Our Curriculum
We have structured our program around the AMI Primary Environment curriculum which targets children ages three to six. Historically, children who complete the full three-year cycle graduate able to write in cursive, reading phonetically, and do basic math, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions. Children completing this program are fully ready to continue their learning experience in either a public or private elementary school program and are strongly positioned for future educational success.
The Primary Environment Curriculum divides the studies into four areas: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Math, and Science.
The Primary Environment Curriculum divides the studies into four areas: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, Math, and Science.
Practical Life
Practical Life works to develop a child's gross and fine motor skills. More importantly, these first exercises help the child learn how to work in the Montessori environment, keep the classroom clean and orderly, and cooperate with the other children in the sharing of materials. Common objects from home, such as buttons, brushes and pitchers entice the child to perform and to perfect practical life activities. The child's attention span and concentration increase, as they learn to focus on details while following a regular sequence of actions.
Sensorial
One of the greatest contributions Maria Montessori made to the understanding of children was the idea of “sensitive periods” — that there are particular ages when the child is developing particular capacities, such as walking, speech, fine motor control, and developing the senses. Many of the sensorial exercises are geared toward the tactile — training the child to correlate relative shape and size between what the child sees and what the child feels in his or her hand. For example, the cylinder blocks may appear to the casual adult observer to merely be a sorting exercise. But when a child performs the exercise, the child usually runs his or her finger along the length and along its width to help determine size. The fine gradations of the ten cylinders in each block can be a challenge to one with undeveloped senses. Maria Montessori observed that children naturally desire to repeat exercises to master them, and in so doing the child becomes increasingly proficient due to increased power of the senses.
Language
In the AMI curriculum, children learn cursive writing first, and children learn to write before reading. Maria Montessori observed that children, when holding a pencil, naturally draw circle patterns continuously without lifting the pencil, and her method takes advantage of this. Reading is done phonetically. Children learn the alphabet by the sounds the letters make rather than the names of the letters. By reading phonetically, the child can tackle ever more difficult words throughout life, and correctly read what authors intend rather than guessing based on context as “whole word” methods espouse.
Math
The Montessori math methods are the most easily recognizable as having a direct link between hands-on work and the understanding of physical and spatial relationships of number, shape, and size. In this area the children learn to connect the physical concepts of numbers and counting to working abstractly with numerals. This process aids in development of a deep understanding of mathematical relationships in the same way that professional mathematicians think about math.
Beyond the Basics
Art, Music, Science, Culture and Movement activities, sometimes considered “extra” in more traditional education, are fully integrated under the four main curriculum areas.
Art, music, culture and movement are treated as extensions of the basic skills mastered in the sensorial program. Whether learning to distinguish tones through a bell sound matching exercise or walking and marching to the music of various world cultures, children in a Montessori classroom learn to see music as a core part of their world. Our art program focuses a child's natural desire to scribble, draw, and paint towards increasingly realistic representations of the shapes, objects and images in the child's normal environment.
Additional extensions to the basic Montessori program, like the botany cabinet, extend the concepts of caring for the classroom, taught in the practical life curriculum, and shapes, covered in our math programs, to the natural world and reinforces the need to care for nature and the natural environment. Our geography cabinet, another program extension, takes the concept of shapes even further with puzzle maps. Our parents are often amazed at how quickly their children master a basic understanding of continents, countries and the counties flags - exercises many adults would struggle to complete.
Art, music, culture and movement are treated as extensions of the basic skills mastered in the sensorial program. Whether learning to distinguish tones through a bell sound matching exercise or walking and marching to the music of various world cultures, children in a Montessori classroom learn to see music as a core part of their world. Our art program focuses a child's natural desire to scribble, draw, and paint towards increasingly realistic representations of the shapes, objects and images in the child's normal environment.
Additional extensions to the basic Montessori program, like the botany cabinet, extend the concepts of caring for the classroom, taught in the practical life curriculum, and shapes, covered in our math programs, to the natural world and reinforces the need to care for nature and the natural environment. Our geography cabinet, another program extension, takes the concept of shapes even further with puzzle maps. Our parents are often amazed at how quickly their children master a basic understanding of continents, countries and the counties flags - exercises many adults would struggle to complete.
The Work Cycle
The Montessori classroom is a vibrant and dynamic learning environment. Structure is created uniquely by each child while operating in a common classroom framework established by the teachers and the children working together. Our children are given the opportunity to select their activities, within a guided learning environment. They learn by working with the instructors, working on their own and working with their peers. The children are also given the responsibility of maintaining the classroom environment and the materials. Each child is expected to clean-up after themselves. While this is sometimes a challenge for new children, proper encouragement from the teachers, and eventually the rest of children,, combines with the innate desire for structure in most children, and produce a neat, well organized and calm classroom setting.
Normally, each child works in the rhythm of a three-hour work cycle. This uninterrupted time gives children the opportunity to allow ideas to find them and provides the time to express and explore those ideas. We believe that enabling a child to create personal success in learning, concentration, and independence leads to long term success in life.
Normally, each child works in the rhythm of a three-hour work cycle. This uninterrupted time gives children the opportunity to allow ideas to find them and provides the time to express and explore those ideas. We believe that enabling a child to create personal success in learning, concentration, and independence leads to long term success in life.