Infant/Toddler Program (6 months – 3 yrs.)

The teacher, child, and environment create a learning triangle. The classroom is prepared by the teacher to encourage independence, freedom within limits, and a sense of order. The child, through individual choice, makes use of what the environment offers to develop himself, interacting with the teacher when support and/or guidance is needed.

Imagine your 4-month old feeding herself with a spoon. Your 18-month-old joyfully picking out his clothing and dressing himself. Your 2-year-old helping her baby sister put on her shoes. This is the power of Montessori at work in the lives of young children.

Dr. Maria Montessori, the Italian educator and scientist who, more than 100 years ago, developed the system of education that bears her name, knew that during the period from birth to age 3, your child’s brain develops more rapidly than at any other time, and more learning takes place than at any other stage of development. Yet many parents don’t seek out formal education until their children have passed the toddler age.

Recognizing the importance of these formative years, the Montessori approach to infant and toddlers supports starting earlier than that.

In a Montessori environment, your infant or toddler will be with teachers—loving, nurturing, and rigorously trained in child development—who create peaceful, supportive, and safe environments for our youngest children. In these spaces, a child’s natural passion for wonder, curiosity, exploration, and discovery comes alive.

Schedule Options
Monday – Thursday
8:30am – 11:30am
12:00pm – 3:00pm
3:00pm – 6:00pm
Friday
8:30am – 3:00pm
Flexible schedule available:
Book on a regular basis or weekly basis depending on your needs.
Morning and afternoon sessions are available.

Early Childhood (3-6 yrs)

Children can solve a number of practical, concrete problems by intelligent use of means-ends problem solving, the use of tools, requesting objects, asking for things to happen. They can communicate well and represent information and ideas by means of symbols – in drawing, symbolic play, gestures, and particularly speech.
Our classroom is filled with the full range of Montessori materials arranged sequentially for ease of flow of the curriculum and movement in the classroom; Practical Life, Sensory-Motor, Language, Mathematics, and Cultural Subjects. Students work in blocks of uninterrupted work both individually and in small groups.

Schedule Options
Monday – Thursday
8:30am – 11:30am
12:00pm – 3:00pm
3:00pm – 6:00pm
Friday
8:30am – 3:00pm
Flexible schedule available:
Book on a regular basis or weekly basis depending on your needs.
Morning and afternoon sessions are available.

After School Option (3-9 yr. olds)
Mon-Thurs. 3:00pm-6:00pm
No Class On Fridays

Curriculum Areas

Practical Life
Refers to the daily living activities that children see their parents engage in at home; cooking, cutting, sweeping, dusting and caring for the environment. Practical Life initiates a child into ones culture.
Maria Montessori placed a great value on Practical Life exercises as she believed they not only refine skills but also form the foundation of character. Moreover, before children master academics, working with Practical Life activities aids the inner construction of order, concentration, coordination, and independence.

Sensory-Motor
The Sensorial area builds on the foundations learned in Practical Life (concentration, order, coordination, and independence) while continuing to prepare for the other curriculum areas. We take in all the information through our senses, so learning to refine them early in life is extremely important to our intellectual development. Each activity in the Sensory-Motor area isolates one of the ten senses (visual, auditory, olfactory (smell), gustatory (taste), tactile, temperature, weight, perception of an unseen object, movement, and balance.

Language
Language activities are enhanced by activities in the other curriculum areas. Large groups foster vocabulary development, communication skills, writing and reading readiness. The Language Curriculum has a large variety of reading readiness materials, including materials for phonetic analysis, word attack skills and reading as well as materials for the refinement of motor control for writing. The hand is trained to become precise and sure for the writing movements.
Reading is prepared indirectly from writing.

Mathematics
Dr. Maria Montessori believed that a child’s mathematical mind based on the order or his awareness found in the development of the senses. Concrete hands on materials are presented before the abstract. The mathematics curriculum in the 3-6 classroom includes the development of concepts such as numeration, place value, fractions, and the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division using numbers up to 999. The Montessori philosophy allows children opportunities to discover various math concepts through concrete manipulation, self-correction, and to see patterns and relationships around them.

Cultural Subjects
“Let us give the child a vision of the whole universe … for all things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one unity.”
Maria Montessori
Children feel grounded by the knowledge of where they belong and thus emphasized the importance of presenting the children with a view of the whole world.
Cultural Subjects encompass the study of Geography, History, Botany, and Zoology.

Multi-Age Grouping

Multiage groupings are a hallmark of the Montessori Method: younger children learn from older children; older children reinforce their learning by teaching concepts they have already mastered. This arrangement also mirrors the real world, where individuals work and socialize with people of all ages and dispositions.

Dr. Maria Montessori observed that children experienced sensitive periods or windows of opportunity, as they grow. As their students develop, Montessori teachers match appropriate lessons and material to these sensitive periods when learning is most naturally absorbed and internalized.

Early Childhood
In early childhood, Montessori students learn through sensory-motor activities, working with materials that develop their cognitive powers through direct experience: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and movement.

Elementary
In the elementary years, the child continues to organize his thinking through work with the Montessori learning materials and an interdisciplinary curriculum as he passes from the concrete to the abstract.  He begins the application of his knowledge to real-world experiences.

This organization of information—facts and figures—prepares the child for the world of adolescence, when thought and emotion evolve into understanding more abstract, universal concepts such as equity, freedom, and justice.

Benefits of Montessori Education

Montessori education offers our children opportunities to develop their potential as they step into a world as engaged, competent, responsible, and respectful citizens with an understanding and appreciation that learning is for life.

Each child is valued as a unique individual. Montessori education recognizes that children learn in different ways, and accommodates all learning styles. Students are also free to learn at their own pace, each advancing through the curriculum as he is ready, guided by the teacher and an individualized learning plan.

Beginning at an early age, Montessori students develop order, coordination, concentration, and independence. Classroom design, materials, and daily routines support the individual’s emerging “self-regulation” (ability to educate one’s self, and to think about what one is learning), toddlers through adolescents.

Students are part of a close, caring community. The multi-age classroom- typically spanning 3 years-re-creates a family structure. Older students enjoy stature as mentors and role models; younger children feel supported and gain confidence about challenges ahead. Teachers model respect, loving kindness, and a belief in peaceful conflict resolution.

Montessori students enjoy freedom within limits. Working within parameters set by their teachers and peers, students are active participants in deciding what their focus of learning will be. Montessori understands that internal satisfaction drives the child’s curiosity and interest and results in joyous learning that is sustainable over a lifetime.

self-correction and self-assessment are an integral part of the Montessori classroom approach. As they mature, students learn to look critically at their work, and become adept at recognizing, correcting, and learning from their errors.

Given the freedom and support to question, to probe deeply, and to make connections, Montessori students become confident, enthusiastic, self-directed learners. They are able to think critically, work collaboratively, and act boldly—a skill set for the 21st century.