The Primary Program is a mixed age community of children ages 3 to 6. It supports the whole child academically, developmentally and socio-emotionally by encouraging a love of learning, a sense of community, respect, accountability and responsibility. Our teacher-child ratio in the Primary environment is 1:10. We strive to provide consistency by having the same teachers work with your child throughout their entire time in the Montessori Primary Program.
Primary Program: Encourage a love of learning by adhering to the Montessori pedagogy of “follow the child.”
Kindergarten Program: Excelling at and often exceeding the Virginia Standards of Learning concepts.
Primary Program: Introduce, practice and master lessons that support a child’s academic prowess, their fine and gross motor skills, sense of independence, concentration, and self-confidence.
Kindergarten Program: Deeper focus and understanding in the acquisition of Math, Language, Reading, Science, Geography and Cultural Studies.
Primary Program: Creates an independent, self-confident and intrinsically motivated learner with empathy and respect for their peers.
Kindergarten Program: Creates a leader who is academically advanced and a confident, capable and caring citizen of the world ready for first grade and beyond.
The Practical Life curriculum area is an essential part of every authentic Montessori community. It teaches children to care for themselves and care for their environment. As Dr. Maria Montessori said, children thrive when we follow the mantra: “help me do it by myself.”
Sensorial is another vital component of the Montessori environment. Here is where your child really learns to make sense of their world. Each of the five senses becomes strengthened through Montessori materials that support skills for gradation, matching, sorting, smelling, tasting and touching.
Dr. Montessori believed that children have a natural thirst for language. This area is where your child learns the essential tools for reading, reading comprehension, communication, writing and spelling success.
Montessori is known around the world around for its outstanding math curriculum. Children in Primary are taught the visual and tactile representations of number quantities and symbols – always starting with quantities first and then symbols. Maria Montessori believed “what the hand does, the mind remembers.” All Montessori materials are built with a self-correcting component that allows the child to explore and learn independently.
Dr. Montessori felt that Cosmic Education is integral to early childhood education. It gives children the framework for understanding the world and their place in it. Children learn how people, places, plants, animals, the Earth and planets are all connected. From science lessons on Botany and Zoology to Geography and Cultural lessons, Cosmic Education shows the child the opportunities they have to improve their communities and the world as a whole.