Vancouver Montessori School--Montessori Curriculum/Lessons

Montessori Lessons

Sensorial Activities

The Montessori program offers a multi-sensory approach to learning, encouraging the children to use the optimum combination of senses for learning. Designed to isolate and categorize qualities of the environment perceived through the senses, Sensorial activities focus on the development of sensory perception for the acquisition of information.

Practical Life

The exercises of the Practical Life curriculum are designed to foster independence, self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-control, characteristics that play a critical role in subsequent intellectual growth. Dr. Montessori these sets of exercises as Control of Movement, Care of Person, Care of the Environment, and Grace and Courtesy.

Language

Language lessons continue throughout the day in all curriculum areas and in all activities. Specific lessons assist with vocabulary development, the progression into reading, the development of writing skills, and composition.

Mathematics

The Math curriculum begins with activities to teach sequence, recognition, and quantity of numbers 1-10. Two parallel lesson formats continue with the concepts of (1) the process of the operations (addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division) and (2) the memorization of the math facts—the tables of addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division.

Geography

The Geography activities present facts and nomenclature of physical geography, i.e., the physical characteristics of the earth, and political geography, i.e., the countries and cultures of the world. Topics explored include history and appreciation of art, nomenclature and classification of zoology, science experiments, history and appreciation of music, and the study of historical figures. Reading and writing skills are used extensively in these activities.

Expression

Montessori teachers have been trained to prepare the environment and to observe and guide the child. The teacher watches for obstacles to the child's development and removes them.