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PRIMARY PROGRAM
PRIMARY PROGRAM
Practical Life
Practical Life learning helps bridge your child from home to the classroom as he observes exercises that you have demonstrated repeatedly in daily life. The different groups of practical life exercises include:
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Care of the person. Your child will participate in exercises that help him become independent in activities including getting dressed/undressed, taking care of his body, washing, bathing, or combing his hair, or things that concern his own person.
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Care of the environment. This consists of activities such as ironing, washing, gardening, sweeping, polishing, etc.
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Developing social relations. Greetings, offerings, accepting, apologizing, thanking; these are what we commonly call grace and courtesies.
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Control of movement. These activities help your child develop a sense of control and balance of her entire body.
Sensorial Exercises
These exercises allow your child to engage his sense of sight, touch, hearing, smelling, and
Dr. Maria Montessori
Offers her wisdom >
Education should no longer be mostly imparting knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentials.
Dr. Maria Montessori believed that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill the child with facts but rather to cultivate the child’s own natural desire to learn. Children in the Montessori Academy Primary Program have what she called "the absorbent mind," the ability to absorb all aspects of one’s culture and environment effortlessly. Our Montessori Academy classrooms provide a prepared environment where children are free to respond to their natural curiosity and desire to learn and grow.
Through hands-on Montessori materials, your child will gain a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of math, geography, science, language, and art. She will receive individualized instruction from the teacher allowing her to go as far and as fast as she desires in each subject area. Multi-age classrooms allow her to learn from, and mentor to, other students, an essential principle of Montessori education. Younger children learn from the older children and the older children get to reinforce what they’ve learned by helping the younger children. Teachers act as “guides,” linking together all areas of study and directing students’ focus toward learning necessary skills.
The Primary classroom consists of several types of exercises designed to cultivate adaptation and the children’s ability to think and express themselves with clarity. They include the following:
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lasting to help him distinguish, categorize and relate new information to what he has absorbed since birth.
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Language
In the Montessori Academy Primary classroom, the individual presentation of language materials allows the adult to take advantage of each child’s greatest periods of interest. Before children learn the alphabetical names in order, they learn the phonetic sounds of the letters. These sounds are given first because these are the sounds they hear in words they need to be able to read. They first become aware of these phonetic sounds when they are introduced to them with the Sandpaper Letters.
When your child wants to know what a word says or when they show an interest in using the Sandpaper Letters, reading instruction begins. Writing or the construction of words with the movable alphabet then follows.
Mathematics
The math area contains concrete materials to represent all types of quantities. Maria Montessori observed that children who become interested in counting like to touch or move the items as they enumerate them. Children can combine this equipment, separate it, share it, count it, and compare it, to demonstrate to themselves the basic operations of mathematics.
After your child is able to count to 10 and can identify the symbols, they are then introduced to the golden bead materials working with the decimal system. She moves on to concrete work with the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are a variety of materials that allow her to perform similar operations. The variety helps sustain her interest while providing opportunities for necessary repetition. In the Primary classroom there are many materials that can be used for counting, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
Cultural Subjects
Cultural Subjects include geography, history, science and nature, music, and art. Each of these areas has its own exercises and accompanying materials, some overlapping from one area to the next.
Maria Montessori saw teaching of the cultural subjects as a great, important part of the whole education of the young child.
In Geography, wooden puzzle maps are very popular among the children in the classroom. The children use the maps as puzzles in the beginning. Eventually they begin to learn the names of the countries and information about climate, products, customs, food, music, language, and animals. Many of these characteristics are demonstrated through the geography pictures.
In History, the children work with time lines and pictures from the past and present. Your child may begin by making a time line of his own life, starting with when he was a baby.
In Science and Nature, natural curiosity is stimulated through discovery projects and experiments. The children study plants and animal kingdoms in an orderly fashion to cultivate a love and appreciation for all living things.
Music is used on a daily basis through singing songs. The children also have opportunities to listen to different types of music and learn about famous composers.
In Art, children have the freedom to explore their imaginations in a variety of mediums including coloring, cutting, pasting, drawing, painting, and sewing, with exercises set up in a natural progression from start to finish as your child works with them independently.