Practical life

Practical life activities allow children to practise skills for personal independence whilst developing their balance, movement, hand-eye co-ordination and concentration, all important skills for more academic learning which will come later. Being at Seedlings also lays an excellent foundation for children's personal, social and emotional development.

Sensorial

The Montessori sensorial materials introduce children to many concepts that we appreciate through our senses, such as colours and shapes, texture, sound and pitch, dimension, length and weight. From their work with these materials the children gain practical and concrete experience of early mathematical concepts, enabling them to reach many of the early learning goals across all the areas of learning, giving them a good grounding for entry to school.

Language

The Montessori prepared environment has a strong focus on communication, language and literacy, one of the Early Years Foundation Stage areas of learning. The calm of the Montessori environment enables the children to hear clearly and respond to what adults and other children are saying, and their language skills grow as their social skills develop.       

There is a strong emphasis on developing listening skills in preparation for the children being introduced to phonic letter sounds using a multi-sensory approach. By understanding the phonetic 'building blocks' with which words are formed, children quickly learn both to build (write) and read words. They are provided with plenty of opportunities to practise their emergent writing, which develops spontaneously. The book corner is a favourite haunt, and reading and telling of stories and rhymes happpens frequently throughout the day.

Maths (Problem-solving, Reasoning and Numeracy)

Following on from the indirect preparation gained from working in the practical life and sensorial areas of the prepared environment, and in response to a developing interest in numbers and counting the children first learn to recognise and work with numerals and quantities, and the structured approach of the Montessori curriculum enables them to progess easily in line with the expectations of the EYFS.

Cultural

Our cultural area responds to the children's curiosity about the world around them by encouraging them to investigate and question. Through early introductions to geography, history, science, music and art, the Montessori environment fulfills the EYFS requirements in the learning area of knowledge and understanding of the world.

Creative   

The Montessori environment nurtures the children's creative spirit by encouraging them to use their imaginations and express themsleves freely through a variety of creative media, such as painting, drawing, collage, music, dance and construction. In this way the children work towards the early learning goals laid down in the EYFS relating to creative development.