Montessori School of Central Marin
Providing a Wholesome Education Since 1974
415-456-1748
San Rafael, CA
Practical Life
Practical life materials focus on developing your child's hand-eye coordination and fine motor hand skills. These skills establish concentration, order, coordination, and independence which provide the foundation for academic learning. Your child learns the simple tasks involved with care of the self, care of the environment, and courtesies.
Sensorial
Mathematics
Our Curriculum
The Montessori curriculum consists of practical life, sensorial, mathematics, and language arts. The materials in each of these curriculum areas reinforce the underlying objectives of concentration, order, coordination and independence.
Both the curriculum and the objectives guide the child towards knowledge of self and of the world. Through the understanding of how to resolve the often competing needs of both self/other and self/world, the child sustains equilibrium and peace. The classroom environment provides the structure for resolving the needs of the self and others in the form of ground rules.
Sensorial materials focus on developing and refining your child's five senses. It is during the "sensitive period" that the complexity of the child's brain is created from sensory perception. These materials are designed to refine the child’s senses in distinguishing visual cues of size, shape and color, tactile cues of texture, weight, and temperature, and auditory, olfactory and gustatory cues.
Mathematics materials focus on developing your child's understanding of linear and base ten counting. Linear counting, one to one hundred, is introduced beginning with counting the quantity (number) and then associating the quantity with the symbol (numeral) that represents the quantity. The base ten system of organizing quantity is introduced with units, tens, hundreds, and thousands in the quantity and in the numeral. Simple mathematical calculations are also introduced.
Language Arts
The Language Arts materials are broadly organized into the categories of receptive language (listening and reading) and expressive language (speaking and writing). The Montessori classroom emphasizes the precise usage of language so that the child hears a clear model of the English language. The teacher encourages the child to speak in complete sentences. The materials in the classroom are designed to foster the English language through phonics. Your child simultaneously learns to write and to read words, phrases and sentences.
Spanish
Cultural
Our Spanish program exposes your child to the language. Our materials and group activities are designed to build speaking, listening, and comprehension skills that are naturally absorbed by your child. Our school is proud to have teachers who are native and fluent speakers from various Spanish speaking countries.
Our cultural curriculum has the goal of making the child sensitive to the beauty of life and the environment. It includes areas in Zoology, Botany, Geography, History, Music, and Art. The goal is to make your child learn to appreciate, protect, and care for their environment. Moreover, the cultural curriculum aims to feed your child's natural curiosity regarding the world around them.
