We enjoyed an evening of community and talking about our passion of Montessori at our Parent Education Night (Soup's On). Our lead teachers explained how a child moves through each year of Montessori, building on the skills they developed in the previous year. They gain more independence bit by bit as they finally become the masters of their classrooms in their leadership year (aka Kindergarten).
Maria Montessori knew that the 3 year cycle was ideal for learning. Furthermore, the child is in their absorbent mind period. Their brain absorbs everything around them, building new pathways through age five. If a child does not have the opportunity to solidify (master) their learning in their third year, much of what they learned will evaporate. It is a gift to stay through their leadership year, continuing to use the concrete materials and practicing their role in a community, AND the way for your child to get a return on your investment!
One example of Montessori through the 3-year cycle:
Children learn the vocabulary “cube” early in the Montessori classroom. They enjoy the experience of handling the pink cubes as they order them from largest to smallest. Curiosity, creativity, order, sequence, coordination, concentration, independence, and a mathematical mind are all being developed through this fun concrete experience with cubes!
Children also learn the vocabulary associated with the Golden Beads in a Montessori classroom; unit, ten bar, hundred square, and thousand cube. They enjoy the experience of handling these beads, which is also giving them a concrete experience of the decimal system! As the children play games with these Golden Beads they continue to build on their skills and further develop their mathematical mind.
Once a child has a solid idea of the Golden Beads and has learned the symbols, they get to learn new games that associate numeral to quantity. They are using some of the same materials at 4 years old that they did at 3 years old, but now their brain is more developed!
As a child masters the Golden Beads, they move onto learning about different cubes. Now, they get a concrete experience of counting a long chain of beads and learning that a cube of 8 has 512 beads. Furthermore, they have practiced skip counting by eight to 512, and figured out that this cube is made of 8 squares of 8 (and each square is 64)!