School of Montessori

A resource for parents, teachers, and parent/teachers to learn and practice the Montessori philosophy. This site is currently a work in progress. Feel free to browse the content, become a member, and let us know what you think. In the next couple of months we will be adding a great deal of content and features to improve the experience and make this our Montessori community hub. The goal is to create a unique space for education, discussion, and growth of the Montessori curriculum.

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Practical Life

The term Practical Life is used to describe those exercises which involve everyday activities with real child sized materials. These exercises form the basis of the child’s physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development. Because they are based on the observation of daily activities, the range of practical life activities is vast. Students begin with activities that appear familiar such as spooning, transferring with tongs, wiping, and pouring, but there are no limits to their exploration as these shelves also rotate seasonal activities that lead to independence. This is where Montessori guides usually hear the first “I did it!” when the school year begins.

Sensorial

Sensory materials have been developed to facilitate the formation of ordered thought. For developing minds, sensory input is a mechanism to understand the world around them. Children will often taste, touch, and listen to sounds they create by interacting with their environment. The senses can be categorized by visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, thermic, baric, stereognostic, and chromatic. By deepening the cognitive connections of these senses, children develop the capacity for deeper concentration and abstract thought.

Language

Language work flows from the development of concentration, ordered thought, and fine motor skills that are attained through interaction with Sensory and Practical Life activities. A child’s natural tendency towards increasingly more complex work will lead them towards picture recognition, word association, commands, phrases, and ultimately sentences. Children come to recognize phonetic symbols as representative ideas and sounds, paving the way to more complex abstractions such as reading comprehension and multiple languages.

Mathematics

Maria Montessori believed that children are naturally attracted to numbers and born with a “mathematical mind”, which is built up with exactity based on the order and perceptual awareness found in the development of the senses. These sensorial impressions allow the child to create mental order which leads to reasoning and differentiation. The child that has mastered the basic concepts involved with practical life and sensorial materials progresses naturally to the beginning Math activities.

Science

Scientific frameworks like Botany, Biology, Physics, Zoology are simply lenses to observe and predict the activities of the natural world, even at the tiniest unseen level. In the primary years, students excel in these studies because of their own inclination to understand their environment and experiment within it. The activities in this section are designed to help students understand basic scientific classifications, concepts, and natural phenomena.

Art

Art activities in a Montessori classroom help develop hand eye coordination, three finger grip, and a basic understanding of the tools used to create beauty. We have a lot of fun connecting children to Seasonal concepts through art projects that relate to the weather, clouds, leaves, parts of a plant, and holidays. Students enjoy exploring different textures, and sensory experiences as we introduce the use of watercolors, clay, oil pastels, fabrics, and nature! Exposing children to art at a young age helps develop the ability to observe, and follow directions with an appreciation for art all around them. Exposing children to art at a young age helps develop the ability to observe, and follow directions with an appreciation for beauty in their environment.

Culture

Maria Montessori felt that having an understanding of a diverse set of subjects developed a more “cultured” individual. Traditionally this can include the sciences as well, but for the tutorials on this page, we are mainly going to focus on Sociological activities that explore cultures around the world. Materials are refreshed on a monthly basis as topics and areas of study change throughout the year. We explore people, food, holidays, and music from around the world. These activities are layered in with science activities in the next section.