Curriculum for Childrens House

“Children’s House” is the special Montessori term for 3-6 year old classes because the carefully prepared environment for these children includes so much more than just class work.  It is, in fact, a small version of the world, a world scaled down to the child's age and ability level.  Work in the Children’s House includes everything from nose-blowing lessons to multiplication…buttoning to the meaning of the word "verb" …dishwashing to square dancing…singing to yoga. The children are acquainted with each area of learning through the scientifically thought-out, hands-on curriculum materials, and the careful and thoughtful guidance of their “directress”—the Montessori term for “teacher.”  They are introduced to the materials and, hence the curriculum, through lessons.  But the children don’t just learn what’s in the lessons.  They are encouraged to explore subjects widely, pursuing work deeply in the areas that catch their interest. By nature, children from the ages of 3 to 6 are hard at work developing their sensory and motor abilities.  The Montessori materials are perfectly keyed to these needs.  They provide more than a hundred ways in which children can refine their sight, touch, hearing, taste, smell and movements, large and small.  All this is done at the same time as children are learning about reading, mathematics, geography, history and science, as well as the arts.

Through the beauty of the materials and ingeniously attractive activities, the children use their minds and bodies in ways which prepare them for more concentrated study in later years.  The keys to learning—focus and concentration—are built from the very first lessons. For instance, an early lesson on pouring rice with small glass pitchers is not just a fine motor activity, but also pre-reading preparation.  It trains the eyes in left to right tracking, and the body in careful movement.  Unorganized movement causes the child to drop and break items, letting the child know what he or she needs to do. Concrete skills, self-mastery and self-direction are built as well. Also, in working with the materials, the children take things apart, put them back together, and think about what they do.  This gives them practice in the highest thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  It also leads to mature questioning, research and true creativity when they put things back together in a new way.  The youngest children in the environment catch the enthusiasm of the older ones as they make their discoveries and reach toward the more sophisticated materials, all the while enjoying their own pursuits and "games.”

The fact that the Montessori materials are laid out on the shelves according to their difficulty from left to right allows each child to track his or her progress in terms of what shelves have been mastered.  This is a clear and simple way for the children to know "what is next,” as well as for the directress to follow what the child has mastered.  Children demonstrate their mastery of a curriculum area by how they use the materials.  They become models for other children "because they are experts." All these features of the Montessori materials and curriculum layout help develop self-direction and self-monitoring, important work habits for future success. Likewise, the organization of the materials helps reveal the wonder of having the older students together with the younger.  The children actually begin to track each other's progress.  They help and encourage each other by giving lessons and modeling responsible behavior.  All three age levels benefit from the community atmosphere, strong curriculum expectations, and values of the "Children's House." Council Oak offers a classic Montessori Children's House which aims at a high level of intellectual, social, emotional and physical development for each child.  It is dedicated to preparing the 3-6 year olds for more advanced study in the Lower Elementary (6-9) program at Council Oak.

The Prepared Environment

The "prepared environment" offers the child work in Practical Life, Sensorial Exploration, mathematics, science, geography, writing, art, movement, dramatics, and music.  Simultaneously, the child is guided in an especially important area known as "Grace and Courtesy" which consists of lessons in manners, leadership, and concrete methods of cooperation.  The various areas of the environment begin with concrete materials that start the thinking in each subject, and progress to more abstract materials that allow the child to experience the great "aha!" moments of understanding and appreciation for the mysteries of advanced thought.  Each child interacts with the curriculum areas according to his or her comfort and challenge level, progressing at his or her own rate. And all of this is laid on a foundation that begins the first day of school at age 3. Outwardly, the Children’s House Kindergarten level is distinguished only by the lengthened work period, called “Extended Day,” i.e. a full school day from 8:30 AM to 3 PM.  But inwardly, pride, skill, mastery and self-direction become a substantial part of the student's experience of school at this level.  Reading takes shape into "research," Math evolves into math facts, money games, calculator use, and recording the cubing and squaring works.  In Geography, the child develops familiarity with the physical and cultural attributes of every continent on the earth, while in Science, he or she progresses to the study of  zoology, botany, and the physical sciences.

Similar to the old-fashioned "one room schoolhouse," the children learn from each other, support each other and work toward self-creation, under the gentle guidance of the Directress.  To symbolize this, we use a triangle with each angle representing one of the following:  the Student, the Directress, and the Environment.  Each side of the triangle is just as important as the other two, and lends toward a stable, democratic, environment that is authoritative rather than authoritarian.  This is the very stuff of getting along in society itself.

Curriculum for Lower Elementary

From age 6 to 12, children become reasoning explorers.  They develop new powers of abstraction and imagination.  They utilize and apply their knowledge to further discover and expand their world.  During this time it is still essential that the child learn through activity in order to integrate acting and thinking.  It is the child's own effort which gives him or her independence, and his/her own experience which brings him/her answers to how and why things function as they do. Work in the 6-9 classroom involves the transition from the largely sensorial to the more and more abstract; from exercises entirely with the materials to more and more exercises using symbols, pencil and paper. To facilitate this transition, the 6-9 classroom is equipped with many of the more advanced materials from the 3-6 classroom and with materials which challenge the elementary child’s expanded abilities and cosmic interests in subjects such as the planets, U.S. history, animal phyla, and philosophical questions. The 6-9 curriculum also addresses the child’s more advanced social and emotional development with instruction in such things as Grace and Courtesy.

Curriculum for Upper Elementary

Work in the 9-12 classroom involves the transition from partly sensorial, partly abstract learning to fully abstract thinking. The classroom contains some materials from the 6-9 classroom appropriate at the 9-12 level also, such as the periodic chart of the elements, as well as a vast array of more advanced work and plenty of research material. The 0-12 child is involved with the continued acquisition of the basics of mathematics, language, science, and social studies. He or she is also moving to new levels of cognitive and personal organization and understanding. These abilities are exercised in numerous research projects in which the child is expected to look for, acquire, and organize large amounts of knowledge from different aspects of the curriculum. At the 9-12 level, the children are challenged to be more and more responsible for the social and physical environment of the classroom, and to develop increasing understanding and sensitivity in their relationships with others.

Curriculum for Middle School

According to Maria Montessori, the children in the 12-15 class have moved into a new plane of development: they are preparing themselves for adulthood. Consequently, they need more and more experience with the kind of independent work and practical responsibility of an adult. From age 12 to 15, the teacher's role is to prepare an appropriate environment with those materials which have value and purpose, and to foster and protect the child's endeavor to explore.  The teacher serves as a guide and is the link between the child and the environment. The Middle School students receive instruction in all the normal academic curricular areas, such as science, mathematics including algebra, literature, and history, as well as opportunities to learn practical business skills through company projects and fundraising programs which they run to responsibly acquire money for their camping trips. Large research projects are central to their academic curriculum.

Most students find the small class sizes liberating, because of the individualized attention which they receive from the teacher. Group cooperation and principles of appropriate social behavior are explicitly discussed in the class, and issues addresses. In our experience, and those of many other Montessori elementary schools, our students become particularly skilled at incisive reasoning, problem solving and research, practical life skills and at motivating themselves. Regardless of the type of high school they attend (public, private, or religious), they are most often successful because of the self-motivation, organizational skills and self-confidence which they have developed through the Montessori Method. Likewise, they are favored by high school teachers because of their inquisitiveness, enthusiasm for learning, and self-responsible behavior. Our graduates have attended a wide variety of high schools, each chosen to suit the individual student and family. These include Morgan Park Academy, Whitney Young, St. Ignatius, Brother Rice, Leo Catholic, Luther South, Marist, Mother McAuley, Morgan Park High School, Evergreen Park, Marion Catholic, and Homewood-Flossmoor, among others.

Links to Other Valuable Sites

Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius North American Montessori Teachers’ Association (NAMTA) American Montessori Society (AMS) Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) The Montessori Foundation International Montessori Index Montessori Connections Montessori FAQ’s Montessori Great Lessons Beverly Area Planning Association (BAPA) Study Guide: Montessori Education by Council Oak founders Marsha Enright and Doris Cox, summarizing the essentials of the Montessori philosophy and history including a bibliography of reference works on Montessori. Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, a foundation led by Council Oak founder Marsha Enright, which is creating a college using the Montessori philosophy