Pinnacle Montessori Primary Room
The Primary Montessori Class is composed of a balanced grouping of children who range from the ages of 3-6 years. This is the environment in which the entirety of academics fully include Mathematics, Language Arts, and The Cultural Subjects, which converge with the already recognized lessons of Practical Life and Sensorial. This curriculum provides the backdrop in which your child develops the skills of coordination, concentration, order, and independence. The older ages are also introduced to the Montessori lessons of Peace and Socialization. These lessons are combined to introduce your child into the social and emotional constructs of empathy, and kindness towards their neighbor, creating a lovely classroom culture in which they will learn and develop for three years. Fantastic strides will be made academically, socially, and emotionally, in this safe and nurturing environment.
Practical Life teaches the children life skills of washing, polishing, folding, buttoning, zipping, buckling, pouring, the list goes on, but with the added focus of refining their large and fine motor skills for writing and the left to right set up for reading.
Sensorial is the child’s first introduction to the higher-level mathematical concepts albeit taught sensorially, focusing on sight, sound, touch, taste, and scent. The materials were created utilizing a base ten approach. The children are introduced to the proper vocabulary of colors, shapes, size gradients, geometry, both flat plane and three-dimensional shapes, the Binomial and Trinomial cubes are introduced first as a sensorial layout then mathematically. They also learn about differentiating sounds, temperatures, and tactile differences.
Montessori Mathematics is begun as an association of quantity and symbol. When your child comes home and tells you a number, they actually understand the quantity of the number. They will also be introduced to The Global View, known as, place value, and the mathematical operations.
Montessori Language Arts is a phonetically based approach to teaching the alphabet. The names of the letters are taught at a later time. Writing is taught as a road to reading, per Dr. Montessori. Word building is explored with the moveable alphabet along with dictation and working with nomenclature works. Blends, diagraphs, and vowel blends, are explored with your child as they are ready, as well as reading.
The Cultural Subjects is an umbrella term in Montessori to cover the following subjects: geography, history, science, the study of culture, botany, and zoology. In Montessori, the puzzle maps are engaged in after the child or class studies the culture of the area, the “cuisine, art, dress, and a day-in-the-life. Geography must mean something to the children other than tracing and coloring.
Art is woven into the curriculum as each subject lends itself to projects and lessons that your child will create amazing works and art pieces to bring home to you. These will be individualized and not carbon copies of their classmates.
What You as Parents Need to Know
Your child will benefit tremendously as these lessons will build each upon the other to prepare them for their elementary experience. What continues beyond, are the lessons from the Peace Curriculum, the ability to problem solve and work through difficulties that might occur within their peer groups. The Montessori curriculum, historically, prepares your child to handle the academics that will come their way as they transition to the next grade level. If one can imagine your child being able to manage any academic or social situations in their next school situations, that is priceless.