Dr. Maria Montessori devised the “prepared environment” to allow children to develop at their own speed. To achieve this, Dr. Montessori designed many “materials” or “jobs” to be worked on individually. All materials or jobs are carefully made to self-teach the child by having a “control of error”. This control of error is what enables the teachers to evaluate the child’s understanding and to correct the child without negative reinforcement. The goal is to motivate and stimulate a child to want to learn. We have implemented a prepared environment at AmeriMont Academy with cubbies, shelves, materials, jobs, and numerous replicas of the materials Dr. Maria Montessori made herself. Although there is a certain amount of freedom in the classroom, there are three basic rules to which students must abide by.

Although the Montessori environment allows children choices and freedom, a student may not:

  • Abuse the materials
  • Disturb other children
  • Be disorderly or unruly

When a teacher does a demonstration to a child, they use a technique known as the three period lesson:

  1. To teach, the student will be told: "This is..."
  2. To demonstrate understanding, the student is asked: "Give me..." or "Show me..."
  3. To evaluate knowledge, the student is asked: "What is this?"

There are 5 basic areas of Montessori:

 

A few of the jobs you might see:

Purpose/Benefit:

Practical Life

Polishing a shoe, pouring from glass, folding clothes, washing windows, slicing bananas.

Develops coordination and control. Very repetitive. Includes care of self and the environment.

Sensorial

Color tablets, sound boxes, music, pink tower, knobbed cylinders, geometric solids & dressing frames

Develops the senses of hearing, vision, touch, taste, smell & perception.

Math

Number rods, bead chains, snake game, spindle boxes, teen board, trinomial cube, & worksheets

A number is an actual quantity. Understanding symbols of quantity, addition, multiplication, subtraction & division

Language & Reading

Sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, reading boxes, worksheets, workbooks, sentence strips.

Learning first the sound (phonics), then the beginning and ending sounds, reading & writing

Culture

Knobbed puzzle maps, flash cards, flags, books, circle-time

Continent, country & state recognition, awareness of others & self

 

A few of the jobs you might see:

Purpose/Benefit:

Practical Life

Polishing a shoe, pouring from glass, folding clothes, washing windows, slicing bananas.

Develops coordination and control. Very repetitive. Includes care of self and the environment.

Sensorial

Color tablets, sound boxes, music, pink tower, knobbed cylinders, geometric solids & dressing frames

Develops the senses of hearing, vision, touch, taste, smell & perception.

Math

Number rods, bead chains, snake game, spindle boxes, teen board, trinomial cube, & worksheets

A number is an actual quantity. Understanding symbols of quantity, addition, multiplication, subtraction & division

Language & Reading

Sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, reading boxes, worksheets, workbooks, sentence strips.

Learning first the sound (phonics), then the beginning and ending sounds, reading & writing

Culture

Knobbed puzzle maps, flash cards, flags, books, circle-time

Continent, country & state recognition, awareness of others & self

 

"Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activity, spread over a specially prepared environment, and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Human teachers can only help the great work that is being done, as servants help the master. Doing so, they will be witnesses to the unfolding of the human soul and to the rising of a New Man who will not be a victim of events, but will have the clarity of vision to direct and shape the future of human society."                                                                                -Maria Montessori

 

 

"Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants - doing nothing but living and walking about - came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love."                                                                                                                               -Maria Montessori

 

AmeriMont Academy offers a Montessori preschool through kindergarten environment with childcare currently located in Anaheim Hills and Carmichael, to service both the Orange County and Sacramento areas of California.