Children learn by doing. In our Early Childhood classrooms,  academic learning as well as the practical life and sensorial exercises are presented as activities that can be felt, handled, and manipulated. These hands-on experiences help a child to build their own understanding through discovery.

Practical Life & Inner Purpose

“If we have a vision of the cosmic plan in which every form of life in the world is based on purposeful movements, having their purpose not in themselves alone, we shall be able to understand and to direct the children’s work better.” – Dr. Maria Montessori
 
An essential component of our Montessori curriculum is what is called Practical Life. Dr. Montessori also called this “purposeful movement”, referring to the things we do to carry out our purpose that feed not only our sense of self, but also our sense of community. Contributing to the community and the classroom is taught in all sorts of organic and prepared ways. Things like cleaning up after themselves, helping a friend clean up, learning to sew, or preparing a snack for their friends are taught with the same importance as math, reading and science. 
 
In this video, we see how practical life skills are taught with a lesson -- and how they naturally happen on their own. 

Sensorial

The refinement of the senses is fundamental to the growth and development of the child. The materials of the Sensorial area are designed to meet this need. Important math and language skills are also indirectly developed as the child experiments with shape, color, sound, volume, taste, size, smell and touch.

Peace Education

Children live together in peaceful communities, guided by their teachers. Even very young children learn to identify and express their feelings in constructive, purposeful ways. As children grow in our Early Childhood classrooms, they learn empathy and practice peaceful conflict resolution. For behavior management, we use a positive discipline approach that focuses on self-regulation, honors each person’s autonomy and emphasizes respect. Children and teachers work together to create peaceful, respect-filled communities.

Language

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In the language-rich atmosphere of the classroom, the child has many experiences of oral language including story reading, story-telling, thought-provoking conversation, poems, songs, and vocabulary enrichment. Children build important pre-reading and pre-writing skills through use of the Practical Life and Sensorial materials. Formal lessons in phonics, word building, reading, creative writing and grammar are introduced when the child is ready.

In the Montessori classroom, letters have both sounds and names. A presentation of the letter “c” for example, might go like this, “This is ‘c’ (hard like cat). Let’s think of things that start with this sound. Cat, color, cucumber…” As the child progresses through all of the sounds of the letters, they are then presented with the name. “The name of this letter is C, its’ sound is ‘c’.”
The letters and sounds are also reinforced sensorially as the children trace their fingers along the high-grit letters to reinforce the sound and shape.
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Watch this reading journey as it naturally progresses in our EC classrooms.

Mathematics

In order to support the development of true number sense, each child is exposed to numbers and their meaning in a variety of concrete ways with appropriate materials. Through play and discovery, children start to build their mathematical minds using Practical Life and Sensorial materials which focus on one-to-one correspondence, ordering, sequencing, conservation of quantity, and geometry. When children are ready, they begin to construct their strong mathematical foundations through work with place value using the Golden Beads and work through carefully sequenced math curriculum in operations, memorization of math facts and counting.

In this video, you will get a picture of what a Montessori math lesson looks like in one of our Early Childhood classrooms. Notice Ms. Jihye’s intuitive connection she has with one of our students as she delivers this hands-on math lesson using Montessori spindle boxes.
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With the spindle boxes, a natural control of error occurs when a child finishes counting. If there are too few or too many spindles, the child knows they have made an error somewhere along the way. This control of error fosters independence as the child is not dependent on the teacher to either confirm they have done it correctly, or to help them “fix it”.

Cultural Studies & Science

Our goal in Early Childhood classrooms is to inspire the child to feel the wonder and awe of the natural world, and to begin to understand this amazing world. The Montessori curriculum invites children to share many rich and varied experiences of geography, botany, zoology, cultural studies, history, physical science, and earth science. Children also enjoy experiences of botany and zoology in our outdoor learning environments.

Art & Music

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Art is an essential part of the young child's classroom experience. Open-ended, process-oriented art materials are available to children throughout the day. In each classroom, children choose from among a large variety of art materials and art experiences. Children are also exposed to fine art and art appreciation. 

Children experience music of many different cultures and styles. At daily circle times, teachers lead songs and  creative movement. Children play rhythm instruments and learn new songs. At a weekly circle with our music specialist, children sing joyfully together, learning new songs and singing well-known beloved songs.

Foreign Languages

In our Early Childhood program, Spanish is taught through the Total Physical Response Method. This interactive method is based on the way children acquire their first language. Through fun, singing, moving and responding, children are exposed to Spanish and begin to acquire a basic vocabulary.  In addition to Spanish, American Sign Language plays an important part in the life of each classroom; it is used throughout the classrooms by teachers, staff and children. Many of children come to MCH with more than one first language or begin their acquisition of English in an MCH classroom. The children themselves incorporate these many languages into their daily lives at school.