Parents’ Evening – The Principal’s Presentation
At The Children’s House we believe in open communication with parents. We work in partnership with parents ‘in service of the child’.
We are part of a triangle with family and school at the base and the child at the apex.
Maria Montessori was the first female doctor in Italy:
- The Montessori method is based on observation
- Maria Montessori created planes of development 0-6, 6-12, 12-18 and 18-24
- When we cater to the child during their different phases of development we are building on their past experiences.
If we look at the cube we can see the different approaches one can take depending on the child’s level of interest and focus at different times:
0-3 Visual and Sensorial Discrimination
3-6 Visual discrimination of volume – for example the Pink Tower, which is the cornerstone of the 3-6 environment. At this point they also learn the basic language connected with ‘cube’ and diminutives e.g. small, smaller, smallest and superlatives e.g. big, bigger, biggest.
6-9 Continued exploration takes place – Why is it called a ‘cube’? How do we make it? How many surfaces, edges, vertices does it have?
9-12 We can learn the formulae for the Binomial and Trinomial cubes. They did this sensorially in the 3-6 class. They can calculate the volume of the entire pink tower. They can create a trinomial. They can extract the root of a binomial and trinomial. They can work on exponential values and see where the million cube fits into this!
The children are already going from concrete experiences to abstraction.
The children of today will be the adults of the future and our role is to prepare them for that future. We believe that by catering to their different planes of development they will learn with ease and enthusiasm. In that way when they move onto secondary they can look back to their experiences with concrete materials and know they have a solid foundation.
Micaela Kuh, Principal