Infant & Toddler House

List of 6 items.

• Practical Life

  Infants and toddlers learn by doing for themselves. This curriculum area provides the opportunity to practice daily living skills. Children gain independence and a sense of responsibility to care for themselves.
  
  -The scale of the classroom furniture, kitchenettes, and bathrooms encourage children to be as independent as possible with routine activities: washing and toileting, dressing and undressing, and mealtimes. A sense of pride comes when the child completes self-help tasks independently. Practical Life includes exercises to refine their small motor coordination through activities such as pouring water, squeezing a sponge, transferring small objects with a spoon, and more. This area develops the hand for future tasks – holding a pencil properly, shoe-tying, or playing a musical instrument.

• Grace & Courtesy

  Watering the plants, caring for class pets, sweeping the floor, setting the table, and gardening are some of the lessons that are given to the children that instill a sense of courtesy and commitment to the environment and all living things.
  
  -Harborlight is affectionately considered a home-away-from-home for our youngest learners. It is their first foray into the real world and they are given the opportunity to express their independence and form a sense classroom citizenship. Planned lessons in this area also include cooking and gardening while smaller, spontaneous lessons occur throughout the day such as when a child lends a hug and an icepack to a classmate who has fallen.

• Sensorial

  Montessori materials in this area of the classroom respond to the curious child’s exploration through the five senses. In relationship with the materials in the environment, children under three learn to discriminate and identify shapes, colors, dimensions, tastes, and sounds.
  
  -Sensorial lessons lead to discovery of the world in a very tangible way. Exploration with sensorial materials responds to children’s natural wonder and keen sense of order. Sensorial materials reveal relationships and attributes (hard/soft, short/elongated, prism/sphere) that build a foundation for classification and sequencing in science and math.

• Math & Geometry

  Real world objects and activities engage toddlers in mathematic concepts. Counting quantities, matching one-to-one, making sets, and more allow toddlers to see and feel how math and numbers work in everyday life.<br /><br />

  -When ready, they can demonstrate the concepts of math by reading numerals and matching sets or quantities of objects with numerals. Montessori materials are specifically designed to lead from concrete exploration to later abstract understanding. The pink tower you see the children building (a material in the Sensorial curriculum) has a very concrete relationship to the algebraic square of the decanomial they will discover during the elementary years.

• Language

  Infants and toddlers develop a large vocabulary during the first three years. They are able to understand conversations, listen to stories, and follow directions and requests before they are able to speak and express themselves with words.
  
  Teachers use language purposefully to support the development of a rich vocabulary and engage children in games and lessons that encourage expressive language and correct usage. In Montessori, we use the term ‘nomenclature’ in our Method. Nomenclature is the proper naming of things across the curriculum. For older toddlers, naming is not enough and the teachers dive deeper into definitions of words. For example, the parts of a plant are specifically named and lead to a further study of systems and relationships in botany.

• Natural World

  The natural environment is attractive and peaceful for young children. Each classroom has an attached deck for extending the learning environment into the outdoors. Mimicking the home environment, the deck bridges learning and nature. Here the children play, read, have a snack, paint at the easel, plant seeds, etc. The play yard is also a natural landscape that includes a mud kitchen and a garden for investigating with earth, water, seeds, and plants.
  
  Infants take nature walks around campus and in the neighborhood using the strollers and also have their own gated play yard and garden separate from the toddlers. Toddlers spend a good amount of time in the outdoor play yard and gardens each day. This is their first foray into the study of the natural world by exploring and observing the wonders of botany, zoology, and earth science.