For many, the idea of wrangling young children in a school environment can seem like an impossible task. A trained preschool teacher, however, can take the energy and emotion bursting from these young students and create an environment that engages their senses and cultivates their natural tendencies to grow and learn in beautiful ways. A highly qualified preschool will teach your child more than just numbers and letters. With a focus on the whole child, you may wonder what your child will learn in a Montessori preschool setting.
The Montessori philosophy contains four core subjects that lay the foundation for all other academic progress: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language and Math. Each of these serve a unique purpose to prepare the child for future learning.
In the Practical Life curriculum, students are taught skills that serve them in a very physical and helpful way. These lessons include things like pouring, practicing fine motor skills, sweeping, buttoning and polishing. Many of these tasks seem uninteresting to adults, but children are engaged with the lessons because they help them to be more independent. The children practice important fine and gross motor skills that serve them in all kinds of ways in the future. These lessons are some of the most important in the Montessori classroom and help build the child’s confidence for more challenging tasks in the future.
Sensorial lessons help to refine and use the child’s senses, ie. sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste. Through these lessons, children are intentionally exposed to a range of smells, textures and sounds to provide them with opportunities to experience new things. These lessons help to slow the child down to recognize subtle differences, such as tones or flavors. Many of the sensorial lessons prepare the child for future math skills by practicing size and spacial discrimination and placing things in order.
The Montessori language curriculum encompasses a full range of skills necessary to learn communication skills. The pre-reading lessons begin with matching and rhyming skills. As the child masters these skills, they move to learning sounds, writing letters, creative writing and eventually full literacy. The intentional and systematic lessons lay a solid foundation for all skills necessary to become a great reader and writer.
Through the math lessons, Montessori students use tactile objects to help the abstract concepts of numbers become concrete in their learning. During their time in a Montessori primary classroom, students gain a strong understanding of counting, math operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and place value. The hands-on learning approach provided through the lessons make a lasting impact for all future math learning.
Beyond the four core subjects, Montessori classrooms provide lessons that broaden the scope of the child’s education. These may include:
A Montessori preschool is a great option if you want your child to learn skills that carry them throughout the rest of their education. At Fountainhead Montessori, we believe that young children are capable of learning amazing things when given the tools to succeed. If you would like to learn more about a whole child approach to education, we would love to connect. Contact us today.