to the symbolic world of the written word can be difficult for children and so we have created materials to ease that transition by associating words and clauses with pictures. Also, to make learning to read more appealing we have based materials around dinosaurs, bugs, astronauts, and other topics kids enjoy. The materials progress along with our reading series to strengthen the child's current phonetic vocabulary.

After kids have completed our phonetic reading series then they move onto reading chapter books. Most students by the end of Kindergarten are reading at a 1st or 2nd grade level. A lot of one-to-one reading is done in the classroom. We have reading moms that volunteer to come in the classroom and read with the kids. The head teacher and their assistant do one-to-one reading with the children as well.