Children’s House
Preschool and kindergarten fall within what Dr. Montessori called the “First Plane of Development” (0-6 years old). Your child’s sensory experience of the immediate environment is the way they have learned since birth.
By experiencing materials and complexities in carefully-designed classrooms, children have the opportunity to develop their mental abilities, satisfy their natural inquisitiveness, and set the stage for a life of learning.
Experienced teachers help guide them through this development, respecting each child’s learning style and creativity. Choose a morning-only or full-day option for preschool, for 5 days/week. Our kindergarten program is full-day only, 5 days/week.
AVAILABILITY
Monday – Friday
AGES 2.9 – Kindergarten
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Practical Life
Practical life is a cornerstone of the Children’s House classroom. It’s a purposeful activity that helps develop motor control and coordination, independence, concentration, and a sense of responsibility within oneself and the community.
These step-by-step practices cultivate lifelong skills for caring for the environment, themselves and one another. They also appease the developmentally sensitive period for order and movement in children 3-6 years-old.
Children take pride in taking care of their environment. Plant care, flower arranging, and dusting the shelves are taken seriously and joyfully. Often older children who have been working hard on language or math will gravitate back to practical life for its grounding qualities.
Sensorial
Children explore and are given language for common geometric solid shapes. They are invited to explore and identify shapes in the classroom and in the larger world. Exploring how simple, precise shapes fit together to create new shapes with the constructive triangles, children are given language and freedom to explore geometry.
Children piece together the geography of the continents using political puzzle maps to learn about the relation of oceans, countries, and states. Geography folders full of pictures coincide with cultural objects displayed around the classroom to spark conversation and awareness of our place in the world.
Mathematical Mind
Children joyfully use materials for counting and computing. Concepts of mathematical laws and operations create a solid, foundational understanding during these formative years and concrete materials help children explore quantity, numerals, and how they fit together.
Language
Isolated letter sounds are introduced to build sensory recognition and early literacy skills. “I spy” and other fun games with letter sounds are part of the foundation to the language curriculum. With a collection of known letter sounds, children begin using the movable alphabet to build words. Typically in Montessori, “writing” words is the precursor to reading. In addition to sensorial terms, children are offered language in anything they are drawn to: dinosaurs, vehicles, flowers, trees, and more.
Indoor Movement Activities
Children are given lessons on how to do yoga poses, and are free to choose to spend time in the movement area of the classroom to exercise or use movement materials.
Movement plays a vital role in helping children learn, retain lessons, and continue to develop coordination and motor skills.
Arts and Crafts
Children are free to use arts and crafts materials whenever they like. In addition, our art teacher comes into the classroom to teach lessons using specialized materials and techniques.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten is the culminating year for the Children’s House program. Kindergarteners are the leaders of the classroom. These children begin to address executive function by having goal sheets for the week which they refer to during the morning work cycle: practicing math, literacy, handwriting, organizing a shelf, helping a younger student, and more.
They leave the classroom after lunch for specialized classes in Spanish, Art, Gym, Music, and Outdoor Enrichment. After specials, they work together on more in depth math, language, reading, handwriting, science, and geography. At the end of the year, we host a special Kindergarten Showcase for the school community and families.