Our Curriculum
Montessori is an activity based educational program for children. It was started over a 100 years ago by Dr. Maria Montessori. It emphasizes on activities which integrate mind with body which helps the child to have focused concentration which leads to a psychologically healthy state called 'normalization'. Thus the child will be calmer, constructive and more intelligent.
Our Curriculum in a Montessori are broadly classified into 5 categories.
EXERCISES OF PRACTICAL LIFE
These are simple daily activities performed by adults to maintain our environment, such as pouring, pounding, polishing, dusting, folding clothes, cutting, sweeping, buttoning etc. But for the child these activities are truly developmental and creative.
- Taking care of oneself - washing hands, buttoning, folding clothes etc.
- Taking care of surroundings - sweeping , dusting, handling objects etc.
- Social relationships - greeting people, saying sorry, thank you, offering etc.
These exercises make the once irresponsible, destructive child become calm, focused and full of respect and consideration for living and non living things.
SENSORIAL
A Special Apparatus called Sensorial Material which are scientifically prepared precision material, which represents one particular property like color, texture, sound, shape etc. and also how they vary in intensities. This helps the child become conscious of the various physical properties of matter with the help of related senses. It thus helps the child to classify and clarify all the information he has absorbed from birth.
MATH
Around 3 ½ years the child wants to quantify the environment. He wants to compare, correlate and quanticize his environment. The child wants to be precise. This is when we offer certain math material to the child so that they learn to count , compare and evaluate. The concept of 0, the four fundamental operations and the decimal system are sequentially presented to the child.
LANGUAGE
Language is one way we express ourselves. We also understand when others express themselves graphically. The child needs to take possession of what he already has and perfect it further. This is done by improving vocabulary and telling stories.
CULTURE
The cultural area includes geography, history, botany, zoology, science and art. Cultural studies encourages the child's natural curiosity and interest is discovering truth about our fascinating world. Dr.Montessori called these subjects as cultural subjects because she believed that a knowledge and understanding of these subjects is what makes the difference between a literate person and a cultured person.
ELEMENTARY CURRICULUM
An elementary child has a reasoning mind and a tremendous power of imagination and is always wanting to know the why and how of everything around him. Thus we have material which allows the child to investigate, analyze and discover for himself all concepts of maths, geometry, science etc.
The core of the Montessori Elementary curriculum is known as 'Cosmic Education'. It includes profound lessons such as the origin of the universe, life on earth, emergence of humans and the history of math and writing and so on. In the Montessori classroom children are exposed to all subjects which are later inter-related. When the idea of the universe is presented it will arouse interest, admiration and wonder. The child will now understand that to know about the formation of a rock, we need to know about the evolution of earth, and in order to know about the earth we must know about the sun and in order to know about the sun we must know about the universe. So now he understands that the stars, planets, earth, atoms or a cell that nothing can be explained without knowledge of the universe. Thus when he understands that everything in the universe is inter-related, he develops a deep gratitude, love and humility to all living and non living things around him.