Primary (3-6 yrs.)
From this early experience, the young child is prepared for the challenges of elementary school. Plum Tree early childhood education helps to develop a child who is:
- Intellectually curious
- Self-disciplined
- Coordinated in movement
- Refined in social graces
- Cultured in arts and music
- Academically skilled
Promoting a Cooperative Community
The Early Childhood classroom is a thriving social and learning community. In a multi-age, interactive setting the children learn shared responsibility, compassion, and respect for each other. Older children reinforce lessons they have learned by sharing their knowledge with younger children, while the younger children observe the work of the older children and are motivated toward these future experiences. Together, the children grow to be independent learners and thinkers and to become socially capable.
Enriching the Child’s Natural Sense of Wonder
With their great sense of wonder, children under six explore and discover the world through the activities and materials available to them in this rich classroom. They respond to a carefully prepared environment that allows them to move, touch, create and discover. With structure, order, and freedom within the classroom, children are comfortable, calm, and resourceful.
Beautiful, concrete, manipulative materials invite activity, convey abstract concepts, and reveal relationships to children through sensory exploration and repeated activity. Montessori materials are specifically designed to enable the children to work purposefully and productively without adult interference. A true sense of accomplishment and satisfaction comes when the child is able to solve problems for himself.
Offering an Academic Curriculum
An interdisciplinary curriculum meets the needs of each child at his/her stage of development. As a guide to learning, the teacher acknowledges the child’s initiative, pace, and readiness. Individual and small group lessons are presented with great enthusiasm which entices the child to learn. Teaching concepts when the individual is ready promotes continual success and motivation.
A Plum Tree education facilitates the development of each child. The child then develops an imagination and conceptual ability well beyond the boundaries of the immediate classroom, and well beyond the capabilities of traditional education.
To a casual observer, it is evident that children between three to six years are self-confident, independent, and enthusiastic about learning. They go about their work calmly and purposefully, whether it is counting beads, cutting raw vegetables, carrying pitchers of water and pouring without spilling, or constructing sentences with the moveable alphabet.