Middle Primary 6-9 Years
The 6-9 year old child
- The 6-9 year old child strives for mental independence.
- The child wants to know the ‘why’ of life.
- The child wants to understand the mysteries of the universe and their place in it.
- The child will typically show an innate sense of compassion, justice and idealism.
- The 6-9 year old child’s questioning mind, active imagination and developing ability to reason and abstract, drives the child to want to discover more.
- In Montessori Primary, the child’s own questions provide the depth of their learning.
- 6-9 year old children want to belong to a ‘group’.
- Dr Montessori described this age as ‘the age of rudeness and serenity’!
The Montessori Primary curriculum
The curriculum is a holistic curriculum; it presents a unique ‘big picture’, stimulating the child’s imagination and demonstrating the interconnectedness of different areas of study. In the 6-9 cycle the curriculum is a mixture of explicit instruction and an opportunity for self construction.
The 6-9 Middle Primary classroom
- Blue Gum Montessori School has five Middle Primary Classes – Wandoo, Karri, Lilly Pilly, Eucalyptus and Tingle.
- Montessori materials are continued to be used to help the child move into the abstract in the next three years.
- The 6-9 year old child now learns the subject names such as geometry, geography, grammar and algebra.
- Through the Montessori approach, the 6-9 year old child continues to develop a high degree of independence and discipline in their learning choices and outcomes; a process they started in the 3-6 cycle.
- This cycle is a ‘construction’ cycle similar to the 0-3 cycle. Using explicit instruction, the teacher helps the child build on the foundations of numeracy and literacy laid in the 3-6 cycle.
- The Montessori teacher ensures that the foundations of reading, writing and arithmetic are covered in depth within this three year cycle.
- Using these numeracy and literacy skills, the child is able to construct new skills in their work in the Montessori Cosmic work – science, history, geography, zoology, botany, the arts.
- A Montessori teacher is a ‘director’, skilled in observing, monitoring and assessing each child individually to ensure that each child covers all curriculum areas.