San Tan’s Montessori Program

San Tan Montessori is based on the philosophy of Dr. Maria Montessori. The four major areas of the Montessori classroom are: Practical Life, Sensorial, Language and Mathematics.

Practical Life

Practical Life activities make up the foundation of the program. They are intended to help the child adapt to his environment. He learns to button, snap, and tie, to shine shoes, sweep, dust, and polish. He also learns the forms of good manners in our culture, such as shaking hands, closing doors quietly, and not interrupting. The activities within the classroom are designed in a sequence of steps through which the child comes to realize order and logic in activity. Attention, concentration, carefulness, and independence originate with this work.

Sensorial

The Sensorial material is not intended to give new impressions but to order, relate, classify, explore, and realize the sense impressions the child has had before coming to school. The equipment is designed to aid the senses in discriminating form, shape, size, color, sound, and touch. Each piece of material isolates a single quality, a single sense impression. The Sensorial materials serve as keys to all other areas of learning. The sound exercises lead to music; the child's interest in sound, form, and texture is utilized in learning the shapes and sounds of the alphabet; form extends into geometry, botany, and geography.

Language

Language is woven into all parts of the program. The child learns that words are made of sounds. Then he learns that each sound has a symbol. Knowing the sound and symbol for each letter of the alphabet, he begins to build words. Stories, poems, plays, and ordinary conversation are important in the environment. The aim is to increase the child's knowledge, his organization of thought, and his confidence and ability to express and use his mind.

Mathematics

Montessori observed human tendencies to abstract, investigate, calculate, measure, imagine and create. If the child is allowed to develop these tendencies through manipulating concrete materials, allowing for repetition and concentration, he moves easily on to abstraction and a love for mathematics. As the child is introduced to numbers, both the symbol and quantity are taught. Later the decimal system (units, tens, hundreds, thousands) is brought to the child along with basic arithmetic processes. Numbers, both the symbol and quantity are taught. Later the decimal system (units, tens, hundreds, thousands) is brought to the child along with basic arithmetic processes.

Music

Music is fundamental in the classroom. All types of music are integrated. Music appreciation is cultivated, and music used by the civilizations throughout history is unfolded before the child. Music will find its way in all aspects of the classroom as a subtle background during work time, to signal clean-up time, as an integral part of the cultural curriculum, as a form of celebration and fun. San Tan Montessori will be a Registered Music Together school.

Continue reading about the classroom experience