Luna's Montessori Bilingual School offers the young child a program with a wide variety of learning experiences utilizing the Montessori approach to education. The progress of each child is documented in the records of the school and the director/Teacher will discuss this process with the child's parents during the parent/teacher conferences. Children will be supervised at all times by a staff member. The program operates five days a week, Monday through Friday, from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm.

The primary goal of Montessori is to help each child reach his/her full potential in all areas of life. Activities promote the development of social skills, emotional growth, and physical coordination as well as cognitive preparation for future intellectual academic endeavors.

The classroom offers space for movement, space for individual work, and space for group activities. Children are given opportunities to work in the development of language skill, art, music sensorial, and practical life. We use a number of multi-sensory, sequential, and self-correcting Montessori materials to facilitate learning.

The first task a child learns when he or she comes to the Montessori classroom is that there is order in the classroom. The children learn that materials belong on the shelf at a specific place and after using it they have to replace it back at the same place. The teacher demonstrates this first. When a child selects a task, he/she repeats the activity until he/she masters the task.

The core of the Montessori curriculum is practical life, sensorial, language and mathematics activities. In addition to the core curriculum, there are enrichment activities, which include science, geography, art and special classes.

"Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress him/herself, reflects in his/her joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence"

 - Maria Montessori

The practical life area provides that children with practical life activities, which gives the child a feeling of dignity, accomplishment, and self-confidence. The exercises of practical life are fundamental for the child's development because it supports the tendencies and needs of the young children. The practical life area is particularly emphasized as the activities in this area give children the chance to develop skills to care for themselves and their environment in the following areas: control of movement, and grace and courtesy.

"The aim of Sensorial Exercises is an inner one, namely, that the child train himself to observe; that he be led to make comparisons between objects, to form judgments, to reason and to decide; and it is in the indefinite repetition of this exercise of attention and of intelligence that a real development ensues."

 - Maria Montessori

The sensorial area allows children to use their senses to learn about the world. These materials isolate a defining quality, such as color, size, sound, texture or shape. They help to develop the child's visual, auditory and tactile senses. Some Montessori materials, such as geometric solids are concrete representations of mathematical concepts that appear in later schooling.

"Knowledge can best be given where there is eagerness to learn, so this is the period when the seed of everything can be sewn. The child’s mind being like a fertile field, ready to receive what will germinate into knowledge."

 - Maria Montessori

Language activities and materials increase vocabulary and conversational skills, develop writing, and reading skills and begin and understanding of grammar. The language materials include objects and pictures to be named, matched, labeled and classified to aid vocabulary development. Textured letters allow the child to feel and see the alphabet. Phonics and the moveable alphabet lead the child toward reading.

The math area provides the child with ideas for their intellectual development. Hands on experience with math materials give children clear, concrete impression on which to build their own abstractions. This is a concrete experience in the Montessori classroom. Special materials such as spindle boxes and bead bars allow the child to see what "nothing" or zero looks like, or to see that multiplying 5x5 can be done with 5 bars of 5 beads each. We have children in different levels using a variety of our math materials such as:

• Red Rods: an important building block of math is hierarchy. Your child learns to put rods in order using his or her sense of touch and sight.
• Sandpaper Numerals: introduces symbols and the vocabulary for the numerals.
• Spindle Boxes: used to reinforce the child's understanding of number names, numerals and quantities.
• Introduction to the Decimal System: used to introduce the child to name and the relative sizes in the hierarchy of numbers.

The children are given an introduction to physical and cultural geography through the use of wooden puzzle maps and other activities. Studies about countries and activities with objects and snacks from other countries, and international celebrations are all part of geography.

Painting, color mixing, collage and printmaking are just some of the activities provided to show the care and use of art materials, to encourage creativity, and just have fun! The Kindergarten level children do art appreciation activities based on the study of particular artists such as Monet and Matisse.

These are nature related activities. Studies of plants and animals include parts of various plants, vertebrates, habitats and weather conditions that support particular plants and animals and for the kindergarten level children, studies of planets. Right now we are learning all about the systems of the human body, from the nervous system to the skeletal system.

We speak Spanish to all the children through the day. In addition, we have a daily twenty-five minute lesson. The lessons are designed to introduce children to a second language and the basic understanding of Spanish with numbers, words, colors, games, songs and stories.

Our Kindergarten children also have the important advantage of remaining with children of mixed ages. Mixing ages provides our kindergarten children with abundant opportunities to develop leadership skills and responsibility and gives the children greater social diversity. This is the "leadership year". They have friends of all ages. The mixed ages and widely varied achievement levels of the children greatly minimize comparisons and competition, which are so damaging to young children. It also does wonders for a kindergarten child's self-esteem to be admired and looked up to by the younger children.