The best start in life! There is growing interest from parents for Montessori environments for younger children.  Here is our programs, based on Dr. Montessori's methods.

Bambini ( 18 - 36 months )

The Bambini environment offers very young children a unique year of self development in a tender atmosphere of special understanding, respect and support. They are unique in that they provide a very specific structure which fulfills the social, physical, emotional and psychological needs of each child.

In these environments, there is space for movement, space for individual work and space for group activities. The eating area and the sleeping area are separate from the other areas. Everything in the environment is proportionate to the child's size and is designed to be safe and aesthetically pleasing for children. The toddler classroom is simpler an slower paced than the early childhood (three to six year old) classroom.

Bambinis are given opportunities to work in the development of language skill, art, music sensorial and practical life. The practical life area is particularly emphasized as the activities in this area give children the chance to develop skills to care for themselves and their environment in the following areas: control of movement, grace and courtesy. Practical life activities are simple and can be accomplished by each child. They offer repetitive cycle, which helps the child establish patterns of order and sequencing. Due to the fact that these are very real activities, each child becomes grounded in reality, building the child's self esteem is the ultimate goal and this is accomplished through repeated successes with these activities.

Through songs  and freedom of choice, the toddlers have access to a variety of large muscle activities that offer them opportunities to jump, climb, balance, crawl or skip. These exercises as well as creative art activities, are offered for each child to choose. This freedom in a safe space is crucial to the Bambini program. However, it is always tempered by two important limits that will be beneficial for a lifetime, respect for others and respect for the environment.

The Montessori classroom is a "living room" for children. Children choose their activities from open shelves with self-correcting materials and work in distinct work areas - on tables or on rugs on the floor. Over a period of time, the children develop into a "normalized community" working with high concentration and few interruptions. The classroom includes the following components:

The practical life exercises enhance the development of task organization and cognitive order through care of self, care of the environment, exercises of grace and courtesy, and refinement of physical movement and coordination. The sensorial materials enable the child to order, classify, seriate and describe sensory impressions in relation, length, width, temperature, mass, color, etc. The Montessori math materials, through concrete manipulative materials, allows the child to internalize the concepts of number, symbol, sequence, operations and memorization of basic facts.

The language work includes oral language development, written expression, reading, the study of grammar, creative dramatics and children's literature. Basic skills in writing and reading are developed through the use of sandpaper letters (loose alphabet letters) and various presentations allowing children to effortlessly link sounds and symbols and to express their thoughts in writing.

The child is also presented with geography, history, life sciences, music, art and movement education.