The Montessori System of education operates with a well-defined program and a curriculum backed-up with a wide array of scientifically designed Montessori materials for optimum learning – unique to Montessori and very different from the traditional schools.
In Holy Infant School Montessori, we offer 2 main programs: The Casa dei Bambini and the Primary.
CASA DEI BAMBINI PROGRAM
Our Casa dei Bambini Program is for children 6 years old and below. There are 2 classes in this program. Children 2-3 years old belong to Lower Casa Class while children 4-6 years old belong to the Upper Casa Class. These mixed-age classes spanning 2-3 years of academic and social development encourage peer learning and provide for individual difference, self-pacing and continuity. Children are actively engaged. Students learn through activities that involve exploration, manipulation, and repetition. More so, students are encouraged to use their senses of touch sight, hearing, smelling and tasting to explore and manipulate materials in their learning environment.
A. Lower Casa dei Bambini (TODDLER)
Our Lower Casa dei Bambini Program serves children who are 2 to 3 years of age. Their learning environment is rich with Montessori materials and furnishings tailored to the size and developmental abilities of these very young learners. The environment is rich in language as words are constantly introduced to enrich the child’s vocabulary and the proper pronunciation of words is modeled by the teachers. Practical Life Activities provide children the opportunity to develop control of movement and skills to care for themselves and their environment. Repeated success helps them build independence and self esteem. Our teachers guide them towards independence and accomplishment in a gentle and supportive way.
B. Upper Casa dei Bambini
Our Upper Casa dei Bambini Program is for children 4 to 6 years of age. The classrooms or learning environments are carefully prepared to offer concrete, hands-on, self-directed and self-correcting materials. The children use the wide array of Montessori materials to understand abstract concepts which in traditional environment they might have been asked to simply memorize or accept. Our Casa children lay a solid foundation upon which virtually all of their later learning will be built. Children learn individually or in small groups at their own pace.
PRIMARY / ELEMENTARY PROGRAM
Our 6 years Montessori Primary Program allows the children to continue building-up on the foundation they have established in the Casa dei Bambini Program.
The children’s learning environment at the primary level is no longer confined within the four walls of the classroom. They are given key lessons that allow them to launch research projects studying the universe, the earth, and peoples of the world and how man has, throughout time fulfilled his needs, both physical and spiritual.
There are two classes in the Primary Program: the 6-9 class and the 9-12 class. Children 6 to 9 years old as well as children 9 to 12 years old are heterogeneously grouped but are given work based on their individual levels. We cover the first to third grade curricula in the 6-9 class while the 9-12 class covers the fourth to sixth grade curricula in the basic education ladder.
Elementary age children are naturally curious. We support their inquisitive nature with a broad curriculum, limited only by their imagination. Our curriculum for the elementary child which Dr. Montessori called “Cosmic Education” emphasized the interconnectedness of the many things children observe and learn. This integrated curriculum avoids artificial division of knowledge instead, it encourages children to see the relationship among all subject areas and, indeed, among aspects of life.
In the Primary, children learn individually or in small groups. Long blocks of time encourage extended spans of concentration, uninterrupted by bells indicating a sudden change of subject.
A. LOWER PRIMARY
The Lower Primary Class is for Children 7 to 9 years old. The integrated curriculum and multi-age classroom give rise to a dynamic learning environment. At any one time, you will see a variety of activities in progress because children will be working at their own level of interest and ability.
Challenging work in the areas of Math, Reading, Grammar, Science, History and Geography are woven into their daily fabric of learning. More advanced Montessori materials provide ample practice and repetition in basic concepts which the child constructs a foundation for gradual abstraction and application of concepts.
Journal writing, research, booklet making, and science experiments develop the students’ powers of observation and self expression. Every student receives the series of “Great Lessons” beginning with the “Story of the Universe” to spark their imaginations around questions of history and science. The unique capacity of elementary children to classify is stimulated through Botany and Zoology studies and their taxonomy.
B. UPPER PRIMARY
Children ages 10 to 12 are grouped together in a cooperative learning environment with the Montessori teacher as facilitator and guide. The Upper Primary curriculum is an expanded and more abstract continuation of the subjects presented in the Lower Primary program. Included in this program are further lessons on Human Body System, History and World Culture, Geography, and Pre-algebra.