Skills of Daily Living - The Practical Life activities are designed to develop a child’s concentration, coordination, independence and sense of order. This area is the basis for all other work in the classroom and uses skills which lead to success in academic areas. Purposeful work is performed from beginning to end and includes everyday activities the child can recognize from his or her home environment include spooning, pouring, twisting, polishing, zipping, sweeping and food prep. They help the child satisfy the need for meaningful activity and allow the child to imitate adults. Other areas are: care of the person, care of the environment and grace and courtesy.

Exploring the World - The Sensorial curriculum allows the child to learn to explore and classify their environment through their senses. This is done by offering the child beautifully designed materials which isolate one concept such as size, color, form, texture, sound, weight, temperature etc…The materials begin with simple activities such as discrimination of size; and progresses to more complex work like grading seven shades of the same color. Repeated exercises enable the child to conquer his/her environment while building the power of logical thought. Their fine tuned discrimination skills carry onto future academic work. Sensorial materials make it possible for the child to understand abstract concepts through concrete material.

Writing and Reading - Dr. Montessori saw the road to reading as a dual path that involves the education of the hand and of the mind. Exploration of sound prepare the child for all aspects of language. First is the development of oral language which builds upon skills such as listening, telling stories, and singing. The child moves on to hear and analyze both the sounds and meaning of language. Materials throughout the classroom offer opportunities to refine the hand. Sandpaper letters give the child visual memory of the sounds and muscular memory of how to trace letters. As children progress they use a moveable alphabet- writing comes first then reading what they have written.

From Concrete to Abstract - In the Montessori Mathematics area, the child is introduced to math concepts and experiences using concrete materials that build on each other in increasing complexity. Rods, spindles, beads and cards are used to symbolize mathematical abstraction. Practical Life has given the child experiences with order and sequence. Sensorial work has provided discrimination skills. First, the numerals 0-10 are introduced, teaching correspondence between quantity and symbol. Then the Decimal system: ones, tens, hundreds, thousands. Simple addition, subtraction and multiplication follow. This is presented in simple, concrete ways that is easy for the child to learn. Children can grasp mathematical concepts at young age... you may be surprised.