Woodland
Montessori School
A child of preschool or kindergarten age learns by doing. In response to this need, the Primary classroom is carefully prepared and organized with activities that invite the students to explore and discover. Through this structure, the children’s natural curiosity and joy in learning is nurtured and encouraged. Listed below are the specific areas of the classroom and what children learn through these activities.
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Practical Life
Practical life is a Montessori term that encompasses the activates and attitudes that help form and maintain the Montessori community, one’s own home, and the overall classroom environment. These activities include cleaning and organizing one’s environment, as well as self-care and hygiene—all taught and completed with a foundation of grace and courtesy.
It’s important to note that for young children, participating in daily chores, such as washing dishes, paring fruits, or polishing silver, is considered special because it provides them an opportunity to contribute to their family, classroom, and larger society. In this way, Practical-Life activities help children develop an independent spirit. These activities also help children develop coordination and fine motor control, and gradually lengthen their span of concentration. The students also learn to pay closer attention to detail. Because of this, everything they experience in this area of the classroom is helping prepare them for learning to read and write.
Primary Program
Ages 2½ – 6 years old
Sensorial
Sensorial materials help refine the five senses: see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. This is an important part of the classroom because these activities, using the senses to learn more abstract lessons like reading and writing, was the beginning of what sparked this revolutionary view of education that we now know as the Montessori Method.
While working with children deemed to be “uneducable,” Maria Montessori used what is now referred to as “The Moveable Alphabet,” large cut-out letters, to teach the basic of recognizing and forming words (which led to early reading and writing among those previously deemed incapable).
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This approach is at the core of the Montessori Method. The sensorial materials included in the classroom help children relate new information about reading and writing, for instance, to what they already know—how to hold and touch each sand letter. Through these activities, which include their own exploration, language lessons, and games, children learn fine discrimination of color, size, texture.
Mathematics
If you’ve seen a Montessori classroom, you’ve most likely seen an abacus sitting on the shelf. This tool was, and remains, an important part of the Montessori Method because Maria Montessori observed that children interested in counting (the basics of learning more abstract mathematics) liked to touch and move items as they enumerate them.
By being able to hold and feel the materials—such as wooden block or stones—and then combine, separate, and count them, children demonstrate for themselves, in concrete ways, the basic operations of mathematics. Counting games are an everyday activity in the classroom and this approach to math is continued throughout all levels.
Language
Learning language in the Montessori classroom first begins with the students being encouraged to express themselves freely, spoken to with respect, and listened to intently. This forms the basic foundation that language is important to our thinking and development, and that our words are important and should be used in the fostering of our environment—based on the reasoning that all of our voices are important. This allows the children to freely talk among themselves, learning to use their words in expressing their thoughts and feelings, while also becoming more comfortable speaking with adults—collectively resulting in a very noticeable social development among the children.
The classroom environment encourages with many opportunities for expanding one’s vocabulary through daily activity. Children are introduced to the sounds of language through games, materials, and songs, and are encouraged to participate in storytelling—which becomes a large part of the classroom by stories from both the teacher and the students themselves. Proceeding at their own pace, students are introduced to the skills necessary for writing and reading, and leave equipped to enter the Elementary Program.
Science & Nature
The natural environment is an extension of the classroom, so the school encourages the exploration of the outdoors. Using scientific experiments and discovery projects help stimulate the children's natural curiosity of the natural world. Additionally, students study the plant and animal kingdoms to help foster an appreciation of all living things. At Woodland, we also endeavor to teach our students about the importance of caring for our environment. This focus on conservation and stewardship is shared through the use of school-wide composting, gardening, and other environmentally-friendly initiatives.
Physical Geography
Geography is a subject, like math, that can seem abstract, but as with all lessons, Montessori grounds these subjects in concrete materials. One of the most popular materials in the classroom are the large wooden puzzle maps used to teach children about world geography. These activities are often done along with a song, so that the lesson is grounded both in the concrete sensorial material and in a tune the children can practice and use on their own. Throughout the program, children learn names of continents and countries, as well as information about climate regions, cultures, and common land formations.
Cultural Awareness
In addition to learning about cultures when studying world geography, our classrooms also incorporate cultural festivals as part of the curriculum, including Christmas, Hanukah, and the Chinese New Year. Through these celebrations, our students learn about the world around them through an exploration of other countries and their cultural celebrations. The focus is on how the children living in those countries would experience such a celebration through a study of the customs, food, music, climate, language, animals, and plants of that particular region.
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Cooking & Nutrition
In addition to the practical life lessons, children also study the basic food groups and learn what their bodies need in order to be healthy.
Additionally, the students have opportunities to cook nutritious meals that revolve around their studies of other countries.
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Arts & Crafts
Art in the preschool environment if about the children’s own joyful expression. Children have the freedom to explore imagination through a variety of media, including painting, drawing, cutting paper, and pin punching.
The emphasis of these art activities is on the creative process itself, as well as the exploration of design and shapes.
Music & Creative Movement
Rhythm is the most appealing musical element to young children, and the natural response to rhythm is to physically move one’s body. So, a child’s body becomes the first instrument through which the rhythms of music are reflected and interpreted.
Throughout a normal school day, our students are introduced to many songs and dances, as well as the instruments of the orchestra and their unique sounds.
