Children’s House: Early Childhood Program Description
Ages three to six years
Our Children’s House program is dedicated to providing individualized, progressive, and developmentally appropriate curricula that are designed to enhance each child’s natural love of learning, independence, and self-discipline. Our approach focuses on the whole child and is designed to promote and optimize intellectual, emotional, physical, and social development.
This program is based on the philosophy of Dr. Maria Montessori in addition to current research on child development and educational methodologies. Central to the Montessori philosophy is the notion that young children possess an innate drive to explore and learn about their world through systematically and purposefully investigating their environment.
Dr. Montessori observed that children of this age best acquire knowledge through physically interacting with objects. Consequently, she developed an assortment of unique and precisely-designed materials. These materials are designed to convey particular universal concepts related to relevant learning objectives for this age child. Our classrooms are well-equipped with these traditional Montessori manipulatives in addition to many teacher-produced supplemental materials.
Whereas the children are given the freedom to choose their work and to pursue their interests in as much depth as they need, they are also carefully guided to ensure that they are receiving a balanced exposure to all areas of the curriculum. Each child progresses through a traditional three-part curriculum consisting of practical life, sensorial, and academic or intellectual education, which includes mathematics, language, science, and cultural studies such as art, geography, and music.
In addition to the standard curriculum, we also offer special elective classes in sign language, physical activity, music, and Spanish. Because of the inherent advantage of learning a foreign language at this age, each of our Early Childhood classrooms receives two Spanish classes each week from a native Spanish speaker in addition to supplemental lessons throughout the week.