Montessori Materials - Casa
The following are examples of some of the educational tools used in the
Casa Classrooms
Practical
Life
These are exercises through
which the child learns to care for him/herself and the environment. The
activities form a comforting link between home and school and provide the
child with essential life skills. Performance of these simple, everyday
activities meets the child's need for independence, development of fine
motor skills and coordination, as well as fostering self-esteem.
See Practical
Life materials
Sensorial Education
This is an area that pertains to the development of the five senses and spatial awareness, while providing vocabulary enrichment and a foundation for writing and math. The Sensorial materials are specially designed to isolate individual qualities such as color, shape, size and concepts such as weight, smoothness and sound.
See Sensorial
materials
Mathematics
Working with the mathematics materials, the child develops a concrete understanding of number concepts and operations. The materials allow the child to explore the two aspects of a number - quantity and symbol. Following this, the materials provide opportunities for further discovery of the Decimal system, and the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
See Math materials
Language
Language is an integral part of Montessori classroom and and is fostered through encouragement of self-expression, lessons and freedom of conversation.
The
language materials introduce the phonetic sound of each letter in the alphabet.
Using these sounds, the child is able to build words, thus begins the process
of reading.
Along with preparatory exercises in Practical Life and Sensorial Education,
the Language materials also foster muscle control for printing.
See Language materials
Culture
This is a very broad term encompassing many areas and experiences in the
environment. Specifically, the materials found on the Culture shelves touch
on the subjects of Geography, History, Zoology, Botany and Science. We also
include activities such as music, art, physical education and field trips
as part of our curriculum.