Preschool

Montessori preschool is unique in that it requires proprietary materials and teachers who are trained and certified to use these materials. Other preschools typically will use materials from various manufacturers and simply require from their teachers a background in education. Maria Montessori developed her program by building upon the work of Friedrich Froebel, the man who invented kindergarten, and she gained worldwide acclaim for proving children can do serious school work before 6 years of age. This level of education requires more training and staff development than your typical preschool will provide.

This form of education emphasizes the development of each child's natural interests and abilities. The teacher acts as a guide to provide close attention to the development of each child. The materials provide visual and concrete experiences for the different developmental stages of learning. In a natural manner, the children gradually progress from concrete experiences to abstract knowledge.

Kindergarten

In the afternoon, the teacher gives advanced presentations and individualized instruction to the six to ten children in her kindergarten class. This allows the teacher to focus more attention on her older students. Younger students can participate if they are ready. Kindergarten is when the students learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic. They have previously been doing these activities in a more concrete manner, but now they are able to complete the formal task on their own. This allows them to do research and to branch out and pursue their interests like never before.

Math

The children first get a sense of number and quantity through using concrete materials. The basic arithmetic operations begin with literally adding or subtracting various objects. Multiplication is taught as adding multiple times. Division is taught as literally dividing a certain number of objects into smaller quantities. As the children progress, they are able to move away from the concrete operation to a more symbolic manner of doing mathematics.

Reading

Our school is unique in that we have created our own materials to support our phonics program and Montessori materials. Making the transition to the symbolic world of the written word can be difficult. 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 are reading at a 1st or 2nd grade level by the end of kindergarten. 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.

Geography

The Montessori geography materials provide an engaging way for children to learn about the world through creating their own maps. It is a multistep process that trains them on how to focus on a prolonged activity. The children will later incorporate these maps with research on the different animals and plants of the world.