PRIMARY MONTESSORI CURRICULUM (Ages 2-6)

The Primary program lays the basic foundation of education and the Elementary curriculum continues to build on this foundation and is expanded in greater detail.

It is a unique cycle of learning designed to take advantage of the child's sensitive years, where he/she can absorb information from an enriched environment. The child who acquires the basic skills of reading and mathematics in a Montessori classroom has the advantage of beginning his/her education without effort, boredom, or discouragement.

A child who misses the early years and/or leaves before completion of the Kindergarten year will not receive the optimum benefits and results from this program.

As the children work in a prepared Montessori environment, they develop a sense of order, discipline, independence, and responsibility. A child who is slow works at his own pace without any pressure. By the same token, a child who is ready to advance and read is not held back because of age.

 PRACTICAL LIFE:

Practical Life activities help to develop motor skills and help to normalize the child.  They are: care of person, care of environment, care of plants, care of pets, dexterity (small motor control) and grace and courtesy. They include such things as water pouring, polishing, dressing frames, bead stringing, gardening, etc. These exercises help to develop concentration, coordination, order and cleanliness.

SENSORIAL:

The Sensorial materials help the child to develop and refine the five senses.  He learns the tactile and visual discrimination of size and shape. The children are introduced to new vocabulary like (big, little, thick, thin, red, yellow, blue, etc.).  This enables exploration and discovery through sensorial impressions.  Properly developed, these impressions can bring to the child a sense of order and oneness with his environment.

 MATHEMATICS:

The Montessori materials for mathematics provide a fundamental understanding of number functions. The children are first introduced to the concepts of quantities and symbols, and then introduced to the functions of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

 The Montessori materials teach mathematics in a hands-on (manipulative) manner.  Because of this, children are exposed to such concepts as fractions, algebra and geometry in a very concrete fashion. This leads to a clearer understanding of the abstract concepts which they will study later in their elementary classroom.

READING AND WRITING:

The interest in writing develops in the child a short time before the interest in reading; however, the skills are so related that they are developed practically simultaneously. 

 Very early on in their classroom experience the children are introduced to the phonetic sounds of the lower case alphabet letters.  Through a series of games and lessons, the children discover that words are merely sounds put together.  Using the moveable alphabets, they  learn to build words, and later get to building sentences and creating stories. 

During this period of reading and writing preparation, children develop their skills and interest to a point where they burst into writing and explode into reading one right after the other.

SCIENCE:

Science in the primary classroom is an exposure to the world around them.  There are collections of shells, rocks, bugs or plants available for the children’s examination. Simple science experiments are done in group lessons to help the children understand the workings of the universe as well as their immediate environment.

                                 

 GEOGRAPHY:

Dr. Montessori created a colorful set of map puzzles to teach Geography.  Children get to learn the shapes and names of the continents of the world and are introduced to the maps of the North American countries and the United States. They also learn about land forms such as the island, lake, isthmus, strait, etc.