Montessori Pedagogy

Children of this age possess what Dr. Montessori called the Absorbent Mind. This type of mind has the unique ability to absorb all physical, mental and spiritual aspects of the environment, without effort or fatigue. As an aid to the child's self-construction, individual work is encouraged. The following areas of activity cultivate the children's ability to express themselves and think with clarity.

Practical Life

Practical Life exercises instill care for themselves, for others, and for the environment. The activities include many of the tasks children see as part of the daily life in their home: washing and ironing, doing the dishes, arranging flowers, etc. Elements of human conviviality are introduced with the exercises of grace and courtesy. Through these and other activities, children develop muscular coordination, enabling movement and the exploration of their surroundings. They learn to work at a task from beginning to end, and develop their will (defined by Dr. Montessori as the intelligent direction of movement), their self-discipline and their capacity for total concentration.

Sensorial
Sensorial Materials are tools for the development of the senses. Children build cognitive efficacy, and learn to order and classify impressions. They do this by touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, listening, and exploring the physical properties of their environment through the mediation of specially-designed materials.

Language
Language is vital to human existence. The Montessori environment provides rich and precise verbal language. Lessons that build toward writing and reading begin with verbal sound games and tracing letters of the alphabet as the child learns the phonetic sound each makes. Once a child is decoding words, s/he builds to phrases and sentences through activities with parts of speech and sentence diagramming, all with the use of movement.

Dr. Montessori writes, "When the children come into the classroom at around three years of age, they are given in the simplest way possible the opportunity to enrich the language they have acquired during their small lifetime and to use it intelligently, with precision and beauty, becoming aware of its properties not by being taught, but by being allowed to discover and explore these properties themselves. If not harassed, they will learn to write, and as a natural consequence to read, never remembering the day they could not write or read in the same way that they do not remember that once upon a time they could not walk."

Cultural Extensions
Geography, History, Biology, Botany, Zoology, Art and Music are presented as extensions of the sensorial and language activities. Children learn about other cultures past and present, and this allows their innate respect and love for their environment to flourish, creating a sense of solidarity with the global human family and its habitat.

Experiences with nature in conjunction with the materials in the environment inspire a reverence for all life. History is presented to the children through art and intelligent music and geography programs.

Mathematics
The mathematics materials help the child learn and understand mathematical concepts by working with concrete materials. This work provides the child with solid underpinnings for traditional mathematical principles, providing a structured scope for abstract reasoning.

The manipulatives offered move from an experiential understanding of 1-10 to linear counting up to a thousand, to an understanding of the decimal system into the thousands, to an understanding of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and eventually to memorizing math facts and connecting symbols to what the child understands.