ENVIRONMENT

What we offer:

At Pathway we are proud to offer a carefully designed, age-appropriate program that provides both freedom and opportunity for the child to explore and discover as he or she works with a variety of Montessori materials in an environment that is spacious, colorful, and engaging. The following areas of learning in the Montessori environment are designed to satisfy the needs of the child’s sensitive period for order, independence, concentration, coordination, movement, and exploration in the course of a normal day:

Practical Life: These exercises are simple but critical to a child’s development. Through controlled movement, care of self, care of environment, and grace and courtesy exercises the child gains independence, builds concentration, acquires basic manners, and refines motor skills. Spooning, pouring, sweeping, dusting, and hand-washing are all examples of practical life work.

Sensorial: Young children learn about the world around them through active use of all their senses. Sensorial and manipulative activities include bead stringing, puzzles, and matching shape, size, color, and texture. Recognizing sounds and smells is also included in the sensorial area of the classroom. These works are tremendously attractive to the child and create opportunities for the child to incorporate all senses in the learning environment.

Language: New words are introduced to your child on a continuing basis to grow and develop his vocabulary and pre-reading skills by engaging him in activities such as reading books, singing, sandpaper letters, nomenclature activities, and even sign language.

Math: When a child is ready, he or she is introduced to simple math activities such as rote counting and identifying numerals from 1 to 10 (and beyond as the child is ready).

Story Time and Music: Reading together is a pleasurable time, and a variety of books and stories are utilized for this activity. Children enjoy gathering together to learn new songs, sing old favorites, and play age-appropriate musical instruments and music games. Music is also incorporated into the regular classroom activities.

Art: The environment in which the children grow and learn includes interesting, simple art activities such as pasting, paper tearing, painting, play dough and more.

Socialization: Playing together and learning to share are just a few of the activities that prepare the child for important facets of life, but it sometimes takes children considerable time to do these things successfully. Each teacher is available to assist the children through these critical social development processes. It is our goal to make socialization a positive experience for the children.

For infants the program is designed to duplicate the loving care and gentle stimulation that an infant needs to grow and develop to his or her full potential. Flexible scheduling allows each child to eat, sleep, or play according to his or her own natural timetable. The environment is characterized by order, simplicity, and beauty which meet the needs of the child.

Language: Along with sign language, we are constantly speaking to the infants about their surroundings--naming objects and people, talking about our activities, reading books, looking at language cards.
Sensorial: We provide a variety of sensorial experiences throughout the day--musical instruments, rattles, music, mobiles and mirrors for visual stimulation, varied textures for touching, colors, and even tasting when age-appropriate.
Movement: Our environment allows for ample movement with the youngest child--lying on a soft quilt with a mobile or mirror, rattles and other objects for grasping, small tables for pulling up, a “walk-around” for beginning walkers, and plenty of space for crawling and creeping.
Care of Self: We provide opportunities for the infants to begin caring for themselves--feeding one’s self, serving one’s self, cleaning up after one’s self, dressing skills, and toilet training when appropriate.