What is your child into right now?
In her observations of young students, Maria Montessori described “sensitive periods” as the time when a child’s enthusiasm, physiology, & psychology coincide to create periods of intense interest in subjects from letters and numbers to science and nature.
During these sensitive periods, students in the correct environment often experience explosive advances in learning. This environment consists of an ordered classroom with easy access to Montessori materials, which are carefully designed to give the young explorer only one problem to solve at a time with a clear and enjoyable path to success.
Sensitive periods tend to overlap, so a child might be in to exploring colors at the same time she is in to identifying shapes. Such a child might choose to work with metal insets, where they learn shapes, decorate with colored pencils, and incidentally develop the hand-eye communication that will be critical for learning to write.
“Education should no longer be mostly imparting knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentials.” - Maria Montessori
What does a typical day look like?
Students start the day with a 3-hour uninterrupted work period, where they can expand on current lessons with follow-up activities or explore other learning opportunities that best fire their current personal interests. Children get the chance to pursue their individual interests with work they select. The teachers observe each child for the developing core competencies they will need to master before advancing to elementary.
At the end of the morning work period, the class comes together for a few minutes of group time. With subjects ranging from countries of the world, seasonal topics, the sciences and more, group time changes every day. The class has a bit of yoga and mindfulness meditation to begin the meeting, ending in our morning poem. Together the group then goes over the date & weather, has a book read-aloud, and reviews concrete examples of the day’s subject. What carries on from day-to-day is an atmosphere of active listening, an adherence to the code of civility, and an overall expectation of enjoying the day at school!
Whenever possible, the children eat lunch outside. After lunch, the children participate in outdoor free play before having the chance to work on special group programs like gardening, dance, visual art, or music. Students then get to spend the late afternoon on further individual studies of their choice.
Consistent with the observations of Maria Montessori, students spend more time working individually and less time in group activities. Montessori found that when the pace of learning is set by the teacher, children who are ready for more advanced concepts are frustrated by a pace that is too slow and children who are still working through previous concepts are frustrated by a pace that leaves them behind. To preserve that young explorer spirit, children are given time to work at their own pace on subjects that most interest them at the time. As a micro-school with a small class, we have the flexibility to cater works based on current interests and needs of the students.
What materials do children work with?
We are a traditionally-influenced Montessori school, and the materials in the classroom reflect that. The classroom is arranged in the structure of the 5 Montessori subjects: Practical Life, Sensorial, Mathematics, Language, and Culture/Science. While the materials switch out on a weekly, monthly, or seasonal basis, the concept of what you might find in each section remains the same.
The practical life area of the classroom has child-size cleaning materials, a dish-washing station, and various trays or baskets of rotating works like introductory sewing materials, stringing beads, folding laundry, and locks & keys. In addition to the traditional classroom materials, the children learn the importance of creative reuse, composting, & recycling, as well as the joy of gardening & plant care, throughout every day, as our school has a significant focus on environmental sustainability in every area of the classroom and playground.
In the sensorial section, you will find objects specially designed for teaching children to train and hone their senses. The red rods, the pink tower, the brown stair, the sound cylinders, the thermic bottles, the knobbed cylinders, and so much more are staples in a Montessori classroom.
The mathematics shelf is where the child goes once she has graduated from the sensorial materials. From here, she might work with sandpaper numbers, the counting rods, the hanging bead frames, the spindle boxes, and the red dot counters. All of these prepare her for learning addition and subtraction during her time in the primary classroom, and eventually multiplication and division in the final year.
Our language area has a multitude of phonetic-based preliminary activities to prepare a child for writing and reading. The sandpaper letters, the green boards with chalk, and the moveable alphabet are essential learning tools for a child’s development of written language. Matching cards, sentence strips, and BOB books are for our ready to go readers who want a challenge.
In the culture & science section, we have a wide range of topics including visual arts, music, botany, zoology, geography, and history. From here, a child might work with the parts of the fish puzzle and matching 3-part cards that encourage her to make a booklet. Or a child might enjoy listening to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker on cassette, studying both the music and the physical media. You will also see earth depicted in many forms, as a sandpaper globe, a colored globe, a puzzle map of the continents, and individual continent puzzle maps.
Ready to learn more? Please arrange a visit. We look forward to meeting you!
