Children’s House

The Montessori lessons in Practical Life are designed to increase a child’s independence and concentration. Children begin to care for themselves by dressing themselves and carrying their own backpacks. They learn to set the table, pour their own drinks, and clean up after themselves after meals. While these may seem like simple tasks, they are actually multi-step processes that take time, deliberate thought, and attention to detail. These simple tasks play a significant role in aiding in the development of coordination, work stamina, and concentration. 

Lessons in grace and courtesy give young children the tools for having polite interactions, such as learning a proper greeting with a handshake; saying please, excuse me, and I apologize; offering food to others from a tray; using a napkin, and eating politely with the correct utensils during meals. Our students learn to keep themselves safe by memorizing important addresses and phone numbers, learning how to ask adults for help, and practicing safety procedures inside and outside of our school.

Sensorial exercises are central to developing a strong literary mind. As children sequence by size, color, sound, and texture, they become sensitized to the task of discriminating letters as they begin to learn to read and write. Children begin to learn letter formation using the cursive alphabet and ultimately learn to write reports and stories in beautiful cursive handwriting. Learning the letter names and sounds, matching the names to objects and pictures, and finally composing words using the sounds of letters leads to early reading – a true joy and source of pride for our young students.

Lessons in geography, botany, and zoology open the wonders of the world’s continents, bodies of water, and the names of indigenous plants and animals in each geographic area. Children move from recognizing a continent to naming, spelling, and drawing maps of the continents, and finally mapping each continent with its countries, bodies of water, and indigenous plants and animals. While geography knowledge is lacking in most American schools, our very young students have a strong working knowledge of the earth’s geographical features.

The Children’s House mathematics program begins with the identification and comparison of size using sensorial materials. Children then learn the names and symbols of numbers, correspond the symbols to quantities, and subsequently count into the thousands. Children add and subtract, skip-count for multiplication, and perform simple division. When asked, most students in the Children’s House say math is their very favorite subject.

Language lessons enable students to understand vocabulary, spelling, and reading and writing composition. Tracing sandpaper letters helps our youngest students recognize the letters and phonetic sounds of the alphabet, which they then can use to create compositions based on lessons in zoology, geography, biography, and personal interest. Even our youngest students develop a sophisticated vocabulary and command of the English language; typical MMS students are solid readers and writers in kindergarten and bring reading homework home each evening.

Extended Day Children’s House students also attend Studio Art, Music, Spanish, and Physical Education classes one or more times per week.

In the early 1900s, the prevailing belief was that children could not benefit from school until the age of eight.  Maria Montessori, the first Italian woman to become a Medical Doctor, began to question this as she worked with young children and observed the ways they learned. Based on her observations, in 1907 Montessori opened her first school in an impoverished area of Rome with the intention of preparing underprivileged children for school. Her program would educate the young children in basic academic concepts, good manners, age-appropriate conversational skills, and good hygiene so that by age eight, they could compete with children from more privileged backgrounds. 

In a short time, it became clear that Dr. Montessori’s preschool students were flourishing and even outperforming more privileged children in school assessments. Word of this success spread, and soon preschools based on Dr. Montessori’s program opened across Europe, South America, India, and eventually, the United States.