Normally Montessori teachers will not spend much time working with the whole class at once.  At AMEC, if a teacher is going to work with the whole class, this is usually done during circle time.  The teacher’s goal is to prepare and maintain the physical, intellectual, and social/emotional environment within which the children will work.  A key component of this is the selection of intriguing and developmentally appropriate opportunities for learning to meet the needs and interest of the different children in the class.

     Montessori Teachers/Guides Have Five Basic Goals:

¨      To encourage her/his normal desire for independence and high sense of self-esteem;

¨      To help children develop the kindness, courtesy, and self-discipline that will allow them to become full members of society;

¨      To help children learn how to observe, question, and explore ideas independently;

¨      And, having created a spirit of joyful learning, to help children to master the skills and knowledge of their society.

“My child doesn’t bring home much paper work and I don’t know what he does all day.  He doesn’t share much with us about his day either.  He either tells us he did nothing or he can’t remember.  How do I know if he is really doing anything?”

Many parents can identify with this question.  The Montessori method is process oriented, not product oriented. This means that your child concentrated on having experiences rather than making a finished product to bring home. Young children live in the moment.  They work with the activity that calls to them at that time.  The richness of the Montessori environment avails children of many opportunities within the course of each work cycle.  It is impossible for them to remember all the things they did, and for some children, their language skills are not developed enough to remember the names of all the activities. 

Younger children tend to work with activities in the Practical Life and Sensorial areas.  These have no paper product; simply the experience itself is the child’s learning.  As a child gets older, usually in the second half of the second year in a 3-6 classroom, the child begins to learn to read and write.  As this happens, you will see more papers.  Metal Insets (shapes traced and colored with colored pencils), push pinned shapes (children poke along the line of a shape with a push pin or sharp stylus), adding problems that have been recorded, words in booklets or lists, and maps that have been colored and labeled are all typical Montessori “paper work.”   Even some older children will work on a project for a long time before bringing it home.  So a week’s worth of work may yield just one paper product.

The classroom is a child size world, designed to accommodate the needs of the young children.  The furniture consists of tables, chairs and shelves as well as the usable objects of trays, glasses, baskets, buckets and many more.  All are appropriate size and each has a specific purpose and place in the classroom.

The classroom is divided into 5 major areas for learning.  The activities of each area are grouped onto shelves in an uncluttered, sequential order from simple to more complex.  This sometimes gives Montessori classrooms the appearance of not having many materials available, when actually the opposite is true.  The materials are used in such a way that many learning experiences are explored and repeated as many times is necessary for the child to move on to a more complex material.

Practical Life: These are everyday activities that are purposeful and relate to the child’s culture or environment.  The purpose of practical life activities is to develop concentration, control of and refinement of movement, independence, a sense of order and adaptation and contribution to the environment.   While at first glance, the sole purpose of these activities appears to be spooning, pouring, squeezing, and lacing, learning care for oneself and the environment, the underlying purpose is for the inner development of the child.  Through these activities children develop concentration, coordination, independence, and order that evolves into the development of the will and self-esteem.

Sensorial:  The geometry based sensorial materials are for the development and refinement of the senses: tactile/touch, auditory/hearing, visual/sight, olfactory/ smell, gustatory/taste, baric/weight, thermic/temperature, stereognostic/sorting and grading.  Sensorial materials help to teach shapes, sizes and color, as well as sorting and sequencing and also serve as a precursor to the math curriculum.

Vocabulary enrichment is an integral part of the sensorial area.  The qualities and nuances of the materials are introduced through the labeling of these qualities.  Using a three period sensorial language lesson, the names of objects and qualities are introduced.

Language:  Montessori language curriculum is designed to give the children the tools to further develop their spoken language through the labeling of objects and pictures with the appropriate and correct name and given the tools to read and write through the introduction of the sound and the shape of the letters.  Whole language and listening skills are promoted through stories, poems, and songs. 

Math: The foundation of the math curriculum is the numbers 1-10.  The children are introduced to the quantity and the symbol for each number through several activities.  Then they have the opportunity to practice counting and to gain an understanding of each number with various activities.  He/she can continue counting the teens and tens to 100.  Later, children are introduced to larger quantities (1,000) and learn how to form those numbers.  The decimal system is introduced and used for the processes of addition, multiplication, subtraction and division.  By using concrete materials, children learn abstract mathematical concepts.

Cultural Studies:  These include art, science, music, geography and history.  These are introduced using an interdisciplinary, interwoven method.

Art activities are designed to introduce art concepts while promoting creativity through independent work, while serving as a precursor to writing.  Nature study, botany and zoology are the basis of the science area.  Using instruments, singing, dancing, and listening express music in the classroom.  Geography includes the study of the earth, its land and water forms, the continents and their countries and the cultures of the countries.  History is comprised of the formation of the earth and its geological timeline.  The concept of time is part of the history curriculum that includes the idea of day, week, month and year as well as the parts of an hour.