Kindergartner Goals

The goals of early childhood education at Northfield Montessori are:

- to cultivate the child's natural spontaneity for learning
- to bring the child to the fullest possible realiation of his/her
indivdual potentialities

During the beginning of Kindergarten year, each child will be assessed by the Kindergarten Teacher. Classroom instruction may be individual, small group or whole group interaction. The Montessori classroom materials can be divided into three main groups:

PRACTICAL LIFE EXERCISES
These are designed to perfect coordination, gain confidence in particular skills, lengthen the span of attention and concentration and establish good working habits.

SENSORIAL MATERIALS
These help the child to become aware of details by isolating single defining qualities, such as color, weight, shape, texture, size, sound and smell. The equipment helps the child distinguish, categorize and relate new information to what he/she already knows.

ACADEMIC MATERIALS
These await each child's moments of interest in language, writing, math, science, geography and art.

Language
- Phonetics- Initial consonants, blends, vowel sounds
- Word Building (decoding and incoding of phonetic words)
- Environmental print
- Sight words
- Phonograms
- Sentence structure/grammer

Science and Health
- Hands on experiments
- Weather
- Five Senses
- Nutrition
- Human growth and development
- Solar System
- Life Science

Geography
- Multi-cultural awareness
- Uses of maps/globes