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About Our Curriculum

ACECQA and NQF

The National Quality Framework (NQF) for Early Childhood Education and Care replaces the existing state and territory licensing and national quality assurance processes and commenced Jan 2012.

ACECQA and NQF guidelines are based on evidence that the early years of a child’s life are very important for their present and future health, development and well-being, hence, a real focus on outcomes for children. Thus, all education and care services must provide a programme based on an approved learning framework (ELYF), which considers the developmental needs, interests and experiences of each child and takes into account the individual differences of each child.

Our Montessori Curriculum

Our Montessori Preschool’s programming is based on the Montessori curriculum, principals and practice. It is very well linked to and meets all the principles, practices and learning outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). They are both approved learning frameworks, yet ours scaffolds on top of EYLF.

Our curriculum includes a prepared environment where children are free to explore, discover, and select their own materials for work independently.

Our mixed age range in the preschool rooms correspond with logical stages of child development. As children stay in the one class for three years, these groups become stable and much like a family unit.

Our classrooms are organised in curriculum areas including language, mathematics, practical life, sensory awareness, geography, history, science, art, music and movement. A library is also included. Each area is defined by shelving units with a variety of material on display ready for use by the child.

Each piece of material is displayed in sequence, following order of how they are introduced in the curriculum. Each piece of material has a specific place on the shelves. Materials are arranged in sequence from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract. The wide use of materials allow the child to explore and use their senses to learn.

When children play they are engaged in the skills of negotiation, problem solving, critical thinking and turn taking as they interact in our supportive and nurturing Montessori Environment.

We provide our children with an order and stability, a predictable environment. This allows our children to develop a sense of wellbeing and belonging.

Our Learning Environment

“a place of beauty ,simplicity and order “ …….“A place where they feel secure to trust their own powers” – Maria Montessori

A Montessori learning environment is prepared to enable the young child to learn through their own activity. The Montessori prepared environment has 3 equally critical components: the children; the trained adult and the environment (physical surroundings including Montessori designed materials).

Montessori learning environments are prepared to be beautiful, ordered and to provide opportunities for children to engage in purposeful work under the guidance of a trained educator.

Our Montessori Preschool environment is characterised by:

The Physical Environment

It is the environment that engages, inspires and invites each child. From the moment you step inside our classrooms you will notice it is calm, orderly and visually attractive, filled with materials and activities that are real life, purposeful and engaging. Activities are displayed on open shelving accessible to the children. Our activities are specifically chosen and matched to the developmental stage of the children in our environment. Our physical environment includes both indoor and outdoor space. The two spaces complement each other and are available at the same time.

Social Environment

We offer multi-age groupings for children, very similar to family life, where siblings are not separated from each other based on age. Once allocated to a preschool room, children are together for 2-3 years enabling a sense of caring, social cohesion and responsibility for each other and their environment.

Time Environment

Our day is made up of large blocks of uninterrupted time both inside and outside. This enables our children to follow their interests without being hurried or interrupted and to develop concentration.

Emotional Environment

We provide our children with an order and stability, a predictable environment. This allows our children to develop a sense of wellbeing and belonging.

When children play they are engaged in the skills of negotiation, problem solving, critical thinking and turn taking as they interact in our supportive and nurturing Montessori Environment.

We provide our children with an order and stability, a predictable environment. This allows our children to develop a sense of wellbeing and belonging.

Montessori Materials for Development

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“The Child who has never learned to act alone, to direct his own actions, to govern her own will, grows into an adult who is easily led and must always lean upon others.” – Maria Montessori

The educational items found on our child sizes shelves are called “materials” rather than “toys.” Hence, our children ‘work with materials’ rather than ‘play with toys’ like in a mainstream long day care centre. This difference provides our children with a sense of worth much like that of an adult who discus’s what they have worked on in their day.

In our Montessori classrooms we arrange our materials on child sized open shelving units that allow the child to choose the material with which they would like to work. They are allowed to work with any piece of material for as long as they like, but must put the material back on the shelf when finished, ready for another child.

When working with material it can be done either on the table or on a small mat on the floor. Where floor mats are used this illustrates to other children the work boundary for the child and assists them to work with the material uninterrupted.

materials1There is only one piece of each material displayed on the shelving so a child must wait their turn to use a piece of material if another child is using it. Our materials are self-correcting negating the need for an adult to correct a child. In this way the child can solve their own problems independently, which builds self-confidence, allows for analytical thinking and the child feels a great sense of satisfaction in completing a task.

Practical Life

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“Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement, the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence”.  Maria Montessori

Practical life curriculum teaches children how to perform everyday living skills that will enhance their independence. Children learn how to pour and use different utensils, prepare and serve food, care for themselves and their environment. The practical life area provides a positive link between home and school. Our children use real, functional child sized tools to perform the same tasks they have seen adults do; pouring, sweeping, scrubbing and polishing.

practical1All activities in the Montessori Practical Life curriculum exercise finger muscles and develop fine motor skills. Practical life encompasses 4 main areas: care of person, care of environment, grace and courtesy and control of movement. The purpose of the Practical Life activities is to improve concentration, co-ordination, control, independence and order which lay the foundation for learning in all other areas.

Sensorial – meaning sense or senses

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The Montessori Sensorial curriculum promotes the development and refinement of the five senses. Children learn through their senses and all materials in a Montessori environment provide learning through touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing or hands-on manipulation.

From an early age children are developing a sense of order and they actively seek to sort, arrange and classify their many experiences. The young child learns to understand the world around him through his senses. Each of the materials isolates one defining quality and assists the child in grasping abstract concepts like weight, length, colour and shape through emphasis of that quality.

The classroom is full of activities that stimulate the senses. Some examples of sensorial learning activities are sorting objects, matching colours, matching same tastes or same smells.

“Nothing comes to the intellect that is not first in the senses” (Montessori, Secret of Childhood, p. 100)

Language

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Maria Montessori did not believe that reading, writing, spelling and language should be taught as separate entities. Pre-school children are immersed in the dynamics of their own language development and the Montessori approach provides a carefully thought-out program to facilitate this process. Oral language acquired since birth is further elaborated and refined through a variety of activities such as songs, games, poems, stories and classified language cards.

Indirect preparation for writing begins with the practical life exercises and sensorial training. Muscular movement and fine motor skills are developed along with the ability of the child to distinguish the sounds which make up language. With this spoken language background the Directress begins to present the alphabet symbols to the child. Not only can children hear and see sounds but they can feel them by tracing the sandpaper letters.

language2When a number of letters have been learned the movable alphabet is introduced. These cardboard or wooden letters enable the child to reproduce his or her own words, then phrases, sentences and finally stories.

Creativity is encouraged and the child grows in appreciation of the mystery and power of language. Other materials follow which present the intricacies of non-phonetic spelling and grammar. Because children know what they have written, they soon discover they can read back their stories.

Mathematics

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Learning mathematical concepts in a Montessori environment begins using concrete materials and progresses towards the abstract. They are developed from simple to complex. Math materials are beautifully designed and developmentally appropriate. Order, co-ordination, concentration and independence are experienced by the child using these materials.

The child’s mind has already been awakened to mathematical ideas through the sensorial experiences. The child has seen the distinctions of distance, dimension, graduation, identity, similarity and sequence and will now be introduced to the functions and operations of numbers. Geometry, algebra and arithmetic are connected in the Montessori method as they are in life.

For instance the golden bead material highlights the numerical, geometrical and dimensional relationships within the decimal system.

language2Through concrete material the child learns to add, subtract, multiply and divide and gradually comes to understand many abstract mathematical concepts with ease and joy.

Culture

cultural1“Our care of the child should be governed not by the desire to ‘make them learn things’ but by the endeavour always to keep burning within them the light which is called intelligence”

The cultural equipment exposes the child to the world through geography, botany and science materials like the puzzle maps, land and water forms, simple science experiments and the botany cabinet.

Children are also given the opportunity to experience and create in cultural areas such as art, craft, drama, music and dance.  These activities enable them to develop their imaginative responses and their creative self-expression.