Montessori Curriculum
"Whoever touches the life of the child touches the most sensitive point of a whole, which has roots in the most distant past and climbs toward the infinite future." -Dr. Maria Montessori
Practical Life
The exercises of the Practical Life curriculum are designed to foster independence, self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-control, characteristics that play a critical role in subsequent intellectual growth. Color-coded items and their location on the shelf help categorize the materials needed for real tasks of everyday living for the child. These tasks include moving around carefully, moving things to appropriate locations, taking care of oneself, maintaining one's surroundings, and interacting appropriately with others. Dr. Montessori classified these sets of exercises as Control of Movement, Care of the Person, Care of the Environment, and Grace and Courtesy. The different exercises of each category develop concentration, sense of order, attention to small detail, awareness of exactness and sequence, and coordination. The key ingredients of each activity are order, beauty, demonstrated sequence and precision, and, on the child's part, repetition. Active participation in the everyday affairs of a child's life grows self-confidence, self-reliance, and self-discipline as the child masters the tasks represented in the individual exercises. Order, exactness, and detail cultivate aptitude for logic, mathematics, science, and composition. Repetition allows for extended concentration, more accurate hand-eye coordination, and a sense of deliberate action manifested in the feeling of self-initiated control: "I can do it myself!," the first step on the road to self-discipline.
Sensorial
Children receive impressions through their senses from the moment of birth. Designed to isolate and categorize qualities of the environment perceived through the senses, the Sensorial activities focus on the development of sensory perception. As adults, we rely heavily on visual and auditory perception for acquisition of information. The Montessori program offers a multi-sensory approach to learning, encouraging the children to use the optimum combination of senses for learning. Using the senses easily, with refined distinctions, increases productivity of experiential learning activities. As perception skills develop, appropriate language is added in the positive, comparative, and superlative of the quality illustrated in the material. For example, the Pink Tower activities compare the visual qualities of "large" and "small," highlighting the comparative qualities of "large, larger, largest" and "small, smaller, smallest." A variety of games for each material extends the primary lesson. The incremental differences manifested in the materials are mathematically based and develop faculties of mathematical understanding. As Aristotle said, "There is nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses..."
Language
Language lessons continue throughout the day in all curriculum areas and in all activities. The specific lessons listed below assist with vocabulary development, the progression into reading, the development of writing skills, and composition.
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Sandpaper Letters - Cut outs of lower case letters glued on individual boards teach formation and recognition of the letters of the alphabet. Traced with the index and middle finger (the fingers used to control a pencil) and identified by the corresponding sound, these exercises are a direct preparation for reading and for writing.
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Moveable Alphabet - Individual lower case letters made of a durable material are housed in separate compartments in a large flat box. There are several cut outs of each letter; the vowels and consonants contrast in color. The moveable letters allow the child to "write down" words as he or she determines each component sound. This series of exercises increases in difficulty from writing three letter words to writing stories.
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Phonetic Object Game- This initial reading activity uses small objects with names containing three or four letters and short vowel sounds. The teacher writes the name of an object and helps the child read it using the skills developed from Sound Games, Sandpaper Letters, and Moveable Alphabet. Printed labels allow the child to do this activity on his or her own.
Mathematics
The specific Math curriculum (there has been quite a lot of math cognition development activities presented in the Practical Life curriculum and the Sensorial curriculum already!) begins with activities to teach sequence, recognition, and quantity of numbers 1-10. Two parallel lesson formats continue with the concepts of (1) the process of the operations (addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division) and (2) the memorization of the math facts - the tables of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. Eventually used together, these two disciplines form the foundation for working complex math problems "in one's head." Other lesson series introduce and develop math concepts and skills such as odd and even numbers, linear counting and number recognition through 1000, "skip" counting (2..4..6..8..), the squares and cubes of numbers 1-10, and fractions.
Cultural
A specific extension of the Language curriculum, the History activities give the child an awareness of time past, a sense of change and development from prehistory to the present, an appreciation of cultural differences, and begin a foundation of historical facts. The Geography activities present facts and nomenclature of physical geography, i.e., the physical characteristics of the earth, and political geography, i.e., the countries and cultures of the world. Other subjects introduced in the "Cultural" activities explore topics including history and appreciation of art, nomenclature and classification of zoology, science experiments, history and appreciation of music, and the study of historical figures. Reading and writing skills are used extensively in these activities.
-excerpts taken from "The Pink What? A Quick Reference Guide to Montessori Materials" by Deede Stephenson
