Mamalina's Montessori Preschool and Childcare Centre Inc.

Prepared Environment

Our areas of learning in the classroom:

1. Exercises in Practical Life

The practical life area is one of four general areas in the classroom environment. Activities here build on the child’s natural interest and help her/him develop good work habits, concentration, eye-hand coordination and lengthened attention span and control of her/his body. The child learns to work independently and achieve success in later work that is more academic in nature. These activities form the foundation. These include a wide variety of materials dealing with developing coordination of movements, leading to self-reliance and introducing the child to the order and sequence of actions involved in the completion of certain activities. These exercises also cultivate concentration of mind, eye-hand coordination, muscular control and give the child a sense of joy at having achieved something. These exercises do fall into the following categories:

1. Care of person
2. Care of Environment – Indoors
3. Care of Environment – Outdoors
4. Elementary Movements
5. Exercises of Grace and Courtesy

2. Exercises for the Sensorial Development of the Child

Montessori sensorial materials are designed to make judgments; to compare and discriminate on the basis of size, shape, weight, texture and colour; to store up impressions on her/his “muscular memory” and to develop the use of certain muscles and motions. These materials are self-correcting hands-on materials that aid your child in her/his developing powers of vision, learning, touch and smell. These materials engage the hand and mind to create lasting learning experiences for your child. These materials become indirect preparations for later academic skills. These involve the use of apparatus for training the different senses:

1. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of DIMENSION.
2. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of COLOUR.
3. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of FORM & SHAPE.
4. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of TEXTURE.
5. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of WEIGHT.
6. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of TEMPERATURE.
7. Sensorial apparatus for discrimination of FORM, TEXTURE and DIMENSIONS with blindfolded eyes.

3. Exercises for the Development of Spoken and Written Language:

In the language area the hand is prepared for drawing and writing. The child also learns how to match the individual letters of the alphabet with their sound thus reinforcing her/his visual recognition of the letters. The child then sounds out and constructs the names of simple objects with the letters. These involve the use of Classified Cards, the Moveable Alphabet, apparatus designed to introduce the letters of the alphabet and their sound; the functions of words shown through various “games” as well as many Pre-Reading “games” such as the ‘I Spy’ game, News Period, Questions game, Poems and Nursery Rhymes, Songs, Stories and the Library Corner. Specially prepared concrete mathematical apparatus with which the child works and absorbs the impressions and abstracts the mathematical ideas and concepts which nobody can abstract for him. Related to the use of each apparatus are several games that are played with the purpose of reinforcing the concepts shown in each exercise.

4. Mathematics:

In the math area the child uses materials that enable her/his to get physical sense of quantity and then associate this with the corresponding numeric symbols. Concrete materials have been designed to represent all types of quantities. If a child has access to mathematical equipment in her/his early years she/he can easily and joyfully assimilate many facts and skills of arithmetic. The more they use these materials the more they gradually consolidate in themselves the mathematical concepts and process. The road taken by children is math from concrete to abstract amazes teachers. There are many treasures to discover in the Montessori prepared environment.

Our aim is to walk with the children on a path of trust, helping them understand how to live their lives, how to develop their talents, how to share their live and how to do what’s right.

In the Montessori classroom, each child creates her/his own cycle of activity based on individual interest. This cycle of self-directed activity lengths the Child’s attention span; our classroom, a caringly prepared well equipped environment, is a vibrant and dynamic learning environment where structure is created by each child selecting her/his activity, doing it and returning it to the shelf. An environment has been created where children enjoy working with grace and dignity. Lessons in grace and courtesy help the children with their social skills so important for them to adapt to the society they live in.

Children have shown us when given a prepared environment, a knowledgeable adult and an uninterrupted work cycle the natural state of the child is to a happy, considerate and contented person. The child’s self-construction is aided by what Montessorians call the “inner teacher” or the child’s unconscious urge to connect to certain activities. The child’s interest and attention are the outward manifestation of this.