At Pacific Crest School, we prepare each primary environment with precision, detail and beauty. Every day the children walk into classrooms that have child-sized furniture, attractive and appealing materials and purposeful activities that foster independence and concentration.
Practical Life
Children love to do what the adult does, mirroring his actions and habits and thus feeling a sense of belonging. The child wants to orient himself to his environment. By providing activities that offer a sense of contribution and familiarity, the practical life experiences assist the child in the care of his environment by introducing concepts such as sweeping, dusting and table scrubbing. Through these activities the child feels a sense of ownership of his environment, refines his motor skills and feels included in the community.
The child between three and six wants to do things by himself. The Primary classroom honors this potential by providing activities that show the child how to tie, zip, button, or wash his hands. Within a short period of time, the child thrives as he can better meet his own basic needs independently.
Sensorial
Dr. Montessori discovered that refining the senses is highly beneficial to the development of a child’s intelligence.
The sensorial activities are concrete tools that the child can manipulate to help refine his sense of smell, touch, taste, sight and hearing. Having such concrete experiences advances the child’s ability when making comparisons and classifying information. Foundations are laid in the brain for language, math and science, while developing the aesthetic sense for artistic creativity.
Language
Children have a natural tendency to communicate. Language in the primary classroom honors this journey through discovery and exploration.
In the classroom, communication between children and teachers is respectful and rich. New vocabulary is offered through poetry, stories and songs that include, for example, naming parts of animals or plants, discovering and naming the continents and understanding the difference between a sphere and a rectangular prism. These concepts invigorate the child’s imagination and enrich creative expression.
The language materials are beautiful and fun and are designed to entice the children depending on age and ability. Through tactile experiences, the children concentrate on a wider range of work from identifying letters to understanding word function and sentence structure. They provide concrete understanding and a strong foundation in the principles of writing and reading.
Math
Dr. Montessori observed that even the young child could understand and enjoy math if presented in a concrete, exciting manner. At Pacific Crest you can observe the children thoroughly enjoying addition with golden bead materials that show the difference between one unit and one thousand. The younger children cement their understanding of the numbers 1–10, not only being able to count, but visualizing the differences between quantities. Once this is in place they can pursue work on the decimal system and the four operations. Beautiful and exact materials provide impressions for squaring, cubing and fractions preparing them for greater work in the elementary years.
