Curriculum

The activities in our Montessori classrooms are divided in 6 broad categories:

Everyday Living	Sensorial	Math	Language	Science	Geography
Each group of activities has its own series of shelves. All the activities for each area are sequenced on the shelves from left to right beginning with the simplest activities and progressing to activities that are more challenging. The children are taught from the first day about the importance of returning each activity to its proper place on the shelf. This specific placement is important because it allows the child to track his/her own progress. As they become more skilled they can see that they are successfully able to complete exercises that are more advanced.
Everyday Living The importance of this area can never be overstated. It is the cornerstone of the child's success and the reason why it is so important for children to enter our program as three-year olds. The purpose of the activities in this area is to develop independence, coordination and control, a sense of order and the ability to concentrate. Many of the activities are also used to strengthen the primary and fine muscles of the hand. The exercises in this area prepare our youngest children to branch out into the other areas. I like to think of it as the, "I learn to crawl before I run" section of the classroom. The child depends on the skills they learned in everyday living to find success in other areas of the room. For example, for a young child to successfully complete a math activity they must be able to locate a rug and lay it out in a place that it large enough to contain it (independence). They must be able to carry the activity to the rug without dropping it (coordination/control). For some activities the child will need to make ten trips from the shelf to the rug (concentration). When the child has developed a strong hand, can work with some level of independence, can move with coordination and body control, sees that most activities are done in a certain order and has developed some level of concentration, then he/she can easily be successful with the beginning activities in all the other areas.			photo by ...