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07359450969
Maryfield Hall, 73 Leysdown Road SE9 4UB
Our nursery school is equipped with natural resources to create a calm and welcoming environment.
The Montessori Method was developed by Dr. Maria Montessori (1870- 1952) who was the first woman to receive a medical degree in Italy in 1894. She believed that a child will learn naturally in an environment consisting of ‘learning games’ suited to the child’s abilities and interests. She developed a range of apparatus to utilise and refine the child’s fine and gross motor skills using the five senses.
The Montessori approach is based on the uniqueness of each child and their immense capacity to absorb and learn when given the freedom and independence to learn at their own pace. It is a tried and tested approach based on an understanding of the way children learn through the freedom of choice – exploring and doing things for themselves – in a natural and stimulating way in a prepared environment with specially developed materials giving them life-long learning skills.
By providing the child with the tools and opportunities to learn their confidence and ability to concentrate will grow.
Easily accessible and available equipment
Free flow within the prepared environment
Freedom of choices within positive boundaries
Time and space to complete tasks at their own pace
Independence
Learning from real experiences and the natural environment
Guidance from caring and respectful adults
Compatibility with the individual developmental stage of young children
An aesthetically pleasing and harmonious classroom making it a joy and pleasure
Personal ownership, with responsibility, and respect for the environment, adults, and peers
Activities of Everyday Living (AEL)– AEL exercises are designed to enable children to learn and practice daily-life skills, such as how to get dressed, prepare snacks, set the table, and care for plants and animals. They also learn appropriate social interactions, such as saying please and thank-you, being kind and helpful, listening without interrupting, and resolving conflicts peacefully. In addition to teaching specific skills, AEL activities promote independence, and fine- and gross-motor coordination. This area has many familiar activities from home to help new children to feel confident and comfortable in a new environment. AEL activities aid to develop and help the child to become an independent and capable individual.
AEL activities are divided into four main groups:
Care of Self (food preparation, dressing, washing),
Care of Environment (cleaning, gardening, care of pets, environmentalism),
Grace and Courtesy (greetings, manners, social interactions),
Control of Movement (refining movements, walking on the line, moving quietly, etc.)
This area allows children to explore shapes, colour, mathematical properties, texture, smell, sound and taste. This extends their vocabulary as well as their sensory perception. Children refine skills in perceiving the world through their different senses, and learn how to describe and name their experiences—for example, rough and smooth, perceived through touch. Sensorial learning helps children classify their surroundings and create order. It lays the foundation for learning by developing the ability to classify, sort, and discriminate—skills necessary in math, geometry, and language.
This area involves the introduction to pre-maths concepts such as sorting, matching and counting. The Montessori maths materials offer a systematic approach to learning through the use of objects, while slowly helping the child in understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems, and describing shapes, spaces and measures. With an exploratory approach, children do more than just memorize math facts; they gain a firm understanding of the meaning behind them.
We use a series of strategies and materials to encourage communication, expand the child’s vocabulary and allow their innate love of books to flourish. The early language and literacy games are primarily designed to train children’s ears to distinguish sounds. To develop writing and reading skills we introduce the sound and shape of each letter and then, when the child is confident with these, they progress to building and reading words. AEL and sensorial exercises prepare the children for writing, and they have extensive practice forming the shape of letters. They can explore mark making using materials such as the sand tray.
The Environment, History, Geography and Science are all introduced through project work. This includes many varied art and craft activities, experiments, and group discussions.
This area of our curriculum is designed to educate children about the wider world. They begin to understand their geographic place in the world, and love to learn about life cycles and animals from different continents. Children learn about their own community and the world around them. Discovering similarities and differences among people and places helps them to develop an understanding and appreciation of the diversity of our world. We joyfully celebrate festivals from all over the world, which teaches understanding, mutual respect, and tolerance for all living things. Cosmic Education is a fundamental part of the KUW materials and learning area. Maria Montessori designed this curriculum area to help develop well-rounded, conscious, responsible, respectful and accountable individuals.
Art is one of the many ways children express themselves. Art is a way for children to communicate their feelings. It is through art that children develop their fine motor skills. In the Montessori environment, we provide open-ended art activities that help children explore and use their creativity. When it comes to art, it is the process not the product that is important to the child. Once a child creates something, he/she does not feel the need to keep the product. It is the process that gives him/her satisfaction and inner joy. We offer many opportunities for the child to create and express themselves through art, in different areas of the classroom, whenever they choose to do so.
Our Montessori environment and the free flow to the garden encourages movement and physical activities in order to promote physical growth and maturity. All of our activities are hands-on and support fine and gross motor skills.
Throughout the day, our children have plenty of opportunities to practice important physical skills such as balancing, dancing, climbing, and jumping.
At Sunflower Montessori we take a holistic approach that follows the EYFS principles together with the Montessori method, giving children opportunities to develop to their full potential.
Our classroom is decorated with neutral colours and natural resources to create a calm and relaxing ambience where children can concentrate on their hands on experiences without being over stimulated by exterior distractions.
We have a full range of Montessori materials as well as role play props, loose part objects and many other educational, high-quality resources.
All of our materials are carefully selected with a purpose in mind and many of them are hand made by our teachers, providing the children with very unique learning experiences.
Our environment is beautifully prepared with interesting and inviting activities which are all fully accessible by the children to enable independence and support confidence and self-trust.
At Sunflower Montessori we help children to develop healthy eating habits for life. We involve children in food preparation and encourage them to try a variety of fruit and veggies. Our nursery is a nut free zone, and we cater for all types of allergies and special dietary requirements.
STEM, Cooking, Yoga, Music, Dance, and Forest School.
Trips to the playground and local library.
We run our forest school sessions at our local public woodland with a fully qualified forest school leader. Each session is organised to have small groups of children and will last about 2 and half hours.
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