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Montessori education approach is characterized by an emphasis on independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological, physical, and social development. Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children ages 2½ or 3 to 6 years old are by far the most common.
Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options. Uninterrupted blocks of work time. A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction. Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators. Freedom of movement within the classroom.
Montessori education is fundamentally a model of human development, and an educational approach based on that model. The model has two basic principles. First, children and developing adults engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction with their environments. Second, children, especially under the age of six, have an innate path of psychological development. Montessori believed that children who are at liberty to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.
In the Montessori approach, these human tendencies are seen as driving behavior in every stage of development, and education should respond to and facilitate their expression.
Abstraction
Activity
Communication
Exactness
Exploration
Manipulation (of the environment)
Order
Orientation
Repetition
Self-Perfection
Work (also described as "purposeful activity")
Montessori's education method called for free activity within a "prepared environment", meaning an educational environment tailored to basic human characteristics, to the specific characteristics of children at different ages, and to the individual personalities of each child. The function of the environment is to help and allow the child to develop independence in all areas according to his or her inner psychological directives. In addition to offering access to the Montessori materials appropriate to the age of the children, the environment should exhibit the following characteristics:
An arrangement that facilitates movement and activity
Beauty and harmony, cleanliness of environment
Construction in proportion to the child and her/his needs
Limitation of materials, so that only material that supports the child's development is included
Order
Nature in the classroom and outside of the classroom
The RIE approach is centered around Respect.
We not only respect our students, we demonstrate our respect every time we interact with them. Respecting a child means treating even the youngest infant as a unique human being, not as an object.
The goal is to foster an authentic child. An authentic child is one who feels secure, autonomous, competent, and connected.
When we help a child to feel secure, feel appreciated, feel that “somebody is deeply, truly interested in me,” by the way we just look, the way we just listen, we influence that child’s whole personality, the way that child sees life.
Trust in the students competence. We have basic trust in the child to be an initiator, to be an explorer eager to learn what he is ready for. Because of this trust, we provide the infant with only enough help necessary to allow the child to enjoy mastery of her own actions.SENSITIVE OBSERVATION
Our method, guided by respect for the students competence, is observation. We observe carefully to understand the child’s communications and his needs.
The more we observe, the more we understand and appreciate the enormous amount and speed of learning that happens during the first two or three years of life. We become more humble, we teach less, and we provide an environment for learning instead.
A SAFE, CHALLENGING, PREDICTABLE ENVIRONMENT
Our role is to create an environment in which the child can best do all the things that the child would do naturally. The more predictable an environment is, the easier it is for students to learn.
TIME FOR UNINTERRUPTED PLAY AND FREEDOM TO EXPLORE
We give the students plenty of time for uninterrupted play. Instead of trying to teach children new skills, we appreciate and admire what they are actually doing.
CONSISTENCY
We establish clearly defined limits and communicate our expectations to develop discipline.
The Reggio Emilia approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education but can be implemented throughout all the schooling years. The belief that children were in need of a new way of learning. The assumption that people form their own personality during early years of development and that children are endowed with "a hundred languages" through which they can express their ideas. The aim of this approach is teaching how to use these symbolic languages (eg., painting, sculpting, drama) in everyday life. The program is based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children through a self-guided curriculum.
This innovative approach to education. The keyword of this method is foster education, from the tender age, promoting the best possible integration among children’s languages, there is a belief that children have rights and should be given opportunities to develop their potential. Children are believed “knowledge bearers”, so they are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas about everything they could meet or do during the day.
The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of principles:
Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;
Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, and observing;
Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore;
Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
The Reggio Emilia approach to teaching young children puts the natural development of children as well as the close relationships that they share with their environment at the center of its philosophy. The foundation of the Reggio Emilia approach lies in its unique view of the child. In this approach, there is a belief that children have rights and should be given opportunities to develop their potential. “Influenced by this belief, the child is beheld as beautiful, powerful, competent, creative, curious, and full of potential and ambitious desires." The child is also viewed as being an active constructor of knowledge. Rather than being seen as the target of instruction, children are seen as having the active role of an apprentice.This role also extends to that of a researcher. Much of the instruction at Reggio Emilia schools takes place in the form of projects where they have opportunities to explore, observe, hypothesize, question, and discuss to clarify their understanding. Children are also viewed as social beings and a focus is made on the child in relation to other children, the family, the teachers, and the community rather than on each child in isolation.
Educators have to make children aware that respect for everyone else is important because everyone is a “subjective agency ” while existing as part of a group.
Parents are viewed as partners, collaborators and advocates for their children. Teachers respect parents as each child's first teacher and involve parents in every aspect of the curriculum. It is not uncommon to see parents volunteering within Reggio Emilia classrooms throughout the school. This philosophy does not end when the child leaves the classroom. Some parents who choose to send their children to a Reggio Emilia program incorporate many of the principles within their parenting and home life.
In the Reggio approach, the teacher is considered a co-learner and collaborator with the child and not just an instructor. Teachers are encouraged to facilitate the child's learning by planning activities and lessons based on the child's interests, asking questions to further understanding, and actively engaging in the activities alongside the child, instead of sitting back and observing the child learning. "As partner to the child, the teacher is inside the learning situation" (Hewett, 2001).
While working on projects with the child, the teacher can also expand the child's learning by collecting data that can be reviewed at a later time. The teacher needs to maintain an active, mutual participation in the activity to help ensure that the child clearly understands what is being "taught".
Using a variety of media, teachers give careful attention to the documentation and presentation of the thinking of the children. Rather than making judgements about the child, the teacher inquires and listens closely to the children. An example of documentation might be a book or panel with the student’s words, drawings, and photographs. By making learning visible, the teachers accomplish several things. They are able to study the thinking and feeling of the students in order to gain insight into their understanding. Also, the documentation serves to help the teacher and other educators to evaluate their own work and refine the curriculum accordingly. And finally, it gives parents information regarding their child’s learning experience while creating an archive for the class and school.
The physical environment is of fundamental importance to the early childhood program, and is often referred to as the child's "third teacher". One of the aims in the design of new spaces - and the redesign of existing ones - is integration of the classroom space with the surrounding environment: the rest of the school, and community the school is a part of. The importance of the environment lies in the belief that children can best create meaning and make sense of their world through environments which support "complex, varied, sustained, and changing relationships between people, the world of experience, ideas and the many ways of expressing ideas."
The preschools are generally filled with indoor plants and vines, and awash with natural light. Classrooms open to a center piazza, kitchens are open to view, and access to the surrounding community is assured through wall-size windows, courtyards, and doors to the outside in each classroom. Entries capture the attention of both children and adults through the use of mirrors (on the walls, floors, and ceilings), photographs, and children's work accompanied by transcriptions of their discussions. These same features characterize classroom interiors, where displays of project work are interspersed with arrays of found objects and classroom materials. In each case, the environment informs and engages the viewer.
Groups of children will stay with one particular teacher for a three-year period, creating consistency and an environment where there are no added pressures from having to form new relationships.
Waldorf education approach pedagogy emphasizes the role of imagination in learning, striving to integrate holistically the intellectual, practical, and artistic development of pupils.
A child development into three major stages is reflected in the schools' approach to early childhood education, which focuses on practical, hands-on activities and creative play; to elementary education, which focuses on developing artistic expression and social capacities; and to secondary education, which focuses on developing critical reasoning and empathic understanding. The overarching goal is to develop free, morally responsible, and integrated individuals equipped with a high degree of social competence, qualitative assessments of student work are integrated into the daily life of the classroom, with quantitative testing playing a minimal role in primary education and standardized testing usually limited to that required for college entry. Individual teachers and schools have a great deal of autonomy in determining curriculum content, teaching methodology, and governance.
Sensory Stimulation Theory traditional sensory stimulation theory has as its basic premise that effective learning occurs when the senses are stimulated (Laird, 1985). Laird quotes research that found that the vast majority of knowledge held by adults (75%) is learned through seeing. Hearing is the next most effective (about 13%) and the other senses - touch, smell and taste account for 12% of what we know. By stimulating the senses, especially the visual sense, learning can be enhanced. However, this theory says that if multi-senses are stimulated, greater learning takes place. Stimulation through the senses is achieved through a greater variety of colours, volume levels, strong statements, facts presented visually, use of a variety of techniques and media.
Playducation is a new learning culture. Playducation emerged from “bring on the learning revolution” that is being heard by educators all over the world. Well bring on the FUN out-of-the-box-learning! The idea that play is just as important as academic schooling and that children learn through play. Allowing kids to be kids, we have created progressive playgrounds, schools & universities all over the world that prove learning can be fun and engaging. We are creating quests for a playful education that work for all age groups.
Cooking is a great way to Promote Development and Learning Cooking is not only a fun and engaging activity for children, but one that has been used for years as an important teaching and development tool for all ages.
Cooking has a Social-Emotional Development – Hands-on cooking activities help children develop pride and confidence in their skills and abilities. The act of following a recipe can encourage self-direction and independence, while also teaching children to follow directions and use thinking skills to problem solve.
Cooking has a Physical Development – Chopping, squeezing, spreading, and mixing are all cooking skills that help develop a child’s small muscle control and eye-hand coordination. It’s impossible to separate hands-on cooking activities from physical development for young children.
Cooking has Cognitive Development – Cooking inspires children’s curiosity, thinking, and problem solving, offering new opportunities to make predictions and observations. Additionally, cooking offers authentic opportunities for students to understand and apply their knowledge of measuring, one-to-one correspondence, numbers, and counting. As they follow a recipe, children organize ingredients, follow a sequence, and carry out multiple directions.
Cooking helps Language Development – With its own vocabulary, cooking is a great opportunity for language development. Take advantage of opportunities for children to match pictures to words and articulate questions inspired by their new experiences.
Cooking has Connections to Content Areas Mathematics, Number concepts, One-to-one correspondence, Simple addition, Patterning (layered salads, kabobs), Measurement, Data collection, organization, and representation (voting on who wants a particular recipe or ingredient), Simple fractions (half, whole, quarter) Arts, Drawing/painting fresh seasonal products, Pictorial recipes, Edible art Science, Life science (growing food in the garden), Physical science investigation (changing forms – liquids, solids, gases), Making predictions and observations Social Studies, Share family recipes, Discover the important role of farmers in communities Literacy, Vocabulary and language development, Children’s literature, Recipe cards, and Life Skills.
We use gardening as a way to integrate with classroom curriculum. Although science is the most natural fit, with the school garden playing the role of science laboratory, the classroom garden can also act as a springboard for a wide range of lessons in mathematics, historysocial science, English-language arts, visual and performing arts, and health.
The garden provides ample opportunity for making science inviting and relevant to students’ lives by inspiring active exploration and problem solving. The garden encourages inquiry as students use their senses, reasoning, and communication skills to find answers to questions. These experiences can help improve students’ attitude toward science. Key science concepts that can be explored in the garden include organisms, cycles, basic requirements for life, plant anatomy, adaptations, food webs, decomposition, interdependence, ecological principles, pollination, and diversity of life. Students practice and hone scientific process skills by observing, classifying, inferring, measuring, predicting, organizing and interpreting data, forming hypotheses, and identifying variables.
Exploring local food and farms with young learners doesn’t have to be challenging! Our preschool lesson plans are an easy way to build connections between the outdoor environment and the classroom while introducing children to new fruits and vegetables.
Bringing gardening into the classroom curriculum incorporates cooking with the fruits, vegetables, and herbs that they plant. Kid tested and teacher approved recipes for each month of the school year. These lesson plans include full step-by-step instructions for cooking in the classroom and include literature connections and other activities to complete the lesson.
School gardens provide students of all ages with opportunities for hands-on learning activities. Our garden lesson plans provide a framework for outdoor exploration regardless of the color of your thumb.
Our lesson plans provide students with opportunities to learn about seasonal foods and local farms. Students explore the science of food with these inquiry-based lesson plans.
Traditional education includes Circle Time which is a great way to start and end the day. It promotes a sense of community. Circle Time provides a time for the children to bond with and get to know one another and their teacher.
During Circle Time we discus the weather, the calendar, and color/shape/letter/number of the week, sing songs, and have story time, read a book to tie in literature to the lesson plan. Everything is perfectly themed tying the weekly curriculum and activities together but it's also so much more. This is a time your children get to share their stories. Preschool Circle Time is a wonderful time to introduce new materials! This is also a great time to reintroduce a forgotten material! Sometimes the children get to wear the clothes from the dress up closet during circle time or use musical instruments. When we discussed bears and hibernation we had them all hold their teddy bears.
Circle Time can be used for new materials to hand out. We ask them to share with a friend or pass it around and add two colors together and look through it with a magnifying class. They loved that the red and blue made everything look purple for example!
During Story Time portion of Circle Time we try to keep things interesting. Rather than just read a story, we have the children act out the story while we tell it with the use of Puppets, Flannel Boards, flannel board pieces for the children to add as you read the story, drawings on the white board, Acting out the story, using props, voices, songs.