The Learning Environment

The Children's House

At this stage of the child's development Maria Montessori stated that children possess an absorbent mind, they use their potential to absorb experiences from their environment without becoming tired or bored.  Children work individually, which helps them to refine skills they naturally possess.  This allows them to adapt to their own environment, gaining independence, physical, social and emotional skills.  Each child is carefully observed and progress is recorded.  Our educational programs are all implemented within the guidelines of the national curriculum.

Subjects in the Children's house include:

Practical Life

These are every day activities, allowing children to participate in daily life skills such as interaction, care of self, others and the environment, gaining independence, concentration and refined control of movements.

Sensorial

We have equipment specially designed to refine and order the child's senses.  Through exploring their senses the child is able to classify impressions of their properties within the physical environment.

Mathematics

We aim to give the child an understanding of the surrounding principles of mathematics and develop skills at problem solving.  We achieve this by way of utilising both concrete and abstract apparatus.

Language

Our materials for this subject are based of phonics to develop reading, writing, spelling and grammar.  Our Montessori environment is full of oral language opportunities for the child to explore.

Art

Our aim here is to encourage children to utilise our wide range of materials in order to develop their manipulative skills and express creativity from within.  They are given the opportunity to appreciate fine art, studying paintings by well known artists, pairing and matching works.

Music and Movement

This is used to develop gross motor and listening skills along with co-ordination, rhythm, rhyme and pitch matching.

Cultural

We split the subject of culture into sections; History, Geography, Biology, and Botany.  The child experiences both practical and theoretical aspects of these subjects.

Food technology

This gives the child the opportunity to experience and participate in the preparation of food, baking and cooking.  They will sample new tastes from different cultures.  We promote an understanding of healthy eating and dietary requirements.

Information Technology

We introduce children to the world of computing, helping them to develop skills with the keyboard and mouse as well as teaching the effective research techniques with the aid of the Internet.