Our Primary classroom community offers a rich variety of opportunities for children to experience freedom within a secure, attractively structured, and welcoming environment. Maria Montessori recognized the spontaneous interest that arises within each child at this age. It is through the child’s interest and active engagement that the love of learning arises. Our Montessori guides/teachers are AMI trained in “Primary Montessori” (3-6 years), they observe and record each child’s individual progress, knowing when to allow a child to work with genuine interest, or when to introduce a new challenge or point of interest.
The Primary environment offers an integrated and developmentally based approach to educating the whole child:
Promotes: Independence, body control, coordination of movement, concentration, sense of order, healthy work habits, character development, grace and courtesy through activities such as gardening, cooking, self care, care of the environment including plants and animals, to name a few.
Promotes: Refinement of senses (size, dimension, form, color, texture, temperature, weight, sound, taste, scent), constructing relationships based on sensory information and perception, gross and fine motor development, language skills, promotes analytical and logical thinking, visual and auditory discrimination, developing hand-eye coordination, increased attention span, geography, geometry, biology, botany, zoology, to name a few.
Promotes: Vocabulary development, classification, writing, reading, oral language skills, grammar, self-expression, to name a few.
Montessori manipulatives for introducing numbers, shapes, mathematical operations, and the decimal system. It promotes counting, sorting, patterning, matching, to name a few.
Promotes: finding patterns in nature, knowledge of human evolution (timelines and civilizations), knowledge of world history, knowledge of astronomy, understanding the truth in the natural world, learning their place in human culture, gaining appreciation for all living things, to name a few.
Sometimes called “the universal language”, music adds a sensory dimension to life like nothing else. Children have an innate capacity to appreciate music of all types, and an uninhibited inclination to move, dance, and make music. Music provides plenty of opportunities to perfect children’s movements and refine coordination. Music is fostered in the Montessori environment daily by the teachers in the classroom in the form of songs, finger plays, music appreciation, and through specialized weekly lessons with our music specialist.
Dr. Maria Montessori observed that movement enhances learning. She wrote: “One of the most important practical aspects of our method has been to make the training of the muscles enter into the very life of the children so that it is intimately connected with their daily activities.”
The Prepared Environment allows children to move freely around the classroom. They do not have an assigned seat, nor are they expected to ask permission to move about. A student from a Montessori school said it best: “I like school because you can walk around the classroom and not sit in desks all day. You make your own snack…We can choose our own work.”
Montessori based her method of education on the premise that learning is linked to movement. Children discover themselves and the larger world by moving about. Children have multiple opportunities throughout the day to engage in various activities involving movement, and also through specialized weekly lessons with out movement specialist.
Both music and movement can provide children with a way to express their own unique spirits.
Art — Promotes: a balance between skill instruction and free exploration, natural desire for self-expression, non-verbal method of expressing opinions (perceptions, feeling, and history), connections between art and the child’s daily lives (in areas such as math, nature, cooking, and sports), a way to express their own unique spirits, children begin to see themselves as members of the fabric of the world, a way to humanize another culture and extend the process of peace. All this creative expression is fostered via individual and group projects, both in class with our Montessori guide/teacher, and through specialized weekly lessons with our art specialist.
Foreign Languages (French and Mandarin ) — These foreign languages are introduced to the children through specialized language instruction designed weekly by our in-house staff and external instructors who are experts in the area.
Each Primary class has a Montessori Guide/head teacher, 1 assistant teacher, and 1 outdoor assistant with a total of 20-25 children in each class.
A Primary Day at OMS – Daily Schedule
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7:30 A.M. to 8:30 A.M.
Extended morning care
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8:30 A.M.
Regular school drop-off. Children arrive and are guided to their classroom
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8:30 A.M. to 11:30 A.M.
3-hour uninterrupted work period. During this time children in the primary program are actively engaged in Montessori work, both indoors and outdoors
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11:30 A.M. to 12 P.M.
Primary children transition to lunch
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12 P.M.
Half-Day (before lunch) program children are picked up
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12 P.M. to 12:45 P.M.
Primary children enjoy lunch in their respective classroom as a community
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12:45 P.M. to 1 P.M.
Primary children lunch clean-up
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1 P.M. to 1:30 P.M.
Primary children outside “free” play
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1:30P.M.
Half-Day (after lunch) program primary children are picked up
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1:45 P.M. – 3:15 P.M.
Primary children nap
The children who do not nap, go back to their classrooms and engage in a 2- hour uninterrupted afternoon work period.
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3:30 P.M.
Full-Day program children are picked up
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3:30 P.M. to 5:30 P.M.
‘All-Day’ Montessori program begins. Children enrolled in the ‘All-Day’ Montessori program enjoy snack, are engaged in classroom work, outdoor work, or enrichment programs
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5:30 P.M
All-day children are picked up
Please Note :
1. There maybe slight variations to this schedule.
2. Morning snack is provided to all children from 8:30 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. as ‘open-snack’ (children will be guided to help themselves).
3. Afternoon snack from 3:45 P.M. to 4:45 P.M. is provided to children enrolled in the All-Day Montessori program, as ‘open-snack’ (children will be guided to help themselves).
4. All of our snacks are 80% – 100% organic.