Montessori Early Education Willow Vale
(07) 5670 8977
The Montessori approach to education, inspires children towards a lifelong love of learning, by following their natural developmental trajectory. Children become confident, responsible, independent learners, who trust in their own abilities. The Montessori approach offers your child the opportunity to develop at their own pace in a stimulating environment where your child can feel safe and have fun learning.
The inclusivity and positive social development facilitated by the Montessori programme forms the basis for a persistent attachment to learning and knowledge. This approach gives children the opportunity to move freely within an environment specifically created to meet their needs. This environment allows children to choose from many activities across the five key learning areas to aid their development and absorption of knowledge and culture.
Our Practical Life area lays a foundation for the child’s introduction to day care, providing a link between their home and our centre. In this area, children learn to care for themselves and also their environment using materials familiar to them. Most Practical Life activities are tasks that children will see done at home and be able to participate in, which eases their transition to day care or school. Some activities include washing up, sweeping, planting seedlings and greeting each other,
In Mathematics, children use concrete (physical) materials throughout their early development years to manipulate equipment and establish number symbols and quantities. As the child progresses, the difficulty increases with a focus on abstract (theoretical) methods. From our experience, a child who can count from 1-9 can easily count from 10-90, 100-900 or 1000-9000. Children are introduced to the decimal system, simple operations and fractions, with all new concepts involving hands on learning. The Montessori curriculum allows variation with careful consideration by the educator, as all children are unique.
Our Sensorial Development area helps to refine all senses of each child as well as to help become more perceptive by categorising each sensory impression. All of the materials isolate a single concept, which allows each child to engage and learn through manipulation and discovery. Every part of our intellect originated from our senses; they play an important role throughout our lives, especially during early childhood. Montessori focuses on ten senses, rather than just five: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, kinaesthetic, stereo-gnostic, thermic, baric and pain.
Our Culture and Science curriculum allows children to explore their natural curiosity about our world and when nurtured, that interest is permanently stimulated. An informed Montessori educator can enrich this interest with further knowledge and thus provide steps for more advanced development on higher academic levels which the children will rely on well into their adulthood. Through interacting with the materials children will build a global perspective, respect and understanding of other cultures. The cultural area includes elements of history, geography, art, craft, music, botany, zoology, science, drama, language, movement, social studies, health and wellbeing.
In Language Arts, children are able to learn to express themselves and communicate clearly with others. It is important that basic language skills are not just formed from listening, but taught phonetically through touch and manipulation. From as early as the first months, a child’s experience with oral language development and literacy begin to build a foundation for later reading and writing success. Parents and Montessori educators play an important role in ensuring progress during literacy development. Our educators are knowledgeable about emerging literacy and make individual efforts to support it with language development stimulated in all areas of the classroom.
