Montessori Curriculum

At La Petite Fleur Montessori House of Children, your child’s days are filled with rich and varied curriculum. Our teachers have been carefully trained to ensure that the exciting and productive experience of Montessori learning unfolds for each child in the classroom.

The curriculum is based on five vital areas – practical life, sensorial, math, language and culture.

Practical Life

The practical life area provides the link between the home and school. These exercises satisfy the child’s need to imitate adult behaviour and achieve increasing levels of independence. In the classroom with functional child –size material, the young child is able to perform the same activities they have seen adults perform. They serve to lengthen attention span, aid in the development of fine motor coordination and learn to work at a task from beginning to end. As time goes by, practical life exercises evolve from care of self into care of others and care of the environment, which lead to activities such as science experimentation and discoveries.

Sensorial

Sensorial exercises involve innovative educational materials that assist the child in the development and refinement of sensory organs. Through sight, touch, sound, taste and smell the sensorial materials enable them to clarify, classify, and understand their world of shape, color, sound, dimension and touch. This gives the child the opportunity to learn to grade and sequence objects according to various attributes, giving a clear, deep understanding of sequences, groups and sets. These activities prepare the child for the more advanced math and geometry activities of later years. The child also meets a rich vocabulary in the process and learns to discriminate perceptually, using the senses.

Mathematics

The practical life area provides the link between the home and school. These exercises satisfy the child’s need to imitate adult behavior and achieve increasing levels of independence. In the classroom with functional child –size material, the young child is able to perform the same activities they have seen adults perform. They serve to lengthen attention span, aid in the development of fine motor coordination and learn to work at a task from beginning to end. As time goes by, practical life exercises evolve from care of self into care of others and care of the environment, which lead to activities such as science experimentation and discoveries.

Language

The language program begins with readiness activities. It is imperative that each child be allowed to progress to a state of physical and mental readiness before formal language exercises are introduced. The child experiences matching cards, stories, poetry, listening games and other preparatory activities.
As the teacher ascertains the child’s readiness, he is introduced to language through our phonetic approach. Language is taught through a variety of multi-sensory activities: visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic. Children are introduced to the sounds and symbols of the letters in all three languages (Sinhala, English and Tamil), As the child differentiates and recognizes sounds, he begins the process of word building with the ‘movable alphabets’ and then blending sounds into meaningful reading, and later writing. Conversation, poems, stories and library time are all important in the Montessori environment.

Culture

Your child will be engaged in delightful activities that instill a lifelong love of sciences, history, cultures and the arts. Our school celebrates all cultural events of Sri Lanka introducing your child to ethnic diversity at an early age. The cultural materials allow the young child to explore the world around and learn the cultural similarities that unite all people. The child can experience new vocabulary through classified pictures and hands on experiences pertaining to Botany, Geography, Geometry, Zoology, Art and Music.

Dr. Maria Montessori’s discovery of Sensitive Periods in children is a key tenet of the Montessori philosophy. Children have specific, limited times when learning is enhanced, even effortless. Our curriculum is designed to engage children at these key times. That is why even our youngest children are introduced to Geometry. Sensory impressions are stored in memory and utilized later when studying the algebraic trinomial equation. The result will be an easier and deeper understanding for the older child. In fact, research now demonstrates that former Montessori students do score higher on many standardized scales. Those who study in elementary Montessori schools score even higher on standardized tests and are much more likely to qualify for accelerated programs than other students.