Our Curriculum

Practical Life activities are the activities of everyday life and they are involved in all aspects of life. The child observes these activities in the environment and gains knowledge through the real experience of how to accomplish life skills in a purposeful way. These activities are cultural and specific to the child's time and place. Practical life activities help give the child a sense of being and belonging, established through participation in daily life with us. Through practical life the child learns about his culture and all about what it is to be human. Generally the activities of practical life revolve around four areas: Caring for the Self, Caring for the Environment, Grace & Courtesy and Movement of Objects. There is another area which encompasses all four areas and which is a very important part of practical life, namely food. Practical Life activities are an integral part of any Montessori environment.

Montessori sensorial materials are materials used in the Montessori classroom to help a child develop and refine his or her five senses.

Like many other materials in the Montessori classroom, sensorial materials have what is called "control of error", meaning that the child not only works with the material, but has a way to check their work rather than seeking out the teacher if they have a question on whether or not they did it right. This is done to help promote independence and problem solving on the part of the child.

Language is used as guidance and instruction. Names given for activities along with their functions and purposes helps the child build his vocabulary. With this growing vocabulary, the child is able to express himself more easily and more fully with others.

This area facilitates book and print awareness, phonetic awareness, decoding and encoding, reading and language comprehension, writing and spelling.  Language is developed through the phonetic sounds and further developed through the use of tools such as sandpaper letters. The child then progresses through more complex language materials.

The Montessori math curriculum is firmly based on learning through experience. Children use a wide variety of carefully constructed materials to lead to an understanding of the value and sequence of the numbers zero to ten. Children are then introduced to larger amounts and learn the concept of making groups of tens, hundreds, thousands, and the decimal system. Number notation and place value are taught as children develop an understanding of number concepts. Four and five-year-olds are introduced to the basic operations of addition, multiplication, subtraction and division at a concrete level so they experience what these activities truly mean. Gradually children move towards an abstract understanding of these concepts. Geometry is introduced in the early childhood program through the use of materials which are classified according to qualities such as, “these shapes have three sides, they are called triangles”, and “the four sides of these shapes are all the same size, they are called squares”. Children learn to discriminate, classify, and name circles, squares, rectangles, and polygons, always using materials as guidance. Fractions are introduced, again in concrete form, and an introduction to the concept of equal parts of a whole lay the foundation for further work with math. Children always build on what they know and systematically progresses from concrete to abstract. Children discover number patterns, sequences, and rules by handling the various materials.

In keeping with the Montessori philosophy of education, the children first experience the general rules of the world around them such as the division of land and water. These are gradually broken down into smaller parts such as the division of continents and oceans, and provinces and territories of Canada. Cultural differences and similarities are explored through music, dance, costume, and food. Festivals and traditions such as Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, Divali, St. Patrick’s Day are celebrated through art, stories, and geography. Work with cultural materials helps children become aware that they are a part of the large family of humanity. Weather observations and experiments help children appreciate the variety of clothing, homes, food that exist to meet people’s needs in various parts of the world.