Education is a preparation for life, not a search for intellectual skills.  Dr. Montessori said that the only really important thing in education is to teach the child how to learn. Every baby is born with the desire to know, the urge to explore, and the need to master the environment – in short, to achieve.  The motivations for learning come from within the child. The child who accomplishes this, moves into harmony with this world and becomes a full person. With that in mind, the Montessori environment is carefully prepared to train the senses, to stimulate curiosity, to satisfy the child’s need to know, and to protect him from unnecessary failure.

A Montessori preschool program lasts from the age of 2 ½ through 5 ½.   During this time they reach for a balanced social and physical, self-discipline, self-knowledge and independence, as well as an enthusiasm for learning. They should have an organized approach to problem solving and basic academic skills.  These long range goals require a full three years to attain.
The Montessori environment

• Permits your child to find and to participate freely in activities suited to his/her individual level of capability.
• Helps your child become an orderly, integrated person with self-direction, inner discipline, and a sense of responsibility.
• Fulfills your child’s need to become independent and to be able to make wise choices.
• Makes it easy for your child to learn social skills as well as basic cognitive skills.

The physical environment of our Montessori classrooms is carefully prepared, orderly, precise and attractive.  They invite learning without being over-stimulating while allowing the children to experience success that becomes truly meaningful to each child in the following areas of the classroom:

Practical Life:
These exercises aid in the child's development of order, concentration, coordination, and independence.  They relate to the care of self and the environment and emphasize the development in a step-by-step approach to work activities.  These are essential for establishing the good work habits that are necessary for later success in the academic areas of the classroom.

Sensorial:
These exercises aid in the child's development of perception and sensory awareness.  The sensorial materials isolate all the different senses and are developmental, leading to finer and finer distinctions.  These perceptual skills provide the child with the tools for all learning.

Language:
These exercises provide the child with the concrete foundation for all further language work. Activities emphasizing auditory and visual perception skills are begun with children 2 ½ to 3 years old. This basis for a phonetic approach to the sounds of our language leads directly to writing and reading. Learning the usage and function of words, with an emphasis on reading for meaning, leads to greater creativity in expression and enthusiasm for both reading and writing.

Math:
These exercises introduce the child to the world of numbers in concrete form.  The child not only learns numbers and counting, but is also introduced to addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and the concept of fractions.

Cultural:
These exercises provide an introduction to the world around the child through exercises in history, geography, science, art, music, and foreign language.

A child's early years are the foundation upon which the rest of his experiences are built.  The importance of providing a strong and positive base is paramount.  In Montessori education, the child is respected as an individual in the environment with unique potential.  This careful and appropriately planned transforming environment provides a wide range of experiences and opportunities that encourage and enhance the child's ability to fulfill his potential.

Montessori Principles

• Mixed age grouping
• Freedom of choice with responsibility
• Self-teaching manipulative materials
• Character and personality development
• Acknowledgment that children progress at their own rate
• Children learn to care for themselves and their environment
  
• Encourages left and right brain integration
  
• Movement necessary for neuro-muscular development
  
• Richly prepared environment
  
• Control of error built into lessons
  
• Teacher is a guide
  
• Builds positive self image
  
• Logical consequences for behavior
  
• Self-discipline through work
  
• Interrelated curriculum
  
• Individual as well as group interactions
  
• Sensitive periods for learning
  
• Lessons in grace and courtesy
  
• Sensory-based learning
  
• Appreciation of all life
  
• Peace through education

Strong words describe the child within the philosophies of both Dr. Maria Montessori and those of the educators of Reggio Emilia, Italy. "Rich, strong, powerful" (Rinaldi 1993, 102): "active, and competent" (Edwards 1993, 152); "connected to adults and other children" (Malaguzzi 1993. 10.)

Reggio Emilia is a city in northern Italy situated in a region rich in art, architecture, agriculture, industry and tourism.  It is also an area with a very highly developed concern for child welfare.  Following WWII strong local initiatives led to the parent-run schools that were the beginning of the Reggio Emilia preschools.  The parents found inspiration and encouragement in the progressive ideas of John Dewey and Celestin Freinet.  The work of Jean Piaget, and others such as Leo Vygotsky and Maria Montessori supported the teachers' observations and discoveries about children and their development.

In 1963 Loris Malaguzzi brought his energies and philosophy into a battle to get the city government to make the people’s schools municipally funded. Under his direction, the educators in Reggio Emilia have come to view children, as well as teachers and parents, as collaborators in a holistic, educational process. They have not established a formal model to be emulated in every early childhood class around the world. Instead they view their experience with the children as an evolution of relationships that benefits and expands the thoughts of the adults as well as the children. In Reggio Emilia it is an ongoing process. It is an exciting process of attitude to be adapted to other cultures.

• Teachers are nurturers, guides, and partners in learning. They facilitate the children’s explorations through long and short projects, and guide experiences of joint, open-ended discovery and problem solving. To know how to plan and proceed with their work, teachers listen and observe children closely. Teachers ask questions, discover children’s ideas, hypotheses, and theories – and provide occasions for discovery and learning.  Teachers are researchers working with children.
  
  
• The child is a collaborator and communicator in his own growth and development. As in Montessori philosophy, children are strong and capable, bringing potential, curiosity and interest into constructing their learning. They negotiate with everything their environment brings to them.
  
  In the Reggio Emilia philosophy the child does not work in isolation. Each child is part of a relationship with other children, the family, the teachers, and the community. He begins life in a community. We are learning to work together. This approach fosters children’s intellectual development through a systematic focus on symbolic representation, including words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, and music . . . 100 languages of the mind and spirit.
  
  
• Parents are partners. Parent participation is considered essential and takes many forms. Parents play an active part in their children’s learning experience and help ensure the welfare of all the children in the school. The ideas and skills that the families bring to the school – and even more importantly, the exchange of ideas between parents and teachers – favor the development of a new way of education, which helps teachers view the participation of families as an integration of different wisdoms. (Cadwell 1997,5)
  
  
• The environment is a third teacher. Every corner of every space is rich in potential to engage and to communicate. Within the Montessori classroom “prepared environments” focus attention on materials and encourage independence and self-discipline. Within the beauty of those materials, the child is given the opportunity to see the individual aspects of an idea and work with those small parts as he/she gains an understanding. The environment within our studio requires that the child build on the concepts gained in the rest of the classroom and reestablish a whole. Education becomes a spiraling development of learning, not linear. Ideas are revisited through encounters, exchanges, and communication.
  
  
• Documentation is a means of communication. It makes parents aware of their children’s experiences. It allows teachers to better understand children, to evaluate their own work, and to exchange ideas with other educators. It also shows children that their work is valued. Finally it creates an archive that traces the history of the school and the pleasure in the process of learning experienced by many children and their teachers.

"Do nothing without joy."