Primary Program

The Primary Program welcomes children aged three through five into a nurturing, multi-age Montessori classroom. During the Great Period, children are free to choose works in the classroom from any of the curriculum areas. The children work at their own pace, and the teacher acts as a guide, with the overarching educational goal to empower rather than instruct. Children learn through exploring and manipulating materials designed to create intrinsic motivation to think, feel, and discover. These activities help lay the foundation for increased abstract thought, all within the context of connecting with other classmates and the world around them.

The Primary classroom and curriculum are divided into seven main areas. The teacher serves as a guide and offers a prepared environment for children to encounter through individual or small group lessons across the curriculum daily. Using observation and record keeping, the teacher chooses appropriate lessons for each child. Over the course of the day, the week, and the year, children experience all areas of the classroom and progress through various lessons with the Montessori materials. The prepared environment is the heart of the Montessori classroom and is set every day with purpose and intention.

Practical Life activities include physical skills, care of self, care of environment, and grace and courtesy. These activities serve to enhance muscular coordination, pincer grasp, and to develop powers of concentration, coordination, independence, and a sense of order, preparing the child for all other classroom works.

Children develop skills such as initiating activities, working independently, completing the cycle of activity, caring for the materials responsibly and using them purposefully, and exhibiting problem solving skills.

Sensorial materials are designed to train the hand, the eye, and the mind toward greater power of discrimination. The children work on developing skills of sequencing, grading, and matching by touch, sight, smell, taste, and sound.

Mathematics begins with numeration, one to one correspondence, and quantity to symbol associations. The concepts are introduced by manipulating specifically designed materials. These materials are presented sequentially, moving from simple to complex, from concrete to abstract, and from numeration to decimal system to linear counting to operations

(addition and subtraction). Children develop skills in rote counting, displaying one-toone correspondence, sequentially ordering numbers, recognizing and naming numerals, writing numerals, and identifying basic shapes, polygons, quadrilaterals, and geometric solids. They are also introduced to the clock and money.

The Montessori classroom introduces Language sequentially, beginning with spoken language. Spoken language in the classroom consists of vocabulary enrichment, story time, and rhyming. Students are then introduced to visual discrimination work designed to develop symbol awareness. Next, children are introduced to phonemic lessons and learn to distinguish beginning sounds of letters while exploring their tactile shape with sandpaper letters and using metal letter insets designed to develop the hand movement needed for making the shape of letters. Children are then prepared to begin reading. Through work with the movable alphabet and phonics games, children begin to sound out words. Through reading work, they begin to understand phonograms, start to gain fluency, and refine comprehension.

In Science, the works are designed to allow the child to experiment with and observe their natural world while helping to build vocabulary and classification skills. Geography gives the child an understanding of the Earth and its physical properties. The curriculum covers land and water elements and then moves into the continents. Each continent is represented in a puzzle map where children can explore and name the continent, oceans, countries, and provinces. The land and water form trays allow the child to pour water into a form and see the dichotomy between land and water. Having a model to physically hold, trace, and manipulate makes learning about the world both concrete and enjoyable. While studying each geographic region, students learn about the amazing diversity found throughout our world. Each continent is explored through traditions, foods, clothing, structures, and community. Children in the Primary Program pursue enrichment courses each week including Music, Visual Arts, Spanish, and Creative Movement. These courses take the children out of their classroom space and actively integrate them into the campus.