Montessori Curriculum

At Scope and Sequence

This curriculum guide is a simplified version of a comprehensive set of five curriculum guides developed by Tim Seldin, president of The Montessori Foundation. They were developed with an eye to national standards and curricular trends in the United States, with the goal of ensuring that all necessary skills and knowledge are covered by the practicing Montessori educator. Parents commonly ask for written information about our curriculum, and we hope this simplified scope and sequence is one way to address their questions. The curriculum guides represent years of intensive work, and they continue to be reviewed and refined in collaboration with Montessori schools around the United States. The complete version is available for your review at the school.

Today's rapid technological and social change makes it increasingly difficult for us to understand and keep pace with the modern world. This has put schools under terrific pressure to reevaluate what should be taught in an age when no one can predict the skills that our children will need when they reach maturity. In the past, when our store of knowledge was relatively fixed and limited, the most efficient education consisted of lecture, drill, and memorization.

In an era of technological revolution and social change, the foundation of a good education is to learn how to learn.

Our course of study encompasses the full substance of the traditional curriculum and goes beyond, to teach students how to think clearly, do their own research, express themselves well in writing and speech, and to put their knowledge to practical application.

We have organized our course of study as an inclined spiral plane of integrated studies, rather than a traditional model in which the curriculum is compartmentalized into separate subjects, with given topics considered only once at a given grade level. Lessons are introduced simply and concretely in the early years and are reintroduced several times during the following years at increasing degrees of abstraction and complexity.

Our course of study is an integrated thematic approach that ties the separate disciplines of the curriculum together into studies of the physical universe, the world of nature, and the human experience.

This integrated approach is one of our strengths. As an example, when our students study the ancient Greeks in world history, they also read Homer and Bull-finch's Mythology. Literature, the arts, history, social issues, government, economics, architecture, medicine, science, and the study of technology all complement one another in our curriculum.

Our school has a rigorous, yet innovative, academic program. Although we offer a warm, supportive academic atmosphere, we set a high level of expectation for the quality of thought, work, and mastery of content and skills.

As children reach the elementary years, they will be challenged to pursue a considerable amount of library and field research both in and outside of school. We consciously teach students how to develop effective work habits and test-taking strategies.

The following is a brief overview of our core curriculum in the areas of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, sensory training, and practical life for our students age 3 through the Upper Elementary level. Please keep in mind that this only represents an overview of the course of study, and is not meant to be complete. Since our students progress at their own pace, it is not possible to divide up the curriculum by grade levels. Also, we have not attempted, for lack of space, to include descriptions of our curriculum in the arts, music, physical education, and foreign language.