The Children’s House program at Lake Country School serves children ages 3 to 6 in three multi-age classrooms. Each of the three classrooms has two Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) trained teachers, typically called “guides.”

Recent research on the development of the brain has borne out Montessori’s observation that young children are particularly sensitive to learning from their environment through the power of what she called “the absorbent mind,” which can take in everything that is offered. The classroom guides the children with concrete materials that offer keys to the world and allows them to work at their own pace. In a Montessori program children construct themselves through meaningful activity in these areas:

Practical Life Activities
These carefully prepared activities include many of the tasks children see as part of the daily routine of their culture, such as carrying objects, pouring liquids, preparing foods, fastening clothes, washing hands, washing dishes and cloths, polishing shoes and furniture, and taking care of the environment. Through these tasks, children refine their muscular coordination and develop their powers of concentration by learning to work at a task from beginning to end. 

Sensorial Activities
These activities use materials Montessori developed to help children learn accurate information about physical properties of the environment. Each piece of sensorial material isolates one quality such as dimension, color, weight, texture, shape, smell or sound. Because children of this age absorb the world through their senses, experience with the sensorial materials provides the foundation for both physical and mental activities in learning. The sensorial materials also enable children to refine all of their senses, including vision, small motor movements, hearing, and speech in preparation for learning and using written language.

Language Activities
The young child is receptive to language in all its forms-–spoken and written language, the language of mathematics and music, and a second or third language. Our first emphasis is on oral language development, through naming objects in the environment, giving scientific classifications to leaf shapes and parts of animals, in geographic place names and in abundant conversation. The children first learn the sounds and symbols sensorially with the sandpaper letters and then begin to construct words with moveable alphabets. After acquiring sufficient experience with oral language and individual sounds, they explode into writing and reading. The broad range of cultural materials expands the child’s oral and written language experience in such areas as art, music, science, history, geography, and French. 

Mathematics
The Children’s House program promotes the child’s innate mathematical ability in its early stages of development. In the Montessori environment, children learn and understand the concepts of math by manipulating concrete materials that are designed to isolate a concept and prepare the child for later abstract reasoning. The development of the mind and body are integrated as the child uses number rods or carries units for the change game. The goals of the program are the introduction to the decimal system, computational skills and confidence in using numbers in everyday life. 

Cultural Activities
Art, music, science, geography, and French are carefully integrated into the whole learning experience. The classroom environment responds to the children’s natural curiosity with living plants, animals and hands-on materials that are part of the classroom. Children are encouraged to share projects or natural objects (such as flowers, leaves or stones), things from other cultures or times, or especially good books. The particular time for sharing is determined by each classroom. 

Development of the Social Community
In a Montessori classroom, children are in the process of discovering who they are and through lessons of Grace and Courtesy, learning how to live well in a community. Older children are responsive to the needs of the younger children, and the younger children learn to seek help from their more experienced classmates. Children can choose to work alone or with others. This balance between freedom of the individual and the needs of the group is fundamental to all our environments and is the foundation for the self-control, responsibility, respect and independence that is laid in Children’s House. 

Physical Education
The variety and independence of the activities in the Children’s House emphasize physical movement, which is fundamental to how children learn. Children who are at school all day have the opportunity for play outside or in the gymnasium daily. They experience and explore locomotive and non-locomotive movements through cooperative games, rhythms, and yoga.

Children’s House Performance
Once a year the children may offer a performance or presentation to their parents in addition to what is shared with each other. The presentation takes many forms, from acting and musical presentations to sharing some aspect of their work. These first productions are an empowering experience for the children and help prepare them to be comfortable with self-expression in front of an audience.

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