Our school has four Junior Primary classes – Melaleuca, Jarrah, Wattle and Tuart. Recognising that children are curious, enthusiastic and eager to learn, these classes are equipped with materials to provide stimulation and challenges.
The classes have a flexible structure which allows the pre-primary children to develop at their own pace. The ‘birthday ring’ is an example of a structured activity in a Junior Primary Montessori classroom.
There are five defined areas which encourage self awareness and focus on the children’s interests and their developmental needs:
- Practical Life – encouraging independence, learning to care for oneself, others, their classroom and environment.
- Sensorial – further development of the sense of sight, hearing, taste, kinaesthetic, touch and smell, naming and categorising.
- Language – focus is on the development of vocabulary, the use of language, learning the phonic sounds and by six years old, writing and reading phonetically.
- Mathematics – development of mathematical concepts through the manipulation of concrete materials and by six years old, recognising numerals to 100 and performing addition and subtraction to 20, along with recognition and naming of geometric shapes and a sensorial introduction to fractions.
- Cultural – introducing the children to the world in which we live. (Geography, History, Science, Zoology and Botany, Music and Art)
The Three Year Range
3 year olds:
Attend Monday to Thursday 8.30am to 12 noon
Mainly engage in Practical life and Sensorial activities where repetition and vocabulary development is valued
The emphasis is on self-chosen activities initiated by individual lessons
Morning sessions finish with story time, music and movement exercises.
4 year olds:
Attend Monday to Thursday, 8.30am – 3pm
Morning sessions are spent on self-chosen activities initiated by individual and group lessons
Introduced to the formal language and mathematics programmes
Afternoon sessions incorporate group activities including cooking, art and craft, physical education and language.
5 year olds:
Attend Monday to Friday, 8.30am – 3pm
Morning sessions are spent on self-chosen activities initiated by individual and group lessons
Develop their language and mathematics skills
Afternoon sessions incorporate group activities including cooking, art and craft, physical education and language.