At Chestnut Montessori School, our early childhood curriculum is designed and implemented to support the needs and abilities of the whole child in his/her physical, social, intellectual and spiritual development. The curriculum is introduced individually as a child demonstrates readiness.

While lessons are usually presented individually, some are given in small groupings to facilitate interest and social development. Daily circle gatherings promote oral language, self-confidence and leadership skills through songs, stories, poems, finger plays and other language activities.

Our integrated curriculum is sequential and our highly trained, credentialed teachers observe students at work to facilitate their understanding of each little person. Each activity has a direct purpose, designed to aid the child’s immediate development; and an indirect purpose which prepares the child for future academic work. Lessons of Grace and Courtesy which encourage character development and respectful relationships are woven throughout the curriculum. Throughout the school day students have access to all classroom learning materials and move readily from one activity to another.

Areas of Study

Practical Life:

The lessons of practical life engage the child in meaningful activity or “work.” These activities allow children to imitate adult activities while assisting fine motor development, eye-hand coordination, concentration and attention span, preparing students for academic work ahead.


Typical Practical Life lessons include scooping shells, folding clothes, pouring water, sorting colors and setting the table. We also present food preparation and baking, gardening, carpentry and art activities. Gross motor exercises are presented in both the indoor and outdoor learning environments!


Because the lessons of Practical Life form the foundation for all future learning, they are considered to be among the most important for young children.

Sensorial:

Our Sensorial materials are very appealing to students, as they are so beautiful and enjoyable to use. These didactic materials are designed to train and refine the student’s visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic memory. This refinement prepares the child’s hands and intellect for reading, writing, math and other academic pursuits. Sensorial materials help develop the student’s spacial development, eye-hand coordination, logical and diverse thinking and creativity. These mathematically-based materials also introduce the child to solid and plane figures including triangles, rectangles, polygons, and curved figures.

Mathematics

The Montessorial math materials truly demonstrate “the science behind the genius.”

Through the use of Sensorial and Pre-math activities, the child absorbs basic concepts of seriation, gradation, classification, patterning, one-to-one correspondence, graphing and estimation. With the Montessori math materials, children as young as three can begin the process of numeral identification, writing and enumeration. These materials provide Materialized Abstractions which lead to the child’s increasing understanding of relationships among numbers. The child is then introduced to the hierarchy of numbers. After working with Golden Beads and place value, students explore mathematical concepts of simple and dynamic addition, subtraction, multiplication and simple and long division. Kindergarteners are introduced to fraction equivalences and addition. Dr. Montessori believed that all infants are born with a mathematical mind and that exploration with these concrete materials supports the child’s understanding of abstract math concepts; memorization of facts follows this understanding. The solid mathematical foundation built during early childhood has a positive impact on his/her math skills throughout the elementary, high school and college years.

Language Arts

The language area of the classroom supports the development of the child’s oral and written language. Children from 3-6 years of age have a great affinity for new words and expressions and enjoy listening to stories, playing word games and reciting poetry. Small hands practice writing skills using colored pencils and metal insets, then letter formation with sandpaper letters. With finely-tuned auditory skills, the child learns initial, medial and ending sounds and begins to form words using the movable alphabet. One day he/she goes home and announces “I learned to read today.” Our reading program guides children from recognizing sounds to reading simple phonetic words with comprehension; sight words and non-phonetic words demonstrate the challenges and inconsistencies of the English language; grammar challenge the kindergartener. Students are enchanted by the magic of written and spoken language.

Natural Sciences

Earth Science: Botany, Zoology and Geography


Children are innately drawn to learning about the natural world around them, including plants, animals and people from around the globe. Our integrated cultural curriculum allows children to experience the beauty and diversity of people and nature in a hand-on and sensorial way. Students explore plants in their natural setting and learn about the parts of plants and corresponding precise nomenclature using puzzles, art, picture cards and booklets. They then create their own art and booklets to further reinforce the richness of their experiences. They study the plant, flower, leaf, root, stem, seeds and their parts; dissect flowers; learn Latin names of leaf shapes; use a magnifying glass to study roots, sprout seeds and grow plants.


Zoology studies begin with the very youngest children learning to name animals and sort them into appropriate environments (i.e. animals that live on a farm, in a rainforest or in a temperate forest). Students build on their sorting skills practiced in Practical Life by sorting model animals into vertebrate or invertebrate; studying 5 classes of vertebrates represented by the fish, frog, turtle, bird and horse; learning about life cycles of insects as they observe the process. Students begin to understand the concept of biomes and the interrelatedness of life on earth.


The earth science curriculum is integrated with Geography curriculum and includes a study of the globe, its continents and oceans. Young explorers learn the name of the seven continents through song, and then study in-depth the animals and people living on each continent. An understanding of our global community is developed through learning about the language, homes, food, dress, flags and traditions of people of many different cultures.


Young cartographers work with puzzle maps in a specific sequence and may make maps of the Planisphere, North America, the United States, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and Antarctica. With the development of writing skills, students label continents, countries, states and provinces.


After the development of water pouring and sponging skills, the young child receives a sensorial impression of simple land and water formations such as the lake and island, isthmus and strait, cape and bay, gulf and peninsula, archipelago and a system of lakes by pouring water to create these forms or using clay or sand to make their own.

Students may also study:

1. The formation of the solar system and individual planets.
2. The interior layers of the earth.
3. Techtonic plates.
4. The formation of oceans, mountains and volcanoes.
5. Early plant and animal forms of life on earth.


The studies help the child develop an appreciation of his/her experiences in his/her own world such as: crossing a bridge over Lake Washington, swimming in an ocean, hiking on a mountain trail, or planning a trip to another state or country. Curriculum flexibility allows studies to coincide with real events; news of the eruption of Mt. Kilauea or Mt. Etna can excite a child’s interest in simulating the eruption with a classroom volcano and learning about the interior structures of the volcano.