Palm Trees Montessori School

Major Point of Montessori Method

• It is based on observations of the true nature of the child.
• It reveals the small child as a lover of work, both of the intellect and mastery of the body (especially the hand). This work is spontaneously chosen and carried out with profound joy.
• It provides suitable activities based on vital urges of the child at each stage of development. Each stage is successfully mastered before the next is attained.
• Each child works at his/her own pace. The quick are not held back, nor are the slowed pressured. There is much opportunity for group work and the child spontaneously offers help with work they have mastered to those children who have not.
• It enables the teacher to guide each child individually in each subject according to his/her own individual requirements.
• It allows the child to grow in biological independence by respecting his/her needs and removing undue influence of the adult. It allows the child a large measure of liberty based on respect for the right of others. This liberty is not permissive license, but form of the basis of self-discipline.
• The child works from his/her own free choice. This choice is preceded by knowledge and it thus a real choice.
• The Montessori Method develops the whole personality of the child, not merely his/her intellectual faculties, but also his/her power, deliberation, initiative and independent choice, with their emotional complements. By living as a member of a real social community, the child is trained in those fundamental social qualities that form the basis of good citizenship.

The very first activities children take part in a Montessori classroom develop their ability to look after themselves and their surroundings. They can practice dressing skills on specially made frames, which allow them to try zips, buttons, bows and buckles. They use little jugs filled with beans or rice and then water to practice pouring; they spoon, scoop, or use droppers and even tweezers to transfer from one bowl to another. 

Other activities use scaled down versions of real equipment: bushes and brooms, wash-up bowls and clothes, show cleaning and polishing kits. There are also varied opportunities for pairing socks, folding and sorting clothes, setting a table, plaiting and sewing.

Their added purpose is that children who work on real tasks which involve the hand and the mind together develop a great capacity to concentrate, which is the best possible preparation for the intellectual work to come.

On the Sensorial shelves there will be specially designed materials to encourage development of the senses, such as a tower of pink blocks; sets of cylinders gradated in size; cylinders with knobs which have to be fitted into the right holes in a block; rough and smooth tablets in boxes; smelling bottles; fabrics to sort by touch; puzzle blocks called the binomial and trinomial cubes which are interesting in themselves but later turn out to be a physical illustration of mathematical formulae. Each of these is used to stimulate and refine one of the ten sensory areas and each will be presented to the child to be used in an exact way to aid his development. The sensorial materials also prepare the child for reading and writing.

Children begin with globes and then study maps using jigsaws. They can trace and color the shapes of each continent as well as placing them in the right place in the puzzle. They go on to name and put the shapes onto blank maps of the world and to recognize flags. Looking at countries individually they will use picture cards of mothers and babies, families and their daily lives and handle and examine artifacts from other cultures. We have cultural boxes, one for each country, filled with all the exotica teachers can find to bring new places alive. On festival day's schools may celebrate with tastes of exotic foods, learn songs from other countries, costume and celebrations. 

Science materials give opportunities to experiment with magnets, light, and air. In many areas of the cultural curriculum children use classification cards for naming, matching or identifying anything and everything from leaf shapes to different kinds of stone to different stages of a tadpole's metamorphosis into a frog. The breadth of children's knowledge of their world when they leave Montessori school can be quite astounding.

 Writing often comes before reading in a Montessori classroom with children building up their first words phonetically using cardboard letters. 

The reading programme progresses through three levels: pink, blue and green - reading materials are color coded for each level. Inside a small pink box a child finds a tiny toy dog. She takes it out, says the word, listens to the sounds in it and then seeks out the letters, which make those sounds to build the word. Writing skills are learned by coloring intricate shapes drawn with insets, and sandpaper letters are experienced by touch as well as by sight and sound. A wide range of story and reference picture books are always available in the classroom.

Children aren't born with an innate knowledge of why we shake hands, or kiss, depending on our culture and in the Montessori classroom they learn appropriate greetings. As they become aware of other cultures they are encouraged to celebrate differences and value them equally. During circle time children are shown how to move quietly and carefully around the classroom, push in chairs, wait patiently before politely gaining someone's attention and are reminded how important it is to allow others to work undisturbed. These ground rules in the classroom give every child total security. Children also learn to notice if somebody needs help nod that nobody is too small to be useful. 

Children must have a multitude of sensorial experiences with size, dimension and form before they are introduced to mathematical quantities and their symbols. Before formal lessons, the children need casual practice with rod counting. Once they are certain of quantity and symbol of numbers 0 through 10, an overview of the base 10 system with numbers 0 - 9999 is begun. Next in the sequence comes counting the squares and cubes of sets of numbers 1 through 10. Simultaneously, children are taught simple one-digit, concrete, static addition and subtraction. Once the children can skip-count from memory, multiplication is introduced and is followed by division with no remainders.