The bright and sunny classroom is inviting as the children go about their daily activities. A glance around the room will reveal children busy pouring beans or sewing in the practical life area, cleaning up the snack table after enjoying a snack with a friend, or mixing beautiful paints at the easel.
The floor is dotted with children working on the tower of cubes or the long rods on their individual rugs. Maps are being traced and painted, books about animals are being colored, children are learning their sounds with sandpaper letters or reading to a friend in a quiet corner. Beads are used for counting, adding, or multiplying. Songs and stories in Spanish are heard in one corner, and plants and animals are being tended by other children.
In the spring, summer, and fall, the garden outside the classroom door is busily being planted, weeded, and watered. The walls display pictures of animals, people, and scenes from around the world. Children’s maps, paintings, and stories are proudly exhibited. Parents and other observers are always welcome to stop by to visit.
The main premises of Montessori education are:
- Children are to be respected as different from adults and as individuals who differ from each other.
- The child possesses an unusual sensitivity and intellectual ability to absorb and learn from his environment that are unlike those of the adult both in quality and capacity.
- The most important years of a child’s growth are the first six years of life when unconscious learning is gradually brought to the conscious level.
- Acquiring the love of learning and learn how to learn is our goal. With this in mind we have organized our curriculum, which is ahead of the traditional curriculum. We have based our curriculum on the Maria Montessori teachings. The curriculum presents lessons simple and concretely in the early years, and are introduced again in a more abstract and complex presentation during the subsequent years.
