Primary Curriculum (ages 2.5 - 6+ years old)

The Prepared Environment:

We call the Montessori classroom, "The Prepared Environment." In the prepared environment, the educator silently gives lessons to the child. If the teacher tells the child how to work on an activity, then it’s not the child’s own acquisition. The child must make mistakes through his own experience. This environment is a place where a child can engage in active and intelligent experiences. You will see a different kind of child when there is a prepared environment. In Montessori, we don’t pretend to cook or use carpentry materials. We cook or build.

Embedded from the AMI-USA channel of YouTube

Why the mixed ages and three year cycle?

Montessori believed that children between 2 1/2 to 6 years of age worked in the prepared environment. It is a place where children can live in freedom. Montessori believed that the children could work together in a mixed age setting. The guide is just there to give lessons and observe the student and eventually the students would take on the role of the teacher, with the older children helping the younger children. The child is free to choose. This isn’t without limits but with responsibility. The environment must have the complete set of materials and the child must stay for 3 years.

Embedded from the AMI-USA channel of YouTube

The Prepared Adult

Preparation of the Adult: In order to create the prepared environment, a prepared adult must first be formed. This must first begin by the guide, having the kind of faith that the child will reveal himself through work.” The teacher has to let go of all preconceived notions of what level the child might be at.

Embedded from the AMI-USA channel of YouTube

Practical Life

When the child first enters the Montessori environment, he must do so through practical life activities. Montessori said, "The hands are the instruments of man's intelligence." Utilizing the hands not only helps the child in making more neural connections in the brain, but also serves as a precursor to writing. In practical life, the child develops a control and coordination of movement. Practical life exercises include, pouring, spooning, cutting, sewing, table washing, buttoning, folding, and many more exercises to help the child become more independent.

Sensorial

The child discovers the world around him through his senses. In Montessori, the child is utilizing his senses through the manipulative materials designed by Dr. Montessori. The child is learning to refine his visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile senses through the materials. The child learns how to perceive shape, size, and dimension with the materials. Many of the sensorial materials prepare the child for reading, writing, and mathematics."The development of the senses actually precedes that of the higher intellectual faculties, and in a child between the ages of three and six it constitutes his formative period." (Montessori in "Discovery of the Child.")

Language

Montessori believed that writing was easier for the child than reading. The child has his first introduction to language in doing the sensorial exercises, such as the cylinder blocks, where he uses the pincer grasp. This teaches the child how to hold the pencil. When the child learns to write, he has a developed muscular sense. Reading on the other hand, requires a higher intellectual development, according to Dr. Montessori.By the time the child finishes the three-year cycle, he should be writing and reading.

Mathematics

Children possess an instinctive knowledge necessary for the preparation of numeration. They have already explored the idea of quantity through the sensorial material:longer, shorter, darker, lighter. Children will learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through the various materials presented to them.

Embedded from the AMI-USA channel of YouTube

Geography, Botany, Science, Art, Music, and Movement

In addition to Practical Life, Sensorial, Language, and Mathematics, the children will gain knowledge of geography, botany, science, art, music, and movement through use of maps,the botany cabinet, various science materials (including exploration of nature), art, the bells (which help perfect perfect pitch in the child under 3), and movement through walking on the line and learning how to move with ease in their environment.

Embedded from the AMI-USA channel of YouTube

The Atrium

Regarding the Atrium, Maria Montessori said,

"My principle would be that in this room everything that the children learn and do in the ordinary Montessori school would be repeated on a higher plane, supernaturalized so to speak."

In accordance with the way Maria Montessori prescribed, the Atrium at Bergamo Academy will be a separate room. Her rationale was that it impresses upon the children a distinction between the natural and the supernatural. At Bergamo Academy, it has the added benefit that for those parents who do not wish their children to learn in the Atrium, Bergamo Academy can keep those children in the regular Montessori environment. The Atrium will be open one day per week to those who have written permission to participate.