The Primary program at the Montessori School of Westminster serves children who are almost three (and fully toilet-trained) through the kindergarten level.  Children throughout this age span share a classroom.  If you are raising siblings, you see the way in which younger children learn from older brothers and sisters.  Older students love to teach those new to the class.  Montessori capitalizes on this approach and frames it with respect and courtesy.

The bright and inviting Primary classroom has areas of shelves devoted to various subjects.  The sets of items on the shelves are called “work.”  When students show interest in a particular set, the teacher, who is called a guide, gives the child a lesson.  Once the child has the lesson, he or she is free to select that work during the day’s work cycle.  The shelves are full of interesting items designed to attract your child’s attention and to teach the child in a multi-sensory way.

The Montessori philosophy utilizes a child’s natural impulse to learn.  Remember how your child learned to walk and to talk?  You didn’t need to teach them other than to help them when they showed readiness to stand up or to speak to them as they acquired speech.  The young child is determined to walk.  She babbles until sounds become words.  Nothing stops him from walking and then running.  Montessori relies on your child’s continued passion for learning and the natural timeline born within.  In many ways, a classic Montessori classroom teaches your child how to learn, and those are skills that will serve the student into adulthood.