Montessori Education

Casa de Niños Montessori Curriculum

Practical Life

Practical: means basic, useful
Purposeful Life: means the way of living

Practical Life Exercises are designed so the child can learn how to do daily living activities in a purposeful way. The purpose and aim of Practical Life is to help the child gain control of their movement, develop independence, and adapt to society. It is important to “guide & not correct” (Montessori) to allow the child to be a fully functional member of their own society. Practical Life Exercises also aid in the growth and development of the child’s intellect and concentration, fostering an orderly way of thinking.

In the Montessori classroom, Practical Life Activities are the first introduced because they immediately satisfy the children’s inner needs and desires. This area allows children to perform everyday tasks such as cleaning, dressing, or greeting people. Children construct knowledge through life experience, so teachers organize purposeful activities reflecting their daily lives. Dr. Montessori observed that children need real-life experiences rather than fantasy ones to adapt well to their environment. Practical Life training helps children care for themselves and their environment and develop social grace, muscle control, and eye-hand coordination. The exercises link home activities with the outside world and nature, covering physical, psychic, and intellectual development and encouraging self-respect and confidence.

The attractiveness of Practical Life materials is crucial, as Montessori believed that children must be offered the most beautiful and pleasing items to help them enter a refined world. Goals and aims in Practical Life activities are crucial; the more far-reaching the aim, the more likely we are to achieve our goals. Materials should be familiar, real, breakable, and functional.

Order

Maria Montessori observed that children need order during a specific sensitive period in their development. If not provided, the opportunity is lost. Children systematically categorize their world, making routine and organization essential. A sense of calm provides an opportunity for orderly self-construction.

Coordination

Both large and small muscle development is supported through precise movement presentation. Attention to movement is a planned voluntary action rather than instinctive. Repetition provides opportunities for perfecting these movements.

Concentration

The child who scrubs a table and attends to details is laying the foundation for calm, effortless concentration and creative thought patterns.

Independence

We all want to be masters of our own fate. Only through self-motivated accomplishments do we gain the joy of learning. Independent activities, which adults take for granted, are major hurdles in a child’s quest for independence.

“Help me to do it myself.”
—Maria Montessori

Sensorial

Purpose

Intelligence involves making the right choices and distinguishing things to make informed decisions.

The education of the senses helps the child classify and distinguish sensorial impressions. The material strengthens the child’s ability to appreciate finer distinctions and recall sensory impressions. Working with sensorial material develops accurate touchstones for color, pitch, form, etc. Precise language from adults helps children communicate and recall impressions, hard-wiring them into the brain.

Sensorial materials also support intellectual development. Well-trained perceptions provide a solid base for intelligence, helping the child categorize and organize sensory information. This process aids in understanding the world and supports abstract thinking later on. The education of the senses indirectly prepares for academic and cultural development, laying the foundation for reading, writing, mathematics, and more.

“The true basis for imagination is reality, and its perception is related to the exactness of observation. It is necessary to prepare children to perceive the things in the environment exactly to secure for them the material required for imagination.”
—Maria Montessori, Spontaneous Act in Education

Mathematics

Mathematics in the Development of the Child

Mathematics helps children make sense of the world and offers progression in their development. Mathematics work is beautiful, precise, and exact!

Mathematics in a Montessori environment is accessible but not imposed. To understand quantity, a child must reach a certain level of mental maturity, which cannot be forced. Montessori made mathematics concrete, enabling children to work towards mathematical understanding with prolonged concentration.

Mathematics aligns with the Absorbent Mind, Human Tendencies, and Sensitive Periods. Properly timed exposure allows children to discover relationships independently, leading to future mathematical proficiency. Abstraction develops from concrete experiences, fostering imagination and creativity.

Dr. Montessori emphasized providing a vision of order and harmony. Education in mathematics or science should offer a key to understanding the world, not just a collection of subject matters. This approach supports the development of a true mind and nature, reflected in the child’s education.

Practical Life as an Indirect Preparation for Mathematics

• Provides logical sequences of actions and movement analysis.
• Offers precise and orderly presentations.
• Uses sequential material in presentations.
• Encourages orderly work and completing activity cycles.
• Allows error control for self-perfection.
• Facilitates repetition and concentration.
• Refines movement necessary for handling materials.

Sensorial as an Indirect Preparation for Mathematics

• Develops precise perceptions through shape and form exercises.
• Fosters exactness through presentations and materials.
• Promotes clarity in expression with appropriate language.
• Provides clear impressions and orderliness.
• Aids careful categorization, which is essential for mathematics.

The Materials Themselves are an Indirect Preparation For:

• Arithmetic: Sets for the decimal system, Red Rods related to Number Rods.
• Algebra: Binomial Cube, Trinomial Cube, Decanomial Square.
• Geometry: Constructive Triangles, Geometry Cabinet, Geometric Solids, Graded Figures.

The Mathematics Area

• Numbers 1 to 10
• The Decimal System
• Counting Numbers from 1 to 1000
• Exploration and Memorization of Numbers
• Passage to Abstraction
• Introduction to Fractions: Sensorial, Nomenclature, Operations

Characteristics of the Mathematics Material

• Responds to the mathematical mind
• Abstract concepts made concrete; materialized abstractions
• Beautiful, precise, exact
• Control of error
• Encourages reasoning through repetition and self-perfection

Language

Language in the Casa de Niños

The prepared environment offers various forms of language to enrich the child’s vocabulary, including conversation, poetry, stories, rhymes, songs, tongue twisters, riddles, language cards, and names related to geography, art, music, and more.

As the child develops from an absorbent mind to a more conscious one, their language also evolves. This evolution includes an explosion in writing and reading, with significant vocabulary growth and improved sentence formation.

The environment and experiences enhance the child’s existing language skills, explored through movement, activities, and games. Language is integrated into all areas, reflecting the child’s natural hunger for words and knowledge.

Purpose of the Language Area

To support the child’s whole personality development. The focus is on building the child’s personality, not just language material.

In the Montessori classroom, we help develop the child’s character through language exposure, which influences communication, self-expression, and idea articulation.

Self-Confidence

To build self-confidence, children should have opportunities to express themselves early. Conversing and listening to the child validates their communication and promotes their ability to express ideas clearly.

The Child Will Learn That:

• Every object has a name
• Many words describe feelings and places
• Words help classify and describe things
• Proper word order in sentences helps express clear ideas

Purpose of Language in the Montessori Environment

The purpose is not only reading and writing but also organizing and building the child’s personality, which includes:

• Self-expression
  • Spoken language: Conversations and storytelling
  • Conversations: Discussing events and daily activities
  • Storytelling: Reading books, inventing stories, using poems and riddles
• Enrichment of Vocabulary
  • Names of everything in the environment
  • Names of materials and their qualities
  • Classification cards: General (home, transportation, tools) and Scientific (botany, zoology, geography, art, music, history)

Role of the Adult/Guide

• Convey acceptance and attentiveness to the child’s communication.
• Help the child organize thoughts and express them clearly.
• Enrich vocabulary with precision and clarity.

“Language should be a part of everyday life for the child.”