Lower Elementary Program for ages 6 to 9

Who is the 6-9 year old student?

• An explorer of the environment with insatiable curiosity!
• A mind that is beginning to shift from concrete physical “doing” to a gradually more abstract “mental” experience.
• A wonderful being searching for an understanding of who they are and where they fit into the world, starting in the classroom, the family, and then society at large.
• A person with big questions about the world and the universe.

The Lower Elementary program aims to develop independent, resourceful, and self-motivated learners who are taught how to be critical thinkers rather than being told what to think.

“By providing the necessary tools and resources for a child to explore concepts independently, we free him from dependence on the adult as the giver of information.”

Maria Montessori

The Montessori Classroom: a Prepared Environment   

Our classroom environment will feel more like a home than a school for your child. You won’t see desks, nor will a teacher stand at the front of the room delivering a lesson to the whole class. Instead, you’ll see children happily working individually or in small groups, at tables or on the floor near small mats that delineate their own space.

In the prepared classroom, children work with specially designed manipulative materials that invite exploration and engage the senses in the process of learning.

All learning activities support children in choosing meaningful and challenging work at their own interest and ability level. This child-directed engagement strengthens motivation, supports attention, and encourages responsibility.

Uninterrupted blocks of work time allow children to work at their own pace and fully immerse themselves in an activity without interruption. Your child’s work cycle involves selecting an activity, performing it for as long as it remains interesting, cleaning up the activity and returning it to the shelf, and making another work choice. This cycle respects individual variations in the learning process and facilitates the development of coordination, concentration, independence, and a sense of order while facilitating your child’s assimilation of information.

How will your child learn?

Our highly trained teachers carefully observe their children in the environment, identifying their interests and abilities, and developing personalized learning plans tailored to each child’s needs. They guide the learning, introducing new lessons and levels of difficulty as appropriate. The Guide (teacher) offers the encouragement, time, and tools needed to allow children’s natural curiosities to drive learning, and provides choices that help them learn, grow, and succeed.

After participating in a demonstration of material from the Guide, your child is free to choose activities and to work on their own or with a partner for as long as they wish. Since there is usually only one of each material, your child will develop patience and self-control as they wait for a material to become available.

Each Montessori Program curriculum follows a 3-year sequence. Because the teacher guides your child through learning at their own pace, their individualized learning plan may exceed the concepts they would be taught in a classroom environment in which all children learn the same concept at the same time.

As children move forward, they develop the ability to concentrate and make decisions, along with developing self-control, courtesy, and a sense of community responsibility.In Montessori schools, academic growth is seen as just one part of children’s healthy development. The method nurtures their social, emotional, and physical growth, ensuring that they are, as Dr. Maria Montessori put it, “treading always in the paths of joy and love.”

Our Curriculum   

We start from within, with social and emotional learning. We embrace the expected fields, starting with practical skills, as well as language, math, culture, and art. We embrace our region, by exploring all that the Obidos area has to offer: nature and cultural programming. We interact with the community, to become global citizens. 

• Social and Emotional Learning
• Language (English and Portuguese)
• Mathematics & Geometry
• Cultural Studies: Geography & History
• Biology & Physical Sciences
• Practical Life Skills
• Art
• Exploration Days (one per week)
• Community Engagement

Our first classroom will open in September 2024. Contact us today for more information and to reserve your child’s spot.