By igniting your child’s love of learning you’re laying a solid foundation for a successful future. This is what the Montessori approach to early childhood education (ages 2 – 6) believes. It is also why they seek to make this time a lot of fun. They do this by creating an environment in which children feel loved and secure so they can thrive. With this in mind, there are some things you’ll always find in this environment.
What Your Child Will Learn
Teachers are instructed on how to observe and guide children through this environment so they can learn:
- Practical life skills: getting dressed, making a snack, setting the table, taking care of plants and animals, social interaction, independence, and motor skills
- Sensorial: exploring the world through their senses and learning how to classify, sort, and discriminate while doing so
- Math: identifying numbers and understanding their quantity, place value, base-10, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and patterns
- Language: vocabulary, learning to write, letter sounds, how sounds are combined to make words, and using a pencil
- Cultural studies: the community and the surrounding world, including history, geography, science, art, and music
A Welcoming Space
The Montessori classroom is set up to feel more like home than school. In this environment, learning is made fun as teachers give a demonstration then allow children to choose what activities they want to work on and how long they want to work on them. Only one skill is taught at a time, giving the child the time they need to be able to master it. Once the skill has been demonstrated children use self-correcting materials – things that let them know whether they’ve done the activity correctly without a teacher’s intervention. This helps the child become more self-sufficient and confident while also promoting critical thinking. In this way, they become their own teachers, which is a skill that they’ll benefit from throughout their lives.
Throughout a Montessori classroom, there are specially designed learning materials available on open shelves that children can easily access on their own once they decide what they’d like to work on. You’ll also find sinks low enough for children to use, furniture that’s child-sized, and even a child-sized kitchen where children are allowed to prepare, eat, and clean up after making their own snacks.
If this environment sounds right for your child and you live in Mansfield, Texas, you should check out The Children’s Academy. Over the years we’ve helped many young children thrive and we look forward to helping your child, too.
