PRACTICAL LIFE
Fine motor skills form an essential part of Montessori education and at South Calgary Montessori, we make sure that every kid gets hands-on experience in practical life skills. Fine motor skills improve hand-eye coordination and also fine motor movements in children during their preschool education. These skills required for everyday activities include self-care skills, pencil skills for drawing, playing, coloring and much more.
For essential self-care skills, we use dressing frames for learning zipping & unzipping, buttoning and unbuttoning, shoe lacing, buckling etc. Other activities and Montessori tools include the mats & trays, spoon work, play dough activities, painting & drawing, building towers, etc.
SENSORIAL
According to Montessori based education, sensorial learning is for the refinement of senses, to improve concentration at early childhood. The teaching methodology is designed to cover all aspects of sensorial experiences such as shapes, texture, color, loudness, softness, temperature, weight, smell, etc. Using appropriate teaching tools like the pink tower, brown stairs, red rods, knobbed cylinders, knobless cylinders, color tablets, geometric cabinet, touch tablets, thermic tiles, basic tablets and smelling jars, we guide the child through the sensorial learning process.
During the tactile sensing, auditory sensing, olfactory sensing, thermic sensing, baric sensing and stereognostic sensing learning process, the child excels in his sensorial experiences and learns to acquire clear conscious information from the environment along with the expertise to classify them.
MATHEMATICS
Humans are gifted with a mathematical mind and an ability to estimate, quantify, calculate, etc. Moreover, math is all around when you grow up. Hence, Dr. Maria Montessori believed that observations and experimentation could be the best tools for early mathematics learning in Montessori kindergarten and preschool. Based on this recommendation, our kids explore the base-10 number system and calculations like addition, subtraction and multiplication using Montessori tools such as sandpaper numbers, number rods, bead material, wooden spindles, pink towers, etc. A combination of concrete and abstract materials are used for primary mathematics teaching.
LANGUAGE
A child’s language development starts right from the womb stage, and early childhood is the right time for the child to develop multiple language skills. As correctly stated by Dr. Maria Montessori, a child has “the absorbent mind” and is capable of developing language proficiency from the information available in the environment.
At South Calgary Montessori, our kids are introduced to letters and sounds and learn to differentiate between vowels and consonants using sandpaper models of alphabets and phonograms. We are well equipped with Montessori based language learning tools and materials such as metal insets, vocabulary cards, pre-selected sound boxes, movable alphabets, rhyme cards, and sentence building cards appropriate for the age group and curriculum.
CULTURAL
Under the Montessori method of early education, cultural curriculum includes history, biology, Geography, Physical Science, and arts. While traditional forms of education mostly focus on Math and language, Montessori methodology gives equal attention to cultural studies along with Math, language and other subjects. Cultural studies enrich children’s understanding of their role and their interaction with the world.
At South Calgary Montessori and Childcare Centre, we have numerous cultural learning tools and materials such as map puzzles, globes and Geography teaching materials, puzzles on animals and plants, color activities and more. We also include reading activities and other advanced learning activities appropriate for the age group.