CMS Primary Kindergarten Program

For ages 3-6, this program is dedicated to the Montessori philosophy which recognizes a child's need to learn through hands-on activities, observing all aspects of the world around them. Students work independently while cooperating within a community. Every day the students bring enthusiasm and joy to beautiful and orderly classrooms, then our teachers give each child the proper balance of guidance and freedom with which to learn with confidence and purpose. Every child in the program is on an individualized education program which is constructed and supervised by certified Montessori instructors each day, and our students, quite simply, love school.

The Primary and Kindergarten curriculum includes:

  • Honor
  • Responsibility
  • Work Ethic
  • Kindness
  • Phonetic and Sight Word reading instruction
  • Investigative Science
  • Mathematics
  • Geography
  • Music and Art
  • Spanish
  • Creative and Directed Writing
  • Sentence Structure
  • Practical Life Skills (dressing, cleaning, organizing, food preparation)

 

Reading Development in the Montessori School

To help you sort out some of those important ideas about how children become fluent readers, let's summarize the main points:

Decoding words is only the entry point. Comprehension must go hand-in-hand with decoding for good reading.

Children who develop early habits of "barking at print" may never become fluent readers. Learning words in isolation (e.g., on flash cards) removes reading from its normal context of getting meaning from real language.

Likewise, please don't encourage too many computer alphabet games that separate decoding from meaning.

Children without a good base of language and thinking skills have trouble understanding and applying what they read.

There are two main ways to recognize words: By sight (words which cannot be shown with pictures or which do not follow the phonetic pattern) or using phonics (decoding).

Some intelligent children do not easily remember words by sight. They need to depend on phonics in order to learn to read words, and they learn best through methods that incorporate all the senses (sight, hearing, speech and tactile).

Most children do not have the neural development required for phonics work sheets until sometime between their fifth and sixth year of age. Early childhood programs should focus on language and listening, not pencil and paper drills.

Reading comprehension is built on mental networks formed throughout childhood - beginning at birth and continuing with the opportunities for language in the real world. Experience = comprehension, and poor comprehension may be the result of inadequate experience with the ideas presented.

Good reading requires intellectual risk taking. A perfectionist environment where mistakes are barely tolerated will inhibit a child's reading development.

Early reading is not always a sign of giftedness. If it replaces other activities which are developmentally appropriate (talking, playing, etc.), it may be a danger signal. If your child shows symptoms of delayed language, anxiety, or difficulty with interpersonal relationships, reading emphasis should be postponed.

The best predictor of your child's later reading success is the time you spend reading to them. Fluency and inflection as practiced by an adult reader becomes the foundation of your child's ability to comprehend and recreate language while reading.

{Excerpted from Children Read With Their Brains}
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