909-599-2224
Children's Montessori Center
of Via Verde
Montessori Method
The Montessori curriculum emphasizes the basics to educate students so that they have an understanding and awareness of their total environment and can act purposefully within it.

The Montessori education is not a system of teaching, but a method of helping children in the total development of their personality during the fundamental period of development. The child must have freedom in order to develop his or her personality to the fullest - a freedom that is achieved through work, order, and self-discipline. The world of the child is full of sights and sounds, which at first appear chaotic. From this chaos, the child must gradually create order, and learn to distinguish among the impressions that assail his senses, slowly but surely gaining mastery of himself and his environment.
Dr. Maria Montessori developed what she called the "prepared environment" which already possesses a certain order and disposes the child to develop at his own speed, according to his own capacities and in a noncompetitive atmosphere in his first years out of his home.
The structure of Montessori learning involves the use of many materials, which the child may work individually. At every step of his learning the material is designed to test his understanding and to correct his errors. Each child works at his own pace. Hence, the quick child is not held back by the slow, nor is the latter, in trying to keep up with the former, obliged to flounder along hopelessly out of his depth. Montessori puts the competitive spirit in a more positive perspective in order that the child will compete with his own potential rather than because of societal pressures. At every turn, it presents endless opportunities among the child for mutual help-help that is joyfully given and gratefully received.
Dr. Montessori recognized that the only valid impulse to learning is the self¬ motivation of the child. The director/directress prepares the environment, programs the activity, functions as the reference person and the exemplar, offers the child stimulations; but it is the child who learns, who is motivated through the work itself to persist in his or her chosen task. If the Montessori child is free to learn, it is because he has acquired from his exposure to both physical and mental order, an "inner discipline". This is the core of Dr. Montessori's educational philosophy.
Schools have existed historically to teach children to observe, to think, to judge. Montessori introduces children to the joy of learning at an early age and provides a framework in which intellectual and social discipline goes hand in hand.
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909-599-2224
12 POINTS OF THE MONTESSORI METHOD
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It is based on years of patient observation of the nature of the child.
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Proven itself universal application; Within a single generation it has been tried with complete success with children of almost every civilized nation. Race, color, climate, nationality, social rank, type of civilization- all these make no difference to successful application.
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It has revealed the small child as a lover of work, intellectual work, spontaneously chosen and carried out with profound joy.
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It is based on the child's imperious need to learn by doing. At each stage in the child's mental growth, corresponding occupations are provided by means of which he/she develops his/her faculties.
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While it offers the child maximum spontaneity, it still successfully allows him/her to reach the same and often an even higher level of scholastic attainment as the mainstream educational systems.
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Although it does away with the necessity of coercion by means of rewards and punishments, it achieves a higher discipline than formerly. It is an active discipline which originate within the child and is not imposed from without.
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It is based on a profound respect for the child's personality and removes from him the preponderating influence of the adult, thus leaving him room to grow in biological independence. Hence the child is allowed a large measure of liberty (not license) which forms the basis of real discipline.
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It enables the teacher to deal with each child individually in each subject, and thus guide him/her according to his /her individual requirements.
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Each child works at his own pace. The quick child isn't held back by the slow, nor is the latter in trying to keep up with the former, obliged to flounder along hopelessly out of his depth. Each stone in the mental edifice is "well and truly laid" before the next is added.
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It does away with the competitive spirit and it's train of baneful results. More than this, at every turn it presents endless opportunities among children for mutual help- which is joyfully given and gratefully received.
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Since the child works from his own free choice, without competition and coercion, he is freed from danger of overstrain , feelings of inferiority, and other experiences which are apt to be the unconscious cause of profound mental disturbances in later life.
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Finally the montessori method develops the whole personality of the child,not merely his intellectual faculties but also his power of deliberation, initiative and independent choice, with their emotional complements. By living as free member of a real social community, the child is trained in those fundamental social qualities which form the basis of good citizenship.