Montessori Good Shepherd Center
Montessori
This link is a good introduction to the Montessori System and classroom environment.
Activity Area Categories
PRACTICAL LIFE
Practical life is the area where the children learn how to care for themselves including getting themselves food, cleaning up after themselves, putting on a coat, shoes, pouring water, wiping up a spill and getting along with others. These attributes are the secondary purpose of works for the children. The primary purpose is to build concentration and focus which prepares them for works with greater challenges and independence.
Think all the things you do automatically – pouring water, spooning, dressing, putting on a coat, shoes and making a bed. Our children pick them up by watching and trying or with some instruction. With specific materials to practice these things and precise instructions, children can practice them as much as they need to master them. This mastery of self-care and the ability to help others really builds their concentration and focus which is essential for all learning and greater challenges. It also gives them great pleasure and the ability to help others.
SENSORIAL
Montessori trains the intellect through the senses. Sensorial materials develop all the senses and build the pincer grip of the fingers so they can better master writing. This equips them to orient and adapt to their world.
MATHEMATICS
Math is taught starting with concrete materials that build a sense of quantity like the golden beads and then the abstract symbols and then operations. A fun game with these materials is the bank game; they can do as a group or by themselves. Addition, multiplication, subtraction and division all have special materials that consistently help the child understand the operations with the abstract quantity and symbols. The materials help all children be good at math.
LANGUAGE ART
Children learn phonetically. They start with expanding their vocabulary and then the teachers present the sounds; they learn to blend the sounds together to make words. As they progress to phrases and sentences, they can start reading and writing.
CULTURAL EXTENSIONS
Geography, history, science - biology, botany, zoology, art and music are integrated into all the other subjects.
ART/Music
Art is incorporated into all areas of the classroom and the children experiment with various art mediums.
A bell set has 13 bells (a full octave). Beginning lessons focus on matching the bell tone and then putting them in order. The student learns the scales and then composes simple tunes on their way to more advanced lessons.
Grace and Courtesy
These lessons teach students how to get along with each other, resolve conflicts and maintain the environment. It is broken into three areas:
Respect
for Others
Respect
for the Environment
Respect
for Self
Only Montessori
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Only educational system that started from a theological foundation – God’s respect for the child. “Unless you become like a child you can’t enter the kingdom of God.”
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Only educational system that starts from the senses instead of the intellect; developing the senses as an aid to intellectual development. Aristotle said, “There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the hand.”
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Only educational system that is built on the power of choice and how that power is developed and refined.
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Only system of education that celebrates movement.
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Only system built on wonder and discovery instead of rote learning.
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Only system that functions because of “grace and courtesy” – good manners, consideration for others and cooperation.