Curriculum

All areas of the classroom -- Sensorial, Practical Life, Math, Language, Geography, and Science -- address unique and specific needs and interests of the three to six year old child.  While each area has its own curricular progression, all areas are unified by common themes.  The increasingly complex steps of Practical Life work prepares the child for the control of self and sustained concentration he will need to perform later academic tasks in a confident manner. The Sensorial area introduces comparisons needed later in order to work with the math and geometry materials. Geography makes use of the child's ability to match objects to pictures, learned in Language, and also requires a spatial organization learned in Practical Life.  The list goes on.  This section on curriculum is brief, but comprehensive, and is designed to help take some of the mystery out of the Montessori classroom. 

The classrooms at WMS are fully equipped with the Montessori Children’s House materials developed by Maria Montessori. These materials and related activities provide the experiences and sense of order that children are innately drawn to as they pass through the “sensitive periods” of their first six years of development. The classroom is a microcosm of the real world, wherein the child harmoniously engages in the creation of self. Consistently, our students grow in independence, responsibility, self-confidence, and strong concentration skills within a safe, encouraging and respectful environment. Montessori used the term "absorbent mind" to describe the child from birth through six years of age (the first and most vital plane of human development). The rich and abundant world of the Montessori classrooms offer the optimum setting for this process. Please feel free to peruse our descriptions of our curriculum areas, and to ask if you have any questions.  

“The child's development follows a path of successive stages of independence, and our knowledge of this must guide us in our behaviour towards him. We have to help the child to act, will, and think for himself."

                                -- Dr. Maria Montessori