Pre-Primary Program Curriculum
Practical Life
Practical Life is the cornerstone of the Montessori Method, providing practical experience in everyday living. These activities are an aid in the development of fine motor skills, and also foster important life skills such as independence, concentration, order and care of self and the environment. Practical Life work is made up of tasks that teach sequence and order. By practicing these activities the child develops deep concentration and deep focus while completing the work cycle. Practical Life work involves practice in these areas: Care of Self, Care of the Environment, Primary Movements of the Hand, Body Management and Grace and Courtesy.
Sensorial
The Montessori Sensorial materials promote learning through the senses. The materials are designed to develop and refine the child's ability to observe and learn with all of the senses, and to think and reason. Students learn to distinguish and differentiate physical properties through auditory, visual, tactile, kinesthetic, stereognostic, gustatory and olfactory senses. This learning serves them well as a foundation for later language and mathematical work as well as introducing vocabulary to describe things in categorical ways.
Language
Language in our Montessori classroom is woven through all content areas of the curriculum, allowing the student to develop an extensive vocabulary during the sensitive period of language development which occurs in the young child. The youngest children have many language materials available to them which work with beginning phonics (letter sounds), rhyming, and auditory language work to prepare them for reading. Speech articulation and expression of ideas is emphasized for all ages through continuous encouragement of conversational and communication skills.
Through the use of Montessori materials, pre-primary students learn phonics and begin to read. The moveable alphabet is an integral tool for the child and allows them to manipulate the concrete letter symbol to create words phonetically, by sound. In this way the students learn how to read by combining letter sounds and develop encoding skills. As the child builds a repertoire of sounds through repeated practice with the moveable alphabet and other materials, the child becomes an emergent reader.
Even the youngest of students begin to develop writing skills in our pre-primary and kindergarten classrooms. Montessori materials designed for preparation of the hand, such as pin pushing, scissors and practical life exercises help to develop the student's pencil grip. Writing is introduced initially through tracing sandpaper letters while learning each letter sound. In this way the child learns letter formation early, and later will be prepared to begin writing on chalkboard and paper. The joy of success in this area leads to the explosion into writing which Dr. Montessori discovered in the four and five year old. Writing letters soon develops into words, sentences and stories.
Cultural Studies
Our study of cultures includes geography and the study of the cultures that make up our world. Students work with globes to learn first of our earth and its place in the universe. From there students are introduced to the earth's continents through the use of puzzle maps. Our Montessori materials introduce students to countries, states and capitals. Studies of culture introduce students to the diverse languages, traditions, holidays, food and lifestyle of other people. By embracing other cultures our students learn in depth about similarities and differences, fostering compassion, understanding and peace.
Science
Our pre-primary classrooms have an abundance of science materials. Science studies include Botany, Zoology, Life and Earth Sciences, Ecology and Nature. With hands-on materials, our students learn to observe and classify things beginning with Living vs. Non-Living, Plant and Animal, and from there learn to classify animals into Vertebrates and Invertebrates by type. Further studies of the parts of plants and animals enrich the student's vocabulary with the names of living things and their parts.
Our students also learn about geology and Earth Sciences through the study of rocks, layers of the earth and land and water formations. Students learn scientific process and language through work in which they compare and contrast and experiment with magnetism, gravity, and physical attributes and opposites. Studies of Life Sciences include human anatomy, animal habitats and life cycles. Nature studies include gardening, field lessons and nature walks. We emphasize our connection to the earth and all of its life forms along with our responsibility to care for the earth. Each year we study environmental concepts such as composting and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle through hands-on activities.
Math
In our classrooms the child works with Montessori-designed hands-on materials to come to an understanding of concrete mathematical concepts. Repeated work in manipulating quantities of objects leads to a strong foundation of number sense. Later the child will be introduced to numeral symbol recognition and association of quantity to symbol.
Our beautiful Montessori math materials attract the students to explore the association of quantity to symbol (numeral) through the thousands. Instruction begins with numbers through ten and then continues to the teens, tens, skip counting, hundreds and thousands. Children begin to learn to manipulate quantities through the operations of addition, multiplication, subtraction and division, all using the materials created by Dr. Montessori.
As the child's mathematical mind develops further, concepts such as fractions, money, graphing, estimation and geometry are developed. The child moves from sensorial to concrete, operational thinking and then into mathematical abstraction.
Spanish
The Spanish Program at the Bridgeview Montessori School offers weekly Spanish classes to all the Pre-Primary children. Though developed as a three year program, it is designed to allow children to enter at anytime as vocabulary and grammatical structures are regularly introduced and woven together. The program is completely oral-based. Children learn vocabulary and grammar through handling real objects and with songs, chants, poems and dialogues. In support of the Montessori concept of learning through the hand and with physical engagement, movement is a part of every lesson. The Pre-Primary Spanish program strives to give children a joyful introduction to the sounds of Spanish. In addition, it aims to foster real mastery of age-appropriate vocabulary and grammar for the purpose of meaningful communication. Ultimately, children learn that what they say in English can be expressed in another language.
