Kindergarten

5 years to 6 years old
Kindergarten Program Level 4

Girl building Montessori towerIn just five years, the typical kindergartner has learned to understand all of the grammatical structures in their native language. The child can listen to and tell complex stories. They can play with language by rhyming and listening to words that begin with the same sound. Kindergartners begin to explore the relationships between listening and speaking and reading and writing. They learn which letters and sounds go together, recognize some common words, remember and create stories, and use all of these skills to read simple books and write simple messages.

. The kindergarten child has developed a lengthy attention span, works independently, and assist other peers in need of help. They can complete a five part sequence of events and have advanced recall of details in stories. These students have developed a positive and enthusiastic approach to reading. They are very self-motivated and enjoy reading as a self-chosen activity.

The child entering this group has developed a solid background in phonemic awareness, blending letters to form words, word families and initial writing skills. The child continue with the remaining 14 books in the Lippincott Letter book Series and completes the series by June.

Language/Reading

Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.

Maria Montessori

Your child will be given lessons in the following areas of language and reading development:

  • Letter and sound correspondence of the entire alphabet
  • Blending 3-5 letter words and short phonetic sentences
  • Develop fluency and tone when reading aloud
  • Reading short phonetic stories independently
  • Discriminating short vowel sounds and their medial position
  • Generate rhyming words and word families
  • Writing short phonetic words and sentences during dictation exercises
  • Reading short phonetic books
  • Introduction to compound words
  • Simple rules of punctuation and uses when writing
  • Noun/verb
  • Present and past tense
  • Identify misspellings in phonetic words
  • Introduction to high frequency words (Dolch Sight Words Program)
  • Diphthongs and diagraphs

Fine Motor Skills

Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.

Maria Montessori

  • Cut out simple shapes and cut along advanced paths accurately
  • Draw a picture with details
  • Draw a person with details
  • Can write first and last name
  • Firm tripod grip
  • Can write on a line maintaining legibility
  • Draw shapes independently
  • Can trace, self-generate letters and numbers
  • Can duplicate words and short sentences (near and far point duplication)
  • Maintain legibility in writing
  • Complete 20 piece puzzle independently
  • Build complex designs with Lego’s and blocks

MATHEMATICS

boy with abacusMontessori promoted the belief that math in the early years prepares a child for logical and critical thinking, not for memorizing mathematical facts.  Math to a young child’s developing mind is not about facts and memorization. Math in a young child’s life, especially his early years, deals directly with shapes, patterns and spatial relationships he experiences within his environment. He absorbs these experiences and this information into his brain making it ripe for further developing and nurturing. All activities and lessons thus far are prepared to further develop and stimulate the mathematical mind that we are innately born with. The following lessons promote this development in the child’s kindergarten year.

  •  Writing numbers to 100 and beyond
  • Inequalities
  • Place value (to the hundreds, thousandths and beyond)
  • Skip counting by 2’s,5’s,10’s,100’s, 1000’s ( Golden Beads)
  • Addition/Subtraction using Montessori beads (hundreds place and beyond)
  • Addition facts families
  • Identify Fractions and quantitative comparisons
  • Identify all geometric solids
  • Time( hour, half hour, to the minute)
  • Advance money concepts – adding, subtracting, counting change
  • Simple word problems
  • Measurement – inches, centimeters
  • Interpret Bar graphs, charts, maps and diagrams
  • Introduction to Roman Numerals
  • Introduction to Multiplication and Division

We celebrate each child’s uniqueness and individual learning styles and positively challenge each child to perform to the best of their abilities. Each child’s individual progress is monitored on a daily basis. A separate and individual curriculum will be created for a child if additional academic work is needed.

Parents will receive a monthly newsletter to explain upcoming concepts in Language, Practical Life and Mathematics. Critical thinking, analyzing information and drawing conclusions are areas that begin to develop at this stage when presented with prepared lessons and classroom materials to enhance their “work” period experience.

Upon completion of the kindergarten year at Serenity Montessori Academy, your child will have accumulated an enormous amount of information and has been stimulated in diverse aspects of society and the world. The child is self-sufficient, displays confidence with peers and adults and is an independent thinker. They have been a positive role model for the younger students in the classroom and have developed a love for learning and a joy for sharing with others their newly acquired knowledge

We believe that the several years your child spends at Serenity Montessori Academy creates a foundation that enables the child to satisfy their instinctual, personal , and developmental needs and the result in a well-balanced individual that respects humanity and nature and can make an impact in society in the future.