Banksia's activities encourage natural and social development, independence, self-motivation, auditory and visual discrimination, self-discipline and decision making, concentration and focus, muscle development, coordination, a positive self-concept, and a love of learning. By ensuring that the classroom environment is designed to be as accessible as possible for children to work in and everything has its place, children can be given the maximum freedom to move and develop.
In a Montessori environment, children of mixed ages and abilities are grouped in three-year spans. Our school caters to a maximum of 28 three to six-year-olds in one big classroom. Many of the Montessori materials are self-correcting. This means your child has the opportunity to recognize if the exercise was completed correctly or not while working with the equipment. If not, he can try again, ask another child for help, or go to a teacher for suggestions. Children are challenged according to their ability and never bored.
Typical activities for pre-kindy and kindy children include sandpaper letter and number tracing, sorting, stacking, pouring, painting, drawing, counting, matching objects, juicing oranges, peeling carrots, cutting, doing puzzles, learning how to do and undo buttons, zippers, locks, etc. These are all 'jobs' children naturally like to do yet also play an essential role in developing fine motor skills, hand and eye coordination, concentration, and self-confidence.
Older children will complete similar activities but at an increasing level of difficulty. Often the same Montessori materials can be used differently according to the age and development of each child. A unique set of ten blocks of graduated sizes called the pink tower, for example, may be used just for stacking, combined with the brown stair for comparison, or used with construction paper to trace, cut, and make a paper design study perspective and measurement.
Generally, during a child's fourth year, they are getting ready to read and write. When they draw pictures, they often include letters or words. They usually know all the sandpaper letters and are starting to make words with the movable alphabet. Next, they start writing sentences. Maths, science, history, music, movement, and arts are essential components of our classroom activities.
We strongly encourage parents as well as prospective to attend our Parent Information Nights. They are held once a term, and each session explores a different topic: practical life and sensorial, language or maths. This is a great way to learn the Montessori approach to education and view first-hand what your child is up to in our classroom.
