Montessori Of Loyola Curriculum

Philosophy

Our aim is not merely to make children understand, and still less to force them to memorize, but so to touch their imaginations as to enthuse them to their innermost core.

-- Maria Montessori

The curriculum is divided into five main areas.

Practical Life – These exercises are designed to prepare the child for real life experiences. These activities focus on three areas: care of the self, care of the environment, and grace and courtesy. While these exercises appear completely non-academic, they develop fine motor skills and an ability to control movement, a sense of order and familiarity with the work cycle, independence and self-esteem, and most of all, concentration. They are the foundation activities for later academic exercises that require concentration and longer work cycles.

Sensorial Arts – These exercises involve specially-designed materials that were created to help develop the child’s perceptual abilities. The exercises aim to isolate qualities of materials, and to help the child refine and organize those perceptual impressions. Sensorial training is the foundation for later intellectual work.

Sensorial materials cultivate the different senses. Visual materials include those that help isolate qualities of color, shape and sizes, as well as more advanced geometry-based materials. Other materials are designed to develop other senses, such as: touch (smooth and rough, hot and cold, heavy and light); hearing (loud and soft, high and low); smell (spices, herbs, flower scents); and taste (sweet, sour, salty, bitter).

Language – One of the most powerful ways of entering the world of reading is through a well-organized Montessori program. Literacy begins with exposure to an environment that encourages speaking, sharing and listening to stories. Opportunities for oral expression and vocabulary acquisition are provided.

Exercises in visual and auditory perception are introduced. Once the foundation has been prepared, core Montessori language materials are used to set the stage for reading. Children are introduced to sounds using the Montessori sandpaper letters and beautiful miniature objects in alphabet buckets. Word building is begun with the use of the Movable Alphabet.

As children progress in their ability to sound out and build words, a complete set of well-designed Reading materials is available at Montessori of Loyola.

Miniature objects and a wide array of colorful picture-word cards, word puzzles, word booklets, picture work pages, phonetic sentence cards and stories nurture the progression of children from the exciting beginning stages of reading to higher levels of reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension.

Children who are capable of more advance work – and there are many in each batch in our school-- can progress to levels higher than expected for their age because of the breadth of materials available.

The school has language materials imported from the United States. It also has internally developed a comprehensive set of reading materials for different levels, some of which, we are proud to say, are now being sold to other Montessori schools throughout the country and abroad.

The children learn to love reading -- to themselves and to each other. Eventually, they extend their reading in a natural fashion to the different learning areas in the classroom and their homes.

Math – The Montessori approach enables children to understand basic math concepts through the concrete exploration and manipulation of beautiful math materials. This serves as the foundation for the understanding of abstract concepts. The early math program introduces the quantity and symbols of 1 to 10, the teen and ten numbers, the sequencing of numbers through the number board, and the decimal system as a whole.

The program also familiarizes the children with the basic math operations (i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication) by first inviting them to perform operations with physical materials – golden beads, colorful square stamps, bead frames – that gradually become more challenging. They are later guided on how to perform operations in written form. The same hands-on approach is used in teaching such topics as skip-counting and fractions.

Cultural Arts – Even difficult concepts can be eagerly absorbed by young children if they are presented in concrete form using manipulative materials. Cultural studies present experiences in the areas of Geography, History, General Science and Biology to encourage in the child a natural familiarity with the world around him.

Geography – The concept of the world is brought home to children through enjoyable and well-designed activities. The Montessori approach involves using specially-created materials such as pans with hardened materials and blue tinted water to represent land forms, different types of globes and wooden puzzle maps of the world and different continents. Children are also introduced to the world around them --continents and countries through flags, songs, plant, animals, places and artifacts during October, the United Nations month.

History -- Children are introduced to the concept of time through hour glasses, a set of specially-designed manipulative wooden clocks, days of the week and the months of the year wooden boards, and activities where they create their own clocks and calendars. Children develop a sense of their personal history by plotting their own and their family’s yearly milestones through pictures.

Biology – The school has a comprehensive set of biology materials to introduce the child to the natural world. The Montessori approach emphasizes the importance of developing in each child a reverence for living things and a connection to nature. Children, through cards and specimens, are introduced to the concepts of living and non-living things, plants and animals, and vertebrates and invertebrates. Beautifully-painted wooden puzzles introduce parts of the tree, flower, leaf and fruit, as well as that of the horse, bird, fish, frog and other animals. Different animals groups, life cycles of butterflies and frogs, dinosaurs are introduced using attractive miniature animals, skeletons and cards.

General Science – Children learn about science through simple experiments such as sink and float exercises, magnetic and non-magnetic object sorting and others. Science tools such as the magnifying glass and activities such as planting seeds are also introduced.

Enrichment -- The school also offers an enriched curriculum. Art, music and movement, show and tell, child and faith stories, exposure to children’s literature also form part of the program.

The school also organizes field trips and has special activities during Linggo ng Wika, United Nations Day, and the year-end Recognition Day.