Children's House Montessori

All materials and activities in our classroom are designed for hands-on, minds-on learning. Through these activities, your child will develop concentration, motivation, independence, persistence and discipline.

Practical Life
This area is considered the foundation for all Montessori work. Activities include everyday household work, care of self and care of the environment. Children love to do this work because it gives them a sense of independence and control of their own lives. Practical Life activities include pouring, sorting, tying, scrubbing, food preparation, arranging, transferring, etc. The purpose of these works is to develop concentration, attention to detail, sequence of action, and mastery of fine motor skills.

Sensorial
The materials in the Sensorial area isolate one defining quality (for example: color, weight, shape, texture, size, sound, or smell) and allow children to discern variations in the isolated quality. These activities help the child to distinguish, to categorize, and to relate new information to what he/she already knows. It also helps train children to make order/sense out of his/her own life experiences.

Language Arts
At Children's House, great care is taken to develop both spoken and written language. The highly complex activities of reading and writing are broken down into numerous simpler works. And diverse activities such as poetry, storytelling, sequencing, theatre, phonetic reading and creative writing are introduced to help develop communication, language and literacy. For example, through various tracing and pricking activities, students are encouraged to refine their fine motor skills providing better control of their pencil. Through the use of sandpaper letters, children experience letter sounds by seeing them, repeating the sound and by tracing their shape with their fingers. As a child progresses journal work is also introduced. Proper speech and manners are also stressed. Children are given the opportunities to make presentations to the group and to perform.

Mathematics
All introductory work in the Math area is "hands on." Children move from concrete concepts to abstract ones. The students gain an understanding of quantity and symbol. They continue with discovery of operations. There are materials available at Children's House that enable a child to add, subtract, multiply, divide, compute square roots, understand fractions, and even perform basic algebraic concepts!

Cultural
Activities in this area of the classroom explore and celebrate our world and its varied cultural traditions and customs through geography, history, science and nature, foreign language and current events.

Art, Music and Movement
The art area provides open access to various graphic media, paints and sculpture materials so that there are no limits to the child's artistic imagination. In addition different individual and group projects are offered on a regular basis. Weekly Kindermusik® lessons and yoga incorporate music and movement into the curriculum, to promote body awareness, health and well-being.

Nutrition
Your child will participate in preparing and cooking healthy foods, and enjoy daily nutritious snacks.

Gardening, Recycling and Environmental awareness
We are probably the only preschool and kindergarten on the lakeshore to enjoy such a large green space, complete with vegetable and flower gardens for the children to work in. Environmental responsibility and our connection to and impact on the earth are explored through nature walks, gardening, composting and recycling.

“Within our carefully prepared learning environment, children actively choose their own activities based on their interests and abilities. The goal is to foster a love of learning.”