The Early Childhood classroom offers your child 5 areas of study: Practical Life, Sensorial, Math, Language, and Cultural Studies. What are the lessons in these areas?

Practical Life
Children learn by observing and imitating their parents’ every move. They have interest in cooking, setting the table, laundry, cleaning, and caring for plants. Whenever they can’t figure out how to do something, if you show them how to use the tool, they teach themselves by repeating and making mistakes to finally master it. These experiences of learning and achievement lay the foundation of the child’s character that leads to well-balanced development of body and mind as well as the basis for more academic work later in his or her life.

Sensorial
The period of 3 to 6 years old is an important period for cognitive development, which involves observing materials, sorting, comparing, and organizing. Montessori has developed sensorial learning materials that are design to enhance the child’s understanding of shapes, colors, textures, sounds, tastes and smells. Through repeatedly experiencing the process of challenging and resolving problems, it enables the child to develop the capacity to be active-minded, to sustain concentration over long periods of time, and to exercise sharp powers of observation.

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
Language materials are designed to support children’s developing vocabulary, and to enable exploration of both written and spoken language. Working with the Tactile Letters enables children to recognize the characters we use to represent sounds, and they then learn to associate sounds with characters.
After first learning to compose their own written work, children go on to learn how to read the work of others.

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.

Children learn a great deal simply by observing.
What are the benefits of “mixed-age classroom”?

For younger children, watching older children do their work not only provides a model for how to proceed, it motivates young students to practice and achieve mastery over their tasks. They look forward to the day that they can do that kind of work too, thinking to himself, “If they can do that, someday I will as well!”

Older students have the chance to become mentors to their younger classmates, while learning and practicing important leadership skills. Older students can learn the joy of teaching their younger peers.
By helping younger students, older students further learn their work. And they learn the foundations and pleasures of taking responsibility and being appreciated.

It’s worth noting that having a three-year cycle within a classroom is a more stable student and teacher experience. Students get deeply comfortable in a learning environment that fosters their long-term growth, and teachers have a chance to really get to know students over an extended period.