Curriculum

When a three-year-old begins his journey in Casa, the child will receive Practical Life exercises which will capture his interest until he finishes. The young child is able to perform the same activities the young child has seen adults do, including buttoning, washing, doing the dishes, polishing and arranging flowers.

A three-year-old is, of course, more interested in the scrubbing motion of wiping a table than he is in getting the table clean. The motions help the young child gain gross-motor control, hand-eye coordination and order, which enable the three-year-old to perform more precise tasks successfully.

We carefully analyze the young child’s movements to remove obstacles in ensuring their success. The Practical Life exercises are important in facilitating functional independence, focused attention, self-discipline, logical thinking, muscular coordination and control of will.

Sensorial materials are used to develop and refine the young child’s five senses. Their world consists of colour, size, dimension, shape, form, sound, touch, taste and smell. Through activities, the young child acquires clear and conscious information through sight, touch, smell, taste and hearing, where he is able to classify their environment. By classifying their world, children have taken the first step in organizing their intelligence.

The sensorial materials make abstract ideas into tangible materials. Hence, the child is given the knowledge not through word-of-mouth, but through his own experiences.

Language is vital to human development. The Montessori classroom is rich in spoken language opportunities, allowing the child to experience conversation, poetry and stories. Children explore language through interaction with their environment and culture on the first day at Casa and throughout Casa. Children effortlessly link the sounds to the alphabet while playing sound games and tracing sandpaper letters with their fingers. This paves the way for children to progress to writing and reading.

The Montessori language approach promotes Total Reading. Total Reading means a child is able to read and understand what he has read and appreciates the style of the author.

By manipulating the concrete materials, children learn and understand the concepts of mathematics through activities. They learn units, tens, thousands, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions through the concrete Montessori materials, such as rods, spindles, cards, beads, cubes and counters. These are some of the concrete tools used to symbolize abstract mathematical principles, preparing the children to a structured scope of abstract reasoning.

The Culture area of a Montessori classroom brings the outside world to the eyes of the young child. Beginning with a globe, the child explores the world as a whole, from different continents to the child’s country and city. Cultural activities focus on subjects such as history, geography, astronomy, art, music and movement.