Apple Montessori School’s curriculum is designed to aid children in developing a love of learning, respect for others and a sense of self-confidence and independence. The classrooms are fully equipped with Montessori materials. The Montessori teachers and staff provide a safe supportive community in which each child can work at his/her own pace.
The curriculum, designed for children three years of age through kindergarten, consists of the following areas:
Practical Life – This area of the classroom helps satisfy children’s need for meaningful activity and independence. It includes table washing, sewing, dressing frames, pouring liquids, sweeping, dusting, and polishing. It also includes walking carefully, carrying trays and objects, saying “please” and “thank you”.
Sensorial – Children learn about their world through sensorial impressions. The sensorial materials are designed to help children classify these impressions. Each material isolates one quality such as shape or sound. Through the manipulation of the materials, children make clear and conscious mental images of each quality allowing them to explore the world on a more refined level.
Language – Spoken language permeates the classroom. Through conversation, hands on experiences, pictures, stories, poems and songs, the vocabulary and language skills that the children bring to the classroom are expanded. Children are also given keys to the printed word through sound games, sandpaper letters and the moveable alphabet. This work leads children to reading and grammar work.
Mathematics – Children are introduced to math in a concrete form. Through repetitive manipulation of the math materials the children acquire math facts. This enables them to continue their math exploration using abstract symbols, numbers and problems with understanding.
Science and Social Studies – Social studies increases the child’s knowledge not only of their own environment, but also of the similarities and differences of other people and places. Science activities build on the children’s natural curiosity. Through simple experiments, observation and proper nomenclature the children explore the wonders in the world around them.
