Gallery of Student Work

Mentorship in the Montessori Classroom

Among the many benefits of a mixed-age classroom is the chance for older students to become mentors to their peers. This not only builds confidence and leadership skills, but reinforces their previous knowledge when they are able to pass it on to others. In the infant and toddler classrooms, this happens naturally as the younger students often enjoy, and even seek out their older peers to observe their work. As they transition to the Early Childhood classroom, they are given the chance to give lessons and quiz each others' knowledge. In one picture, one student is reading puzzle sight words from the stack so that another student can find them solely by sound. In another picture, one older student gives a lesson on tik-tac-toe to some younger peers while on in the outdoor classroom. A sixth grader even had the opportunity to mentor some Early Childhood students while handling their classroom hermit crab. These experiences are incredibly valuable and enrich our school's sense of community and cooperation.

Toddler - Animal Print Match

This toddler student is very focused as he works on matching a close-up photo of each animal to the picture of the whole animal. This material helps children develop concentration and visual discrimination as they use their executive functioning to compare the patterns at different perspectives. Development of concentration at such a young age prepares the students for more complex tasks as they progress through the curriculum, preparing them for academic success and building their self-confidence and a positive self-image.

Upper Elementary - Squares and Square Roots

As the Upper Elementary students approach middle school age, they are introduced to algebraic concepts like square roots, balancing equations, and polynomials. Through the Montessori approach, they can visualize these concepts by manipulating concrete materials that will help them more fully grasp the concepts. This student is very focused, using the Square Root Peg Board to build the square of 27 in single units (green pegs), and then exchanging them with the blue pegs, which represent ten units each. Once she has exchanged it, she will be able to clearly see the root. This material helps students understand more complex math concepts thoroughly before transitioning to working through them more abstractly on pen and paper.

Early Childhood - Nomenclature Cards: Human Anatomy

Montessori Nomenclature cards are used for classifying and building vocabulary and concepts in all subject areas. Also known as 3-part cards, this material is made up of a control card, which has the picture and word on the same card, and individual pictures and labels. Students then match the individual pictures and labels to the correct control card, providing for in-depth visual discrimination practice and independence, as students do not need to ask the teacher for help to check their work. For this 4-year-old student, the teachers have extended the work to include realistic objects and word tracing, adding layers of complexity to the work. 

Early Childhood - Outdoor Classroom

Springtime brings rain, and rain brings fun! Exploring nature at a young age aligns with children’s natural instincts to be scientists and explorers. The outdoors gives them an opportunity to use things they can physically see, feel, and experience to introduce science in a way that is meaningful to them. Here, the children enjoy the sandbox and barefoot creek after a rainy night by building and balancing on bridges, creating dams, and of course, playing in puddles!

"Let the children be free; encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining; let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and, when the grass of the meadows is damp with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath it's shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning as it wakes every living creature that divides its day between waking and sleeping."

--Maria Montessori

Early Childhood - Metal Insets

Look at that focus and precision! The Metal Insets are a delightful way for a child to prepare for writing. Children use a colored pencil to carefully trace shapes, which helps to develop the fine motor control needed to write small letters. Creating patterns and designs is a secondary goal, but also increases a child’s ability to manipulate a pencil. Perhaps most importantly, this work has many variations and possibilities, and can capture any child’s interest for an extended period of time.

Early Childhood - Language: Puzzle (Sight) Words

This child is very focused in finding the word she has been told by her teacher. The teacher pronounces one of the puzzle words, and the student looks at the choices in front of her to find the correct word, bringing it back to show the choice. If it is correct, she will be told another word and the process repeats. Once children have mastered this set of words, the next set is introduced. Students must use many skills to be successful, listening closely as the teacher says the word, remembering the word as they are walking back to their workspace, visually reviewing the remaining words, and finally sounding out the word to make the correct choice. This work is essential for young children, so they have a rich internal dictionary at their command. These puzzle words do not follow specific phonetic rules but are necessary for communication and need to be memorized.

Toddler - Practical Life, Care of Environment

Most ordinary tasks that we do without much thought are new and engaging challenges for our students. The Practical Life curriculum in a Montessori classroom provides a scope and sequence for these everyday routines and practices. By engaging in meaningful activities and using ordinary objects with purposeful ends, the students develop real abilities, which give them independence and control of their lives. The students learn to focus their attention for the entirety of an activity and, upon completion, have a deep sense of fulfilment. Therefore, the aim of these activities is not only practical but also developmental. Through these activities, children develop concentration, independence, coordination of movement, inner discipline, and independence.

Early Childhood - Consonant Blends with the Moveable Alphabet

The Moveable Alphabet was developed by Dr. Montessori when she realized that children had the mental capacity to analyze the sounds in words well before they could synthesize them. When children write a word with the Moveable Alphabet, they do so phonetically by analyzing the sounds. After mastering CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, students progress to consonant blends. This student is very focused while using to Moveable Alphabet to make words with the TH blend, both at the beginning and the end of words.

Toddler - Practical Life

This student is very focused while squeezing an orange to make juice for himself. Not only does this work strengthen a child's hand muscles, increase fine motor skills, and develop a child's sense of sequential order, it is purposeful work, allowing the child to literally drink the fruits of their labor.

Early Childhood - Caring for Animals

Care of plants and animals is part of the Practical Life curriculum and an important part of Montessori education. Care of pets can be a perfect way for young children to develop a number of skills along with many positive character traits. Including live animals in a child’s daily life greatly enhances their abilities to learn responsibility, empathy, and compassion for other living things, respect for life, and the natural development of living things. The lessons that are instilled in a child through caring for animals will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Early Childhood - Dressing Frames

The purpose of the dressing frames is to build concentration, coordination, and fine motor control, all the while encouraging children to become more independent as they learn to care for themselves. As children gain more hand-eye coordination and fine motor control, these become easier, and they move on to more challenging frames. Here you can see the variety of the dressing frames, such as buttons, zipper, buckles, belts, and lacing.

Toddler - Group Mealtime

Young students eat lunch as a community and learn basic table manners as they sit at the tables with placemats, plates, silverware, and cups. They are also given the opportunity to pour their own water once they have been seated at the table. Students have a sense of comradery as they eat together, have conversations, and laugh. Here, a student can even be seen swirling her spaghetti onto her fork. Young children can be capable of so much when given the tools to learn new things and succeed. Once they are finished, they clean up after themselves by putting their used dishes in the appropriate buckets and going to the restroom to wash their hands.

Early Childhood and Upper Elementary - Fractions

Students learning about fractions using the Fraction Circles benefit greatly from the concrete, consistent, and gradual nature of the Montessori approach. Instead of simply using drawings representing fractional parts, Montessori students are able to feel (as well as see) fractions like 1/10, 2/5, and 3/4, and can use these inviting materials to discover for themselves concepts such as equivalent fractions. As children move into the elementary years, the materials continue to provide a concrete way for students to easily see how adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions is accomplished.

Toddler and Early Childhood - Rolling a Rug

Rolling a rug is precise work! Directly, it enables a student to complete work on the floor and define the workspace. Indirectly, it enhances a child's coordination of movement and concentration while also strengthening a child's fingers for writing and reinforcing care of the environment. In the Toddler environment, the students use smaller rugs and receive guidance from a teacher until they are able to roll it independently. As they grow older and transition to Early Childhood, the rugs are bigger to provide space for the larger, more complicated materials. The students become more precise in their movements, calling to their natural sense of order and fostering respect for the environment that their entire classroom shares.

Toddler - Whisking Work

There are many steps a child must remember to successfully complete the whisking work all while developing skills for future learning. Recalling and executing sequences prepares a child for academic work in language and math. The fine motor skills necessary to accomplish this task readies a child's hand for future writing. Even the way that students are taught to maneuver the whisk mimics letter formation. Finally, the child develops the ability to focus on a task, improving their concentration and preparing the mind for completing challenging academic work in the future. Beyond all of these preparations is the subliminal lesson of independence and respect for the environment that the child is receiving. Who knew a simple activity such as whisking could teach a young child so much?

Early Childhood - Hiking in the Wildscape

How about this weather?! During hikes in our 5-acre Wildscape, our Early Childhood students are constantly learning through exploration as they increase their understanding of the world around them; exposure to the outdoors can foster this natural curiosity. The Wildscape is the perfect space for the children to navigate the various terrains to build their gross motor skills as they run the trails and climb the trees. Younger children may hang from the limbs, strengthening their muscles, while older children can climb, building coordination between their arms and legs as well as cognitive development as they plan their movements. The students practice grace and courtesy as they travel through the trails in a line and respect each other's space.

“There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature; to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature.” -- Maria Montessori

“There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving.” -- Maria Montessori