Montessori

Montessori education assists children in becoming caring, self-motivated and fulfilled individuals, able to create a sustainable and peaceful future for humanity.

Dr. Montessori believed that by offering children a stimulating, specially prepared environment, their natural curiosity would help them become independent, self-motivated and socially aware. She advocated following the interests of the child with a focus on self-discovery. Education is ‘preparation for life’, which indirectly prepares children intellectually for school.

Children in Montessori environments learn at their own, individual pace and according to their own choice of activities from many varied possibilities. Learning is an exciting process of discovery, leading to concentration, motivation, self-discipline, and a love of learning. The children at GMP form a collaborative, mini-society of mixed ages from 2.5 to 6 years of age.

Maria Montessori Curriculum

Dr Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori was, in many ways ahead of her time. Born in 1870 she became the first female physician in Italy. In her medical practice, her clinical observations led her to analyse how children develop and gain knowledge about the world. In 1906, she accepted the challenge to work with a group of 60 children of working parents in Rome.

It was here she founded the first Montessori school, and developed her method of education. Montessori observed children's almost effortless ability to absorb knowledge from their surroundings, as well as their tireless interest in manipulating materials. Every piece of equipment, every exercise, every experience Montessori developed was based on what she observed children 'do naturally', by themselves, unassisted by adults. Children teach themselves. We simply prepare the optimum environment to support their discoveries.

This simple but profound truth inspired Montessori's lifelong pursuist of educational reform, methodology, psychology, teaching, and teacher training - all based on her dedication to furthering the self-creating process of the child.

Prepared Environment

The Montessori prepared environment is comprised of the following broad areas.

Mathematics

Mathematics Materials help establish a solid basis for understanding the decimal system, the role of zero within it, and the hierarchy of numbers to the millions. Children gain a foundation in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They build a strong base of geometry through their sensorial exploration of the geometric materials. They also gain knowledge of skip counting with the bead chains and are introduced to the concept of fractions.

SENSORIAL

Sensorial Materials aid the child in the refinement of his/her senses. Each of the sensorial materials isolates one quality such as colour, weight, shape, texture, size, sound smell. The child is involved in pairing, grading and sequencing these materials. He/she will use cubes, prisms and long rods to build and help develop his/her powers of discrimination. Many of the sensorial exercises are an important preparation for later learning.

When the children grasp the knobs of the cylinder blocks, they do so using the same fingers for holding a pencil so preparing their hands for success in writing. When the children work with the pink tower they carry each cube to the mat making the journey ten times. Where possible the sensorial materials contain sets of ten objects giving the child indirect exposure to the basis of our decimal system.

CULTURE

Cultural Materials enrich the children’s minds and vocabulary with basic information about the world around them. Children of age 3 – 6 are very interested in facts and cultural work caters for this. Depending on their interests they can effortlessly learn the names of animals, flags of the world or the continents of the world. The cultural work also includes an ecological, peaceful and environmental outlook on the planet that we live on.

PRACTICAL LIFE

Practical Life Activities involve-

Preliminary skills – carrying a tray, unrolling a mat.
Care of the classroom – sweeping, dusting, polishing, flower arranging.
Care of the person – tying laces, washing hands.
Social relations – greeting, offering, and accepting an invitation, social language for developing friendship and conflict resolution.

Practical life assists the child in gaining concentration by engaging him/her in purposeful activities involving coordinated movement to lead the child to independence through mastery of skills. They also lead children to independence through their mastery of the skills.

LANGUAGE

The Montessori environment offers a rich and varied oral foundation via the many enriching language games that happen each day. The Montessori language materials also offer the children keys to reading and writing. They include phonetic and phonemic awareness. The materials offer one concept at a time, this may include exploring nouns, verbs, adjectives, singular and plural.

When the child can blend sounds together to decipher words they are then introduced to the names of those letters. Grammar is introduced to the children role modelling, drama and word games.

Grace and Courtesy Groups

During the day, small groups are spontaneously gathered whereby ways to move gracefully and speak courteously are introduced. For example, we show ‘how to carry a chair’ safely or ‘how to greet a visitor’ in a polite way. By never assuming that children know how to carry out the social niceties of life, we model these and other examples of moving safely and communicating respectfully with others which ultimately help the functioning of the community.

Music, Songs, Stories & Poems

Young children are fascinated to learn the names of all of the objects in their surroundings, at a time when they are constructing their own unique personality. Montessori environment for young children is one where real, expressive, descriptive language is used throughout the day. This may take the form of children ‘sharing news’ or enjoying stories, songs, poems, and dramatic play – as a regular occurrence each day.

Peace

Peace is an important concept in the Montessori Curriculum. We celebrate Peace Day each year. We are keen to hear the children's working theories about what peace means to them.

We collated some of their artwork and their thoughts on peace into a book, which allows them to revisit the concept and continue to provoke discussions about peace.