The teacher, child, and environment create a learning triangle. The classroom is prepared by our teachers to encourage independence, freedom within limits, and a sense of order. The child, through individual choice, makes use of what the environment offers to develop him/herself, interacting with the teacher when support and/or guidance is needed. Our Toddler program offers a curriculum that emerges from each child’s unique skills and interests. Based on daily observations, teachers introduce new materials and activities that pique curiosity and stimulate learning. Learning objectives for your child at this age include developing skills, such as language, concentration, problem solving, visual discrimination, and physical coordination.
The routines of everyday living are the foundation of our Montessori Toddler program. Activities promote independence, order, coordination, and concentration, as well as support social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. These learning activities include:
- Self-care: washing, dressing, toileting, and eating, according to each child’s individual capacity
- Care of the environment: cleaning, food preparation and food service; plant care and animal care
- Large-motor activities (indoors and out): walking, climbing, running, jumping, balancing, climbing steps, and more
- Fine-motor skills: reaching, grasping, picking up objects, transferring objects, using tools and utensils, doing art work
- Language: naming objects, describing actions and intentions, discussing pictures, conversation, music, and singing
- Social skills: developing manners through interactions with peers, teachers, and adult-led small group games.
After participating in a demonstration of a material from a teacher, your child is free to choose activities and to work on their own or with a partner for as long as they wish. Since there is usually only one of each material, your child will develop patience and self-control as she waits for a material to become available.
The Children’s House curriculum follows a 3-year sequence. Our teachers guide your child through learning at his/her own pace. Your child’s individualized learning plan may exceed the concepts he/
she would be taught in a classroom environment in which all children learn the same concept at the same time.
As children move forward, they develop the ability to concentrate and make decisions, along with developing self-control, courtesy, and a sense of community responsibility.
At GMS, academic growth is seen as just one part of a child’s healthy development. The method nurtures their social, emotional, and physical growth, ensuring that they are, as Dr. Maria Montessori put it, “treading always in the paths of joy and love.”
The Curriculum
The Children’s House curriculum offers your child 5 areas of study: Practical Life, Sensorial, Math, Language, and Cultural Studies.
Practical Life. Children learn daily-life skills, such as how to get dressed, prepare snacks, set the table, and care for plants and animals. They also learn appropriate social interactions, such as saying “please” and “thank-you”, being kind and helpful, listening without interrupting, and resolving conflicts peacefully. In addition to teaching specific skills, Practical Life activities promote independence, a sense of order and fine- and gross-motor coordination.
Sensorial. Children refine skills in perceiving the world through their different senses and learn how to describe and name their experiences—for example, rough and smooth, perceived through touch. Sensorial learning helps children classify their surroundings and create order. It lays the foundation for learning by developing the ability to classify, sort, and discriminate—skills necessary in math, geometry, and language.
Math. Through hands-on activities, children learn to identify numerals and match them to their quantity, understand place-value and the base-10 system, and practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They also explore patterns in the numbering system. With an exploratory approach, children do more than just memorize math facts; they gain a firm understanding of the meaning behind them.
Language. Activities throughout the Children’s House classroom teach language, help children acquire vocabulary, and develop skills needed for writing and reading. The ability to write, a precursor to reading, is taught first. Using hands-on materials, children learn letter sounds, how to combine sounds to make words, how to build sentences, and how to use a pencil. Once these skills are acquired, children spontaneously learn to read.
Cultural Studies. A wide range of subjects, including history, geography, science, art, and music, are integrated in lessons in the cultural area of the curriculum. Children learn about their own community and the world around them. Discovering similarities and differences among people and places helps them develop an understanding and appreciation of the diversity of our world, and a respect for all living things.
Technology. GMS believes that computers and other technology can be very valuable learning tools. However, based on current child development and brain research, we feel that younger children receive more benefit from the use of hands-on learning. For this reason, we do not make use of computers in our Children’s House classrooms.
KINDERGARTEN – The Last Year of Children’s House
During the first 2 years in our Children’s House classroom, our children look forward to their turn to be a leader. In their third year—known as Kindergarten—children get their turn and take pride in being the oldest. They serve as role models for younger students; they demonstrate leadership and citizenship skills. They reinforce and consolidate their own learning by teaching concepts they have already mastered to their peers. In their Kindergarten year, they express confidence, develop self-esteem and self-sufficiency, and show responsibility.
Kindergarten children are introduced to progressively more advanced Montessori materials and sophisticated, fascinating lessons. And they experience an important period in which their previous learning from working with concrete Montessori materials begins to become permanent knowledge. Montessori Kindergarten students see and feel their personal growth as they watch others learn in- formation they have mastered themselves. Kindergarten is the culmination of the Children’s House program. Children exhibit the independence, critical thinking, collaboration, and leadership that they have been practicing during their previous years in the Children’s House classroom, exercising them independently as they prepare to transition into our Elementary program. This year is crucial to your child’s completion of the Children’s House program.
The individually paced curriculum of Lower and Upper Elementary challenges children academically as it safeguards their well-being and sense of self. Engaging as contributing members of a respectful community, they learn to question, think critically, and take responsibility for their own learning—skills that will support them in later education and in life.
As at all Montessori levels, the Elementary program is based on the belief that children learn best through movement and work with their hands. It provides cognitive, social, and emotional support to help them reach their full potential. This includes addressing their needs as they enter a new period of development characterized by:
A transition from concrete to abstract thinking
Growing interest in socialization
Thinking and memory that is enhanced by creativity and imagination
An interest in fairness, social justice, and compassion
The Elementary Classroom
In our Montessori Elementary classrooms, students work individually and in small groups, at tables or on rugs on the floor. Our elementary teachers guide children through a rigorous curriculum individually tailored to each child’s own interests, needs, and abilities. We monitor progress against established benchmarks and expectations for student learning, including academic preparedness, independence, confidence, autonomy, intrinsic motivation, social responsibility, and global citizenship.
Our Curriculum
Cosmic education is an overall Montessori approach to education that involves helping children develop an awareness that everything in the universe is connected and interdependent, that it forms a harmonious whole, and that they themselves are part of and contribute to that whole. Students at the second plane of development (6-12 years old) are particularly ready for cosmic education. They are developing a deeper appreciation of the world around them and the maturity to participate with greater responsibility:
needing and seeking wider social connections
increasingly capable of abstract thought
developing their own sense of morals (fairness, right and wrong) acquiring a thoughtfulness, a greater sense of the enduring spiritual questions (who am I? why am I here?) and of their places in the world
Our Montessori Elementary curriculum contains the following areas of learning:
Practical Life. Within the Elementary program, the Practical Life curriculum expands from the foundation laid in Children’s House. Practical Life at the Elementary level shifts from a focus on self-care and fine motor skills, to skills that help children connect with their interests in the outside world, organize their time, and take part in their community. While self-care and appropriate social interactions continue to be supported, lessons that teach responsibility are the focus. Use of tools, such as work plans, to support organization and time management skills, are incorporated into the daily routine.
Math/Geometry. The ideas of number concepts, place value, numerals, and related quantities are reinforced and expanded upon within the Elementary program. Newfound purposes for familiar math materials provide children with the means to consider number concepts, mathematical operations, geometric formulas and more complex functions, helping to expand advanced mathematical knowledge and understanding.
Language. Reading and writing are integral to all subjects in Montessori Elementary, as children express their interests and satisfy their curiosity. Students master conventions with thorough studies of grammar, spelling, and mechanics. They produce final copies with careful penmanship and keyboarding. They read, analyze, think critically, and compare and contrast literature to support personal opinion and perspective. Using these reading and writing skills, they present ideas through formal and informal presentations.
Cultural Studies. Cultural studies are interdisciplinary and integrate zoology, botany, anthropology, geography, geology, physical and life sciences, and anthropology. Through these lessons, children explore the interconnectedness of all living things. Additionally, in-depth studies of history, physical and political world geography, civics, economics, peace and justice, the arts, world language, and physical education are introduced.
Science and Social Studies. Interdisciplinary and integrated studies of geology, geography, physical and life sciences, anthropology, and history are built around “Great Lessons,” a series of dramatic stories that explore the origins of the universe, our planet, and the continuous development of human advancement. The laws of physics and chemistry reveal the interdependency of all living things. Beginning with a study of civilization, students explore the contributions of history and what it means to be a responsible citizen and to seek ways to make the world a better, more peaceful place.
Technology. At the Elementary levels, we are very committed to integrating technology into all learning areas. Computers and the internet are used as a practical resource for research and creative writing. We would like our students to see computers and technology as the wonderful tools they are, rather than simply a toy on which to play games. For this reason, we are very careful about the types of software that we introduce. Our goal for the elementary years is for children to learn to safely use computers for age-appropriate research, to learn typing skills and to learn how to create a beautiful typed report.
Elementary Montessori Materials
Our Elementary students don’t just memorize facts and figures. They also learn the “how’s,” “when’s,” and “why’s,” ensuring that learning takes place on a deep and fundamental level. Specially designed learning materials that use real objects and actions to translate abstract ideas into concrete form support them in this learning.
Our teachers introduce materials to students according to their level of development and readiness. Students then work with the materials to make exciting discoveries—such as why, when dividing fractions, we invert and multiply. Inherent in the use of Montessori materials is the understanding of the power of discovering answers on one’s own.
Natural lighting, soft colors, and uncluttered spaces set the stage for activity that is focused and calm. Learning materials are arranged on accessible shelves according to curricular area, fostering independence as students go about their work. Everything is where it is supposed to be, conveying a sense of harmony and order that both comforts and inspires.
Children who are new to Montessori quickly feel at home with the inspired teaching that appeals to their deepest interests, and with the distinctive, hands-on learning materials that teachers introduce sequentially according to the students’ developmental needs.
For students who have completed Montessori Toddler and Children’s House, the environment offers continuity with familiar routines and learning materials that offer new lessons and opportunities for more complex exploration and discovery. Expectations are both exquisitely clear and engagingly open-ended.
Homework
Montessori schools traditionally do not assign homework until the Upper Elementary grades, and even then, it rarely looks like the homework many parents remember from their own school years.
Montessori teachers get the job done in a normal school day by inspiring a sense of interest, curiosity, and enthusiasm among their students. Our goal in Montessori is to inspire in children a sense of purpose in their lives, a sense of their own individual minds.
After school, children should have time to follow their own interests and play with family and friends. Homework can easily become a power struggle between children and adults. And the sad thing is that there is no need if schools instill a love of learning, rather than a sense of obligation and fear.
Whenever children voluntarily decide to learn something, they tend to engage in their work with a passion and attention that few students will ever invest in tasks that have been assigned. Our goal is to inspire joyful thinking not compliance.
Reading Every Day: We ask children to read daily. We suggest that younger children and parents set aside time for reading whatever they find interesting. Older students will be asked to read books, both fiction and non-fiction, newspapers, essays, and thoughtful magazines on a daily basis.
Normally, our teachers will send home a packet of suggested projects that children might want to work on at home. These activities are meant as an experience at home, not always as a continuation of the work that goes on in school. Sometimes, students will have work that requires speaking with a parent, friend, or grandparent and will need to be done at home, and sometimes students will choose to do some work at home.
“Home” work at all elementary ages should be practical day-to-day work that keeps a family functioning at home.
Our Middle School program offers rigorous academic studies with purposeful work, preparing teenagers to become contributing adult citizens who are self-confident and possess skills needed to thrive in society.
The new developmental stage of adolescence involves different educational needs than those of the Elementary classes. Middle School works with the developmental essence of adolescents to help them live full, vital lives. The approach responds to the unique developmental changes of this stage, which include:
Physical: Adolescents experience a period of tremendous physical and neurological growth.
Emotional: They experience self-awareness and self-criticism, emotional ups and downs, and egocentrism. They feel an increased desire for autonomy, along with a susceptibility to peer pressure. It is a time characterized by a tendency toward courage and creativity.
Social: Adolescents seek solidarity with peers and crave greater independence from adults as they establish their own identity. They are concerned with human welfare and dignity, and may exhibit novelty-seeking and risk-taking behaviors as a response to a tendency to express courage and creativity.
Cognitive: Adolescents are critical thinkers who persistently ask “why.” They are creative and have the ability to reason and debate.
Our community allows opportunities for collaborative work and student leadership through:
Regularly scheduled student-led community meetings
Activities, such as in inquiry-based problem solving and applied scientific method, that encourage diversity of perspectives, thoughts, and learning styles
Compassionate, respectful relationships and an appreciation of differences
Uninterrupted Work Periods
The daily schedule allows for uninterrupted work periods of 2 hours or more in core curricular subjects—math, language arts, history or humanities, sciences, additional world languages, and creative arts. Uninterrupted work periods honor student choice, foster concentration, and support student engagement, while allowing for deep inquiry and a chance to work in collaborative project teams.
Spiral Curriculum
A “spiral curriculum” exposes students to many interrelated topics, repeatedly over time, resulting in broad and deep knowledge. Students are academically challenged and given reasonable opportunities for pacing work to meet their needs, while also learning responsibility, meeting deadlines, and mastering skills and concepts with the support and guidance of master teachers.
Students complete complex projects—a culmination of learning—that include research and presentation and illustrate their mastery of concepts. Through all of their studies, tools (such as checklists, rubrics, work plans, and study guides) promote time management, organization, and decision-making.
Additional components of our Middle School curriculum include:
Micro-economic experiences such as developing and running a business to promote a genuine understanding of currency.
Responsible and ethical use of technology, with the majority of the school day spent in learning activities and practices that require peer-to-peer and student-teacher interaction.
Technology
Middle School students continue the work of elementary and expand. Ultimately, our goal is for students to learn how to prepare effective multimedia presentations. Responsible use of technology is taught and practiced. Typically, it is the students who drive us forward in the use of technology.
Middle School Homework Policy
It is important for the adolescent to spend time away from school to deepen social and familial relationships, therefore the middle school curriculum does not require regular homework. The only time homework should be required is as a logical consequence to the student falling behind on class work. We use a weekly assessment as a tool to communicate between the guide, student and parent that outlines any class work that needs completion at home.
Middle School Internships
Each student in the middle school participates in a one-week internship each year. The students spend several weeks developing a resume and cover letter to send to businesses in preparation for the internship week. Seventh- and eighth-year students intern in classrooms and with businesses in our community in order to build life skills and experience as a member of the business community. These internships serve as an important opportunity to explore social and economic in dependence that is central to adolescent development.
Supporting Adolescent Well-Being
At Ghent Montessori, we respect the need for adolescents to have school/life balance, to get adequate sleep, and to maintain their love of learning. For these reasons, Montessori Secondary programs typically do not engage in “high stakes” testing and keep homework to a manageable amount.
Dr. Maria Montessori, the founder of the education system that bears her name, believed in giving adolescents the opportunity to experience self-worth through real and important work—a process she called valorization. Our curriculum provides the opportunity for adolescents to realize they are strong, worthy, and capable of effort.
Afternoon Classes
Physical Education. P.E. is offered to Kindergarten children through Middle School. The instructor is also responsible for creating special activities for children in our Full Day programs.
Art. Art enrichment activities are offered to Kindergarten children through Middle School. In April or May of each year, an all-school Art Show highlights students’ work.
Spanish. Spanish is offered to all Kindergarten children through Middle School.
Music. Singing and movement are part of the curriculum in every classroom. In addition to the classroom, Kindergarten children through Middle School also have a music class with a trained music teacher. Private violin, piano and cello classes are available before and after school. Upper Elementary and Middle School attend Virginia Opera performances four times a year, across the street at the Harrison Opera House. Experiencing an authentic theater experience is vital to our program. Once a year, Kindergarten children perform in a musical at a local theater. Music Night, highlighting the strings and choral groups is also held once a year in the fall.
After School Programs
Each year, we contract with specialists to offer various enrichment activities. These activities are scheduled and are offered on an optional basis after regular school hours. In the past, these programs have included music, soccer, ballet, art, taekwondo, computers, chess club and gymnastics. We welcome open suggestions of additional classes to offer and hope you will let us know about what things your children are interested in learning.