The Montessori Curriculum

There are six main areas in a Montessori preschool: practical life, sensorial, language, math, music, and cultural.

• Activities in the practical life area include learning to do up zippers, snaps, and bows, beading, pouring water from jugs into glasses, cutting, sweeping, hand washing, and washing dishes.
• Activities in the sensorial area include matching colours, differentiating textures, sounds, and smells, sorting similar objects while blindfolded, and grading shapes (e.g. a set of circles) from the smallest to the largest.
• The language area prepares children for reading and writing as well as helps them to develop self-expression. Language activities include vocabulary cards, books, sound games to learn the phonetic sounds of the letters, letter tracing and writing, combining sounds to make words, and eventually reading.
• The math program is one of the most interesting aspects of a Montessori program. It is a very concrete program that makes use of beads, squares, cubes, colours, and symbols to teach children the numbers up to 10 000 as well as basic mathematical operations in a very simple and clear progression.
• Singing and listening to music are every day activities in a Montessori program. The program also uses a set of 10 bells that correspond to the scale from middle to high C on a piano. The children strike them, sing with them, match them, grade them, and create songs with them. It is a very joyful part of the program.
• Finally, the cultural program includes geography and the study of music and art from other cultures. The curriculum goes far beyond what one would find in a typical preschool.