Practical Life is an essential part of the Montessori curriculum.  Students begin as early as 18 months old working on daily living skills.  The areas of a Practical Life environment include; care of self, care of environment, grace and courtesy, and control of movement.  Activities are carefully designed to not only prepare the child to LITERALLY become independent in all areas but also to develop the mathematical and language areas of the brain. This is accomplished when a teacher in the environment sets up each activity and presents it methodically, paying careful attention to every detail.  For example, a lesson on table washing would be presented to a child starting to scrub the table at the top-moving from left to right and top to bottom.  The child moves cross-body as their washing hand literally crosses from the left side of the body, past the center, and to the far right, preparing...

Posted by Britney Peterson Britney Peterson Britney Peterson has not set their biography yet User is currently offline on Wednesday, 17 October 2012 in Parent Education A huge thank you to our Toddler Teachers for presenting a wonderful Parent Education Night to the parents of our Toddler students last night.  We were pleased that so many of our parents came out to learn more about the Montessori Toddler Environment and ways they can support the curriculum in their homes.     Read the article below for more information about preparing the home environment for your little ones.... Birth To Three...Preparing the Environment Learning comes from a natural interaction with the environment much more than from listening or watching another. For this reason the preparation of the environment is extremely important. Read the full article montessori.edu

Posted by Britney Peterson Britney Peterson Britney Peterson has not set their biography yet User is currently offline on Tuesday, 16 October 2012 in Classroom Updates Recently the Middle School students participated in their Team Building Immersion Week, after 5 weeks of study. The week started off with a trip to CLAS Ropes Course in Provo where they practiced many team building techniques.  The Upper Elementary students were excited to be able to join them for the Ropes Course Field Trip.  Other activities throughout the week included completing class projects, painting the “Nookery” (their mini workspace under the stairs), hiking up Mill Creek's Alexander Basin train with more team building games, and planning, shopping for, and preparing  meals for a campout on school campus.  Food from the class garden was used for their meals.  The week concluded with setting up a tent in preparation for their campout Thursday night.  At the...

New research suggests that children who attend Montessori schools may have an edge over other children in terms of both academic and social development. The 5-year-old Montessori students were found to have better reading and math skills than their peers who attended traditional schools and they scored higher on tests measuring social development, researchers reported. The 12-year-old Montessori and non-Montessori students had similar reading and math scores, but the Montessori children tended to score higher on tests measuring social and behavioral development, researcher Angeline Lillard, Ph.D., tells WebMD. Read the full article CBSnews.com

Google on Friday honored Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori with a homepage doodle celebrating her 142nd birth anniversary.Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both went through the Montessori education system and have credited it for their success."I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders and being self-motivated, questioning what's going on in the world, doing things a bit different," Page said in an interview with ABC (below). PCMag.com Article