Critical thinking blossoms in Elementary!
“This age group is amazing. Six to nine year old children are developing an array of skills. In general, this age group is in the receiving mode, open to all possibilities. They are thirsty for knowledge and ready to learn. Many of them are their own ‘walking encyclopedias.’ It amazes me how much I can learn from them.”
The Montessori elementary is built on the foundations of the primary.
When your six year old comes into the elementary class from the Montessori primary, she will find much that is familiar in this new setting. The elementary classroom environment is beautiful and thoughtfully prepared to support independent learning; it is child-centered, not adult-centered. There is access to the outdoors and the kinds of learning that can only take place in nature. Many of the beautiful, inviting Montessori materials from the Primary classroom are also found in the elementary, where your child will use them in new ways suited to her expanding mind, and make her own discoveries in language, math, and science. Perhaps most importantly, the other children in the class have a similar background of being treated with respect and support, and have developed into confident, competent students.
The children’s work is open-ended and creative.
Each child’s response to a lesson is unique, and their follow up work reflects those individual differences. Your child is free to form or join a group to work with the concepts introduced in a lesson. For example, a group of children might have a lesson on the parts of a river. Some might choose to label an outline map with the rivers of North America. Others might choose to repeat the demonstration with the river model (and without the teacher), labeling for themselves the parts previously demonstrated. Another pair might be intrigued by a particular river mentioned in the lesson or by the river running through their city, and they might launch a research project about the Mississippi or the Willamette. Because the children are free to move around the classroom and see what others are doing, it’s not uncommon for an idea to spread; children are stimulated not just by the teacher’s lessons, but by each other.
The classroom is designed to nurture imagination and reason.
Elementary age students are naturally curious and have a strong internal drive to discover how our world works. They may ask, “How does a fish breathe under water?” “What number comes after a trillion?” “What causes a volcano to erupt?” Instead of simply giving them the correct answers, Montessori elementary teachers ask the right questions; they tell stories to inspire the children’s imagination and tantalize them to explore on their own to find out more: about volcanoes and dinosaurs and Monet and gladiators and poppies and skateboards and butter churning and cheetahs and – there is no limit!
Driven by their passions, the children are open to the input from the teacher that refines their reading, writing, reasoning, and research skills. Designing our elementary program around the children’s natural cognitive abilities means that our focus is less on the facts and concepts we teach and more on what the children learn and how they learn it.
The attitudes and confidence developed during these formative years will serve the child throughout his/her lifetime.