Elementary Years (1st – 6th grade) Curriculum Guide

Harborside Campus
105 Prospect Road
PO Box 628
Centerport, NY 11721
(631) 754-4109
info@loveoflearning.org

Love of Learning Montessori offers a challenging, world class curriculum. It is a multiage grouping of students with individualized instruction.

Our students learn through hands-on experience, investigation, and research. They become actively engaged in their studies, rather than passively waiting to be spoon-fed.

We teach our students how to think! Learning is not focused on rote drill, memorization, and mindless busywork. Our goal is to develop students who understand and appreciate the things they study in school. They learn to ask questions, explore, and discover.

The job of the teacher is to be an enlightened generalist who can “sow the seeds of culture.” In the Early Childhood class the child was satisfied to learn the facts, i.e. what plants were, what flowers were, where different animals lived, the sky is blue, etc. Now, having observed this, the child in the Elementary grades wants to know why all these things are so. They are trying to find out what this world is all about; they begin to wonder about the causes of these things; they begin to wonder about their place in the world and the universe.

In response to this reasoning mind the Montessori curriculum is centered on the cosmic plan, a history of the earth and its life forms in which everything the children study fits into an interrelated whole. The cosmic plan tells a majestic story of progress designed to inspire children as they learn.

Our students develop a sense of the great themes of history, literature, philosophy, and the arts, ranging from the question of what makes us human, through the fundamental elements common to all societies.

The curriculum for developing an appreciation of other cultures includes introduction to foreign languages, including Spanish, French, Latin and Italian.

There are minimum daily academic requirements, in all areas, that the children must accomplish; but there is freedom to arrange the order in which they will do it. Thus, Reading, Writing (both penmanship & creative writing), Math, are daily requirements. Besides individual work time, there are also group times wherein key concepts, next steps, specific lessons are introduced with follow-up suggestions or requirements. It is understood that the relationships that exist among such subjects as language arts, science, math, etc often create such an integrated whole that rigid time allotments by subjects are not practical nor possible.

It is the integrated whole of the Montessori program that prepares children to succeed in the real world of ideas, enterprise, and challenging perspectives.