Our school uses a Montessori model of multilevel age groups. Children learn from each other in these family type groups and older students become peer mentors as they grow and mature throughout their time in our school.
Our learning environments are designed with areas for children to have quiet time and the space for play that develops gross motor skills.
Our Toddlers (15 months-3 years) are just beginning to explore their environment using all of the senses. They are process oriented and often on the move!
Being exposed to new materials such as paint and glue builds the foundation for an appreciation of art in all of its forms. Puddles of glue and mixing all of the colors is okay!
At this stage, language skills are rapidly developing and they are excited to engage in conversations with peers and adults.
Preschool Program
As children move into preschool, we see the natural progression of skills developing.
Mark making turns into the formation of letters and children begin to understand concepts of print.
Through lots of dictation, an adult writing the words that children say, they develop an understanding that spoken words can be written and they begin to associate letter sounds with words that are familiar to them, such as their own name or the names of friends and family members.
Through songs, stories and rhymes , children develop not only the ability to recognize letter sounds, but a deeper understanding of the nuances of language.
When building math skills, it is vital to begin with the concrete before moving to the abstract. The beauty and functionality of the Montessori materials means that children can not only see the numeral 10, but also feel it when tracing it with their finger using the sandpaper numbers or picking up the ten bar.
"The unit is smaller than the ten" (prek student)
Children desire order in their environment and will very often line up objects by size or sort them by attributes such as color or shape.
These early math concepts come naturally in a playful, child led learning environment.
PreKindergarten
The prekindergarten year is a pivotal one for our young students. With kindergarten coming next, it can be tempting to speed up the natural process of learning to prepare for kindergarten, but we take a different approach.
Our PreK classes are a hybrid model of our play based preschool program and an academic program that uses a variety of resources from Montessori and Primary Phonics.
PreK students are given the time to play and explore and they also receive direct instruction so that they are ready for the transition to kindergarten.
Through social interaction within this small group, they gain confidence and learn how to work as a team.
We celebrate each other's similarities and differences and discover the diversity in the world around us.
With more time devoted to social emotional development, children are better equipped to handle conflicts and self regulate once they leave us for bigger schools.
Language and Literacy skills that were being developed in our toddlers and preschoolers are now honed in prek as it all comes together through hands on activities such as word building and matching CVC words to objects.
Children throughout our school, even from the 2 year olds have access to writing materials and by the time they enter PreK, they are able to write letters, draw wonderful pictures and express their thoughts and feelings on paper.
Our approach to math skills has always followed the Bev Bos quote...
"It can't be in the brain if it hasn't been in the hand and body"
Using the golden bead materials to cement the foundation for counting and using bigger numbers and feeling 3D
shapes gives children a concrete way to understand complex math concepts.
We've often heard that adults wish that they had learned math in this way!
Our PreK students enjoy a full and enriching time that includes reading, writing and math but also places great importance on social emotional learning, sensory play experiences and time to be a four year old, because it only comes along once in a lifetime!
KINDERGARTEN
TRANSITIONAL KINDERGARTEN
We have proven that it is not necessary to separate play from learning and that they go hand in hand. The skills built in the earlier years create the foundation for kindergarten and life!
As our students grow and mature, we continue to place great emphasis on whole child development. Social emotional learning, developing empathy and kindness, learning to resolve conflicts with less adult intervention, these are the things that will ultimately make our students successful as they move on.
Our Kindergarten students build more complex literacy skills through shared writing, workbooks that align with the Montessori language scope and sequence and a continuation of hands on and sensory experiences such as feeling the sandpaper digraphs and double vowel letter sounds.
They learn more about the Magic E and gain confidence through invented spelling, using their letter sound knowledge to write their own stories.
It is fascinating to watch children move from babbling, to simple words and then to creating sentences and expressing complete thoughts in their time with us!
Kindergarten students begin to notice numbers all around them and one of our favorite activities with our prek children involved searching for numbers in the environment and talking about how they are used to count, to measure, to tell time...
The golden bead lessons continue to become more complex and we hear children making observations such as
"10 10 bars make 100 and that's a big number!"
They really enjoy dressing up for the 100th day of school and thinking about what they would want 100 of!
Concepts such as the use of ordinal numbers and positional language, comparing and understanding the passage of time in relation to important events are developed in kindergarten and used as the foundation for more complex concepts later on.
Learning about different countries and cultures, following their interests and being ready to follow a new plan has led us to some amazing units of study such as our real, fully functioning pancake restaurant that opened to families and was run by the students and lemonade stands that involved creating signs, deciding on a price, and making lemonade!
Kindergarten should be an amazing part of the educational journey and we are dedicated to providing the very best experiences that ignite a passion for learning!