Our Curriculum Areas

Practical Life

The activities in this area aid the child in constructing himself from the life he sees around him and offer the opportunity to learn and take care of his personal needs, to care and maintain his surrounding environment, to function in a social group, relate to peers and adults effectively and successfully and to become aware of how his body moves and performs.

This helps the child to develop co-ordination, concentration, confidence, independence and order. Self-confidence blossoms as the child learns to perfect the skills needed to function in his everyday life.

Sensorial

When a young child enters a Montessori environment, he is developing a sense of order. Being in the sensitive period, he is actively seeking to sort, arrange and classify his absorbed experiences. The aim of the Sensorial materials is to encourage the child to observe, compare, discriminate, judge, reason, decide and solve problems. Thus the materials help the child to construct an internal cognitive system which is logical and orderly. The materials assist the child in the mental organization of his past experiences and serve as a bridge between the child’s unconscious and conscious mind.

The Sensorial materials provide a fine tuning of the child’s senses and aid in the child’s neurological, physical and intellectual development. They are grouped according to the senses such as Visual, Auditory, Tactile, Olfactory and Gustatory.

The exploration and experimentation in Sensorial get the child ready for Science and to appreciate the world. With his self-perfection, the child develops a greater sense of his environment and his role in it.

Mathematics & Geometry

Many skills and concepts necessary for Math are either introduced or solidified by activities in the Practical life and Sensorial areas.

At Growing Minds Montessori School, the children enter the Math area with confidence as they have built a solid foundation by working with activities in Practical life and Sensorial. They bring with them a sense of order and concrete experiences and are able to group concepts of math easily. The child’s absorbent mind bridges with his mathematical mind and gives the child confidence to work with formal Math activities.

When a child learns Mathematics in this developmentally appropriate, concrete, and sequential manner, he will enjoy the work instead of fearing it and would get the satisfaction of learning with abstract materials and then memorizing.

Language Arts & Foreign Language

The beginning of language in the Montessori classroom is the day the child enters. He comes with ability to speak, an appetite for words. He absorbs everything he hears and sees. At Growing Minds Montessori School, we have created an environment that is rich in language activities that leads the children into reading and writing. Materials and activities in the classroom provide pre-reading skills. Oral and auditory activities fulfill the children’s need to hear and participate in language experiences. Reading books, singing songs, telling stories, doing finger plays, acting out stories and circle time activities provide the opportunity to refine their auditory skills as well as develop their vocabulary.

The use of Sandpaper letters, the Metal insets, and other fine motor activities will aid the child in the development of dominant hand. The use of sound boxes as well as the auditory games will aid the child in establishing his dominance in the auditory sense. Through the activities such as Sand paper letters and Moveable alphabets, children discover that letters make sounds, certain sounds and letters together make words, certain words together make a sentence and many sentences make a story. This is perhaps one of the most exciting discoveries a child will make in his life!

The use of definitions, labels, names and illustrations of objects will enable the child to enrich his growing vocabulary, establish recognition of symbols. Thus, offering him many experiences which will pave the way to reading and writing.

By providing the children with an environment rich with language, we offer to the children the awareness of the power of language. We enlighten them as to the beauty of language.

Cultural Studies

At Growing Minds Montessori School, the children build an awareness of the world around them by exploring the seven continents, flags of different countries, learning about the culture, people, traditions, animals and so much more.

Working with individual continent puzzle maps in Geography, helps them get an awareness of the countries, land forms and oceans as they study them in the course of the three-year cycle.

Cultural studies also introduces children to the physical world that surrounds them.

The children are provided with opportunities to explore the real things.
Activities, work sheets, life cycles and knobbed puzzles of animals, plants and human body give the children an awareness of Botany, Zoology and Anatomy.

In Physical Science, children broaden their horizon by exploring different kinds of rocks, minerals, shells and other specimens. There are items from the nature that are displayed in the classroom. Simple science experiments are performed in class such as “sink and float”, “magnetic and nonmagnetic”, “living” and “nonliving”. Children also get the opportunity to learn about space, solar system, volcanoes and weather in the form of unit projects.

Art, Music & Movement

At Growing Minds Montessori School, Art gets the significance of a curriculum area. It is one of our favorite things. Children are introduced and are taught how to do art work from a rich array of activities. They have the freedom to explore their imaginations with a variety of materials used for expression such as: markers, crayons, color pencils, and paints are available so our little artists get a choice to create their masterpiece.

Coloring, cutting, gluing and push pinning activities are an important part of the art shelf. Activities on the shelf are changed regularly according to the monthly themes.
Just like the other curriculum areas, once the children are introduced to an art lesson, they are free to do it on their own.

The children are introduced to the famous artists and given opportunities to replicate the art work. Books and art work of famous artists are displayed to entice the children.
Art supports a child’s creative development and holds an important place in the Montessori environment.