The Montessori Primary Program (ages three to six)
     The Montessori classroom is a "living room" for children.  Children choose their work from among the self-correcting materials displayed on open shelves, and they work in specific work areas.  Over a period of time the children develop into a normalized community working with high concentration and few interruptions.  Normalization is the process whereby a child moves from being undisciplined to self-disciplined, from disordered to ordered, from distracted to focused, through work in the environment.  The process occurs through repeated work with materials that captivate the child's  attention.   For some children this "inner change" may take place quite suddenly, leading to deep concentration.  In the Montessori preschool, academic competency is a means to an end, and the manipulatives are viewed as "materials for development."

In the Primary Program, ages three to six,  five distinct areas constitute the prepared environment:

• Practical life enhances the development of task organization and cognitive order through care of self, care of the environment, exercises of grace and courtesy, and coordination of physical movement.
• Sensorial enables the child to order, classify, and describe sensory impressions in relation to length, width, temperature, mass, color, etc.
• Mathematics makes use of manipulative materials to enable the child to internalize concepts of number, symbol, sequence, operations and memorization of basic facts.
• Language arts include oral language development, written expression, reading, the study of grammar, creative dramatics and children's literature. Basic skills in writing and reading are developed through the use of sandpaper letters, alphabet cut-outs and various presentations allowing children to link sounds and letter symbols effortlessly and to express their thoughts through writing.
• Cultural exposes the child to the basics in geography, history and life sciences. Music, art and movement education are part of the integrated cultural curriculum

The Elementary program, ages six through nine, offers a continuum built on the preschool experience. The environment reflects a new stage of development and offers the following:

• Integration of the arts, sciences, geography, history and language that evokes the native imagination and abstraction of the elementary child.
• Presentation of knowledge as part of a large-scale narrative that unfolds the origins of the earth, life, human communities, empires and modern history, always in the context of the wholeness of life.
• Presentation of formal scientific language of zoology, botany, anthropology, geography, geology, etc., that exposes the child to accurate, organized information and respects the child's intelligence and interests.
• Use of timelines, pictures, charts and other visual aids that provide a linguistic and visual overview of the first principles of each discipline.
• Mathematics curriculum presented with concrete materials that simultaneously reveal arithmetic, geometric and algebraic correlations.
• Montessori-trained adults who are enlightened generalists (teachers who are able to integrate the teaching of all subjects, not as isolated disciplines, but as part of a whole intellectual tradition).
• Emphasis on open-ended research and in-depth study using primary and secondary sources (few worksheets) as well as other materials.
• Going out  to make use of community resources beyond the four walls of the classroom.

In the Montessori classroom there is a deep sense of respect for the child's total being. Children are taught to be their own timekeepers, so that teaching has a natural pace which encourages learning, retention and creativity.