• Montessori 2.5 - 6
• Toddlers 1.4 - 2.5/3
• Montessori Weekend
• Montessori at Home
• Parent Workshops

Montessori 2.5 - 6

The Montessori Chidlren’s House programme and classroom are organized in several main educational areas – exercises of practical life, sensorial exercises, language and mathematics. They are meant to promote independence and concentration; help with development of the will and social skills.

Exercises of Practical Life
‘Exercises of Practical Life are those essential, simple, ordinary task that we do as adults to prepare, maintain, restore and beautify our environment such as washing, sweeping, cooking and cleaning.’(O’Shaughnessy, Molly)

Those exercises are familiar to the child because s/he witnesses them at home every day. They are a link between the home and the children’s house. The Exercises of Practical Life (EPL) facilitate adaptation and orientation, provide security and comfort for the child in the new environment, develop will and concentration, encourage independence, consolidation and coordination of movement.
All the different areas of practical life aim to build consciousness. When a child is aware, s/he can respect and is able to take proper actions.


For the EPL and all other areas of education, the cycle of activity is very important. The cycle of activity helps in forming logical thought, organization of the mind and showing respect. The cycle consists of three parts: beginning – when we get the material, middle – when the activity itself takes place, end – put the material away and clean the working area.

Sensorial Exercises

Children’s first experience is through their senses which Montessori calls ‘organs of relationships.’ In their relationship with the environment, children begin to understand the world.
Sensorial exercises help the children become conscious of the physical qualities of the world such as color, dimension, shape, texture, pitch. They also help the children classify and categorize their sensorial impressions and perceptions.








Another purpose of sensorial exercises is to refine the child’s sensory powers of discrimination.
Sensorial materials give just keys which help the children clarify their impressions, bring them in order and build the block of intelligence.
By sensorial materials children learn geography, botany and culture and get ready for geometry, algebra, and writing.
Sensorial materials support the mathematical mind. Montessori refers to them as ‘gateway to the intelligence.’


Language

“Language not only does it fuse men into groups and nations, but it is the central point of difference between the human species and all others. Language lies at the root of that transformation of the environment that we call civilization.” (Montessori, M., The Absorbent Mind).
Language begins to express itself intentionally at about 1 year.
There are three aspects to be taken into consideration:
1. The child must be exposed to speech and vocalization while the vocal mechanisms are being developed. This is why we need to talk to the child with a rich language.
2. The child must develop a format of interaction – verbal and non-verbal. She should interact with people.
3. Need to have symbolic capacity for language (writing and reading) to help them develop the full gift – the language.


We help the children make sense of their world and unlock this world of language because it is key to development. The Sensitive periods for language and order would assist the process.
When we talk about language we mean spoken and written language. Written language includes writing and reading. If indirectly prepared and there is an opportunity to work with prepared multi sensory materials, children will spontaneously write then read. Dr. Montessori found that it is easier for children to learn to write and read while they are in the sensitive period for spoken language. Before six it is spontaneous, after that the language has to be taught. Children, who start first grade being able to read and write sequentially, will do better.

Mathematics
Roger Bacon said that “mathematics is the gate and key to all of sciences”.
The four natural tendencies of order, exactness, calculation, and abstraction support the mathematical mind. There are number of fundamental abilities the child needs in order to carry out mathematical operations: discrimination, recognizing similarities and differences, constructing and comparing a series, finding relationships, understanding terminology. Many of these abilities are indirectly developed with the work the children have done, prior to mathematics especially in sensorial and language.





The Montessori Math materials are introduced to the child around the age of four. They start with numbers 1-10, followed by the decimal system, counting, memorization, passage to abstraction, and fractions.

"Music, Art, Geography, Biology, Culture, and Gardening are part of our every day programme. The materials related to these activities are incorporated into the other areas of education, i.e. Exercises of Practical Life, Sensorial and Language Exercises, and Mathematics."