Fostering a child’s love of learning is one of the most important gifts parents can give their children. If they are successful in keeping their child’s wonder of education alive, a child will have a drive to learn and explore without the negative restraint of grades and deadlines. Choosing a Montessori education for your child means showing them a different way to approach learning so they can enjoy the learning process more deeply and pursue topics of interest so that the quality of their understanding is rich and abundant. In Orinda, CA, there is a Montessori program that will be a perfect fit for your child.
Maria Montessori was not interested in children checking off a bunch of boxes in their education so they could hurry up and enter adulthood. She understood that a child’s play is their work and that they are learning important aspects about the world around them when they play. Exploring a topic with their hands with real life consequences and being able to move and manipulate it to see if there are multiple different ways to solve the problem gives a child a deeper understanding of these topics and tasks in front of them.
Other skills enhanced by a Montessori education are organization and independence. Montessori students become very good at getting their own drinks from the sink, opening snacks, serving their food, and putting their station back in order before moving to a new one. Students are encouraged to let their interest guide them in a Montessori classroom. It can not be denied that interest in a subject will determine how much time a student sticks with it, allowing them to learn more about the subject. While there are so many stations in a Montessori program of which students are allowed to choose freely where to go and how much time to spend at each station, students are also taught that they can not leave a station until it is tidied back to how it was when they first started using the station. Cleaning up for the next student helps keep the Montessori classroom enjoyable and functional as well as strengthen skills of picking up and remembering where everything goes.
Special programs offered in Orinda are language immersion programs. While morning programs consist of traditional Montessori stations and skills to work on, a language immersion program does the same thing except in a different language. Your child may not understand their teachers at first but because the environment is familiar and the tasks are the same as in the morning, students are able to connect the new words being said with words that mean something to them in their own language. Eventually, students will begin learning the second language just from being surrounded by it during the afternoon program.
If you are interested in choosing a Montessori education for your child in Orinda, CA, give Fountainhead Montessori School a call today to set up a time to observe a Montessori classroom.