The Montessori Preschool Curriculum
The Montessori classroom is designed with the child’s sensitive periods and internal drives in mind. The child is allowed the freedom to follow his inner voice. There are very few group activities in which all children are expected to perform in an identical manner. Each child works independently at activities of his choosing. He is shown how to carry out an activity during a short yet precise ‘lesson’ and then allowed to return to it on his own any time he wishes. Most activities are carefully designed with internal controls of error so the supervision of a teacher becomes unnecessary. This allows the child to develop at his own pace; it allows him to develop his concentration, self-discipline, self-motivation, and self-confidence.
The children in a Montessori primary classroom are of various ages from two and a half or three years to six years. This mixing of abilities and the freedom of movement and interaction provides plenty of opportunities for social development. The children are shown how to deal with conflict and to come to a mutually satisfying and peaceful solution. As a younger child in the group, a three year old benefits from watching the advanced work of the older children. As he grows older he is able to develop leadership skills and consolidates his own learning by sharing his experiences and knowledge with others.
Within a context of self-motivation and self-discipline, the child is presented activities in five major areas: practical life, sensorial, language, math, and cultural studies (awareness of the natural and social world).
Practical Life
Practical Life activities deal with the care of the child’s own person (personal dressing and grooming), care of the environment (cleaning, taking care of plants and pets, preparing food), development of gross and fine motor skills, and learning courteous behavior and conflict resolution (often called “grace and courtesy”). This area directly feeds the need of the child to imitate the activity of the adults in his life and to become independent. This area is for every child who cries out “Mama let me do it by MYSELF!”
Sensorial
The Sensorial area is designed to refine the child’s physical senses. The senses are the child’s window to the world. By the time he reaches the age of two and a half or three, he is not only attracted to sensory stimuli but is now also in a sensitive period for order; he is ready to start sorting and organizing his sensory impressions. The Montessori Sensorial materials give him an opportunity to do this. This is an important precursor to advanced intellectual development, which must have a basis in gathering and processing information. The sensorial experiences also develop the child’s sense of color, of size and distance, and of movement from three to two dimensions. These skills are invaluable in the appreciation and creation of art. He has begun to appreciate the subtleties in music because he is developing an ear for pitch, tone, and volume. He is exposed to various smells, tastes, and sounds from cultures around the world and this increases his awareness and appreciation of human diversity.
Language
The Montessori classroom attempts to saturate the child’s environment with rich language experiences. The curriculum includes oral and spoken language, writing, reading, and even an introduction to grammar. Language is naturally integrated into all curriculum areas of the classroom. The work done in practical life, sensorial, and early language areas develops the different literacy skills, and when the child is ready, these skills coalesce and result in a sudden explosion of writing and reading.
Mathematics
Nature seems to have endowed humans with the natural ability to carry out a number of mental operations that are the basis of mathematics. We tend to compare our experiences and then order them, that is we seek to arrange, group or classify them by different categories. We like to analyze things and take our inferences to a new level by making generalizations; we try to find patters and similarities and make associations. The development or unfolding of these qualities is the purpose of the Montessori math curriculum. The Montessori math materials and activities are elegantly designed to provide the child with hands on concrete experiences of supposedly abstract concepts. The child can see the difference between a ten and a hundred and can hold 53 in his hands.
Cultural Studies
The ultimate goal of the cultural studies curriculum is to help the child realize he is part of an interconnected system of relationships between everything that exists in this universe. It is to help him develop a sense of respect for and responsibility to not only other people but also everything in the natural environment. This is done by exposing the child to a multitude of varied experiences at a time when he is in the process of absorbing his environment, internalizing his surrounding, and forming himself. It is the experiences he has at this age that he will carry with him into adulthood and will form the basis from which he will compare everything else. These are the things he will be comfortable with as he grows older. If he has seen many different features and colors of human faces in he early childhood, he will not be surprised and uncomfortable around them in the future. This was one of Montessori’s means of bringing peace into the world. It is for this reason that the cultural studies curriculum is often called the peace curriculum.