The children in this room are interested in exploring and are doing things for themselves. The children engage in activities that help them build their independence around their self help skills such as getting things ready for eating, independently eating, cleaning up after they’ve eaten, self care skills such as washing hands, wiping their nose and face, and dressing themselves.
Gross motor development is also a major focus in this room. Some children may only be fairly new to walking so they are learning about maintaining their balance, running, climbing, co-ordinating their bodies – activities such as sensory stepping stones, tunnels, foam and wooden climbing structures, and trikes encourage this development.
Activities such as digging in the sand pit, lifting and carrying things are supporting other muscle development. Tasks in the classroom such as puzzles, sorting/posting, threading, pegging, transferring objects from one bowl to another using fingers or tongs, playdough, mark making with pencils, crayons, chalk or paint all work to support the children’s fine motor development, eye hand coordination, problem solving skills and concentration/focus.
As they increasingly become aware of those around them, they are supported further in their emotional development, helping them to navigate social situations with their peers. This age group is also a major developmental period for language and building vocabulary, enabling the children to be developing words and conversations that can be understood by those around them.
Educators support language development through ongoing verbal engagement through the day, putting words to the actions they see, involving the children in rich literature experiences, songs, rhymes and movement as well as other specific language jobs that support vocabulary development.
In a Montessori setting, the children are encouraged to make their own choices as to ‘work’ they wish to engage in, moving freely between the indoor and outdoor settings as they do so.
Yinga (means ‘sing’ in the local Wurundjeri language) and Duwi (means ‘move’). The children continue to build their independence and engagement with their surroundings building their concentration and focus. Elements of the program in this room include:
Practical Life: where children engage in tasks that promote their self care skills such as dressing frames eg: button, zipper, velcro, laces; as well as their fine motor skills by transferring materials using spoons and tongs, pouring from different vessels, engaging in food preparation experiences, learning how to care for their environment both indoors and out as well as experiencing a variety of creative art pursuits such as painting, drawing, collage, playdough or clay. A child’s work in this area is helping them develop essential skills connected to later reading and writing.
Grace and Courtesy: this is a big part of the Montessori curriculum and engages the children in activities that are helping them to learn important skills such as engaging with those around them.
Sensorial: children engage with specific Montessori materials that provide opportunity to explore and learn with their senses, isolating particular concepts such as size, length, width, shape, colour, textures, tastes and smells as they hone their discrimination skills. All the while building a rich vocabulary as educators support their learning with the words they need.
Culture: in a Montessori environment, Culture encompasses the world around them as the children engage in experiences from different cultural backgrounds as well as the world of plants and animals. This may incorporate music, language, cooking, gardening, exploring animals.
Language: this comes through all elements of the program. In more formal language work, the children work to discriminate aurally between sounds that they are hearing through games such as I spy before moving on to more formal sound and letter recognition, as well as engaging in work that contributes to developing penmanship skills ready for writing.
Mathematics: this work begins in the Sensorial area of the curriculum where the children have already been exploring aspects such as size, shape and colour. Maria Montessori believed in taking the child from the concrete to the abstract when learning about their world. With Mathematics this begins with concrete materials that teaches the child about initial number concepts. Handling the materials the child can see and feel that there is a difference in the material that represents 1 to the material that represents 10. With this understanding in place the child is then introduced to the more abstract written form of the number. This mode of working is repeated not only through mathematics but throughout the Montessori curriculum and sees the child exploring numbers to an increasingly higher level as well as number patterns and awareness of how numbers can be combined to create new numbers.
The outdoor environment is used to support all areas of the curriculum as well as provide the children with gross motor activity such as climbing, ball games, engaging with obstacle courses, riding trikes, digging, gardening and construction.
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