In the Montessori philosophy, through the use of a prepared environment, the child learns self discipline, freedom to choose, and the development of the child’s personality. In this class, we teach Practical Life, Sensorial Education, Math, Language, Culture, Art and Music.
Practical Life
The Practical Life exercises are usually divided into following categories:
Care of the Environment
- Clean the table and chair
- Care of books
- Care of materials
- Put away materials
Development of Motor Skills
Exercises for the development of motor skills are:
- Rolling and unrolling a mat and napkin
- Folding paper and a napkin
- Sitting and standing up and use of chair
- Carrying chair
- tearing paper
- Use of sponge
- Using tongs to move beads from bowl to bowl
- Using clothes pins
- Pouring and spooning beans from jug to jug
- Sweeping with broom
- Using the dust pan
Care of Self
- Washing and drying hands
- Dressing frames
- Velcro
- Zips
- Big buttons
- Walking the line on tip toe
Social Grace & Courtesy
- Good morning, good bye, thank you, sorry, please
In Sensorial Education
We teach the Knobbed Cylinders where children learn big and small, indirect preparation for writing in terms of the left to right concept, the 3 finger mechanism and eye-hand coordination. We teach the 3-period lesson.
- 1st Period: “This is big.” “This is small.”
- 2nd Period: Show me “big.” Show me “small.”
- 3rd Period: What is this?
- The Pink Tower is another visual activity. “This is big.” “This is small.”
- In the Broad Stair we teach “thick” and “thin”.
- The Long .Rods teach “long” and “short”.
- Tile Color Box teaches colors and matching.
In Sense of Touch
We teach The Touch Board, The Touch Tablets, and the Fabrics. They learn different textures. In Stereognostic sense, we teach with different textured balls. This exercise develops language.
In Sense of Small
We teach smelling bottles with different smells.
In Sense of Taste
We taste sweet, sour and salty.
In the Sense of Hearing
We hear different sounds in the sound box. We use materials like bells, whistles, and clapping hands.
In Preparation for Early-Geometry
We learn shapes; circle, (for example – happy face) and triangle.
In Math
We teach Sandpaper Numbers, we repeat numbers daily, tracing with two fingers. We show different books with numbers, and use different materials. We show the Number Rods and Cards.
Language Development and Music
Every morning, we do circle time. We teach them songs with hand puppets, sometimes we dance together with a CD, we read books daily and teach new words to help with language development.
Art
We work with crayons to develop small muscles, learn colors and use color pencils, they learn left and right pasting, finger print and making collage with materials.