Our Preschool in miri
This Montessori Kindergarten was founded in 2001 and has been in operation ever since. You can read more about what our established kindergarten in Miri can do for your child in developing them through the Montessori Preschool System here.
Here you will get a good background of what we do to educate your child using the Montessori Preschool System.
Quote: “I have studied the child and have taken what the child has given me and expressed it into what is called the Montessori Method.” – Dr Maria Montessori
Dr Maria Montessori is the founder of the Montessori Method. She was born in Italy in the year of 1870 and died in Holland in the year 1952. She was originally a medical doctor and also Italy’s first woman doctor in her country. Dr Maria Montessori was one of the most influential educators of the 20th century. She saw the need for ‘a new education from birth onwards’. She believed that the education must be reconstructed and based on the laws of nature and not on the preconceived notions and prejudices of the adult society.
The Montessori Method is described as a way of thinking about “WHO CHILDREN ARE”. As a philosophy, it emphasizes the uniqueness of each child. It also emphasizes that children are different from the adult in the way they develop and think. They aren’t ‘adults’ in small bodies. The Montessori Pre-school system is very different from the traditional preschool system.
Dr Maria Montessori’s careful observation and unique insights into children led her to a philosophical approach which encourages the emergence of the children according to their own true nature. Montessori education is designed to meet (in a carefully prepared environment) the intellectual, imaginative and emotional needs of the different stages of the child’s development.
The Montessori approach to education is child centered and is based on mutual respect and co-operation. It also offers children the opportunity the opportunity to realize their potential and seek to promote the following:
1) Self confidence and self esteem
2) Sense of responsibility for themselves and their actions
3) Independence
4) Sense of concentration and order
5) Initiative and self motivation
6) Sense of community
7) Joy of work and love for learning
8) Creative intelligence and imagination
Now that you have good a background of what a Montessori Kindergarten or Pre-school Programme is about, we will show you what are the main differences between a Traditional Preschool versus a Montessori Kindergarten or Preschool Programme in the next section.
Traditional Preschool.
In traditional preschools, children are grouped according to their ages. In contrast, in a Montessori environment, the children are in mixed ages, where the younger children learn and observe from the older children, and the latter have the opportunities to guide the former.
The teachers are the focal point and the children are expected to learn at the same pace, where as the Montessori teachers follows the child’s pace. Children from traditional schools learn in groups. They do more academically, have lots of homework and usually have to work without the teacher’s close monitoring. In the Montessori classroom, children are being taught individually, and they learn with the joy of working and sense of discovery.
Traditional schools use reward and punishment as motivation or to get good behaviour. Children work at desk and passively sit to listen to lectures for long periods of time. In a Montessori environment, the teacher encourages and the good behaviour comes from the children’s inner discipline. The classroom is used as a library or resource room for projects and studies. Children are free to explore and discover on their own. The “THREE PERIOD LESSONS” are applied routinely when the individual is ready.
The Montessori Method Curriculum
The curriculum in a traditional setting is fixed by the textbooks. There are no hands-on learning and also very little or no materials are provided during the lessons as compared to a Montessori Preschool System.
In a Montessori school, children learn with specific materials to motivate them. All the materials are designed with specific purposes. For example, THE PINK TOWER is designed to develop concentration and independence. It trains the visual and muscular senses and creates an awareness of dimension leading to observation, sense of order and to extend the vocabulary.
There is no material to aid the child to start writing in traditional schools, whereas in Montessori schools, there is a full range of materials to meet the child’s needs. For example, THE INSETS FOR DESIGN prepares him for writing because the geometric shapes contain all the curves and straight lines of the alphabet.
Research has repeatedly shown that children who graduated from the Montessori Method have better social and academic skills as compared to traditional school system. Such research are widely available on the public domain.
Here are some insert of such studies. You can read the full research paper here.
1) Montessori Education Provides Better Outcomes than Traditional Methods, Study Indicates
A study comparing outcomes of children at a public inner-city Montessori school with children who attended traditional schools indicates that Montessori education leads to children with better social and academic skills.
The study appears in the Sept. 29, 2006 issue of the journal Science.
2) Outcomes for Students in a Montessori Program – A Longitudinal Study of the Experience in the Milwaukee Public Schools
“This study supports the hypothesis that Montessori education has a positive long-term impact. Additionally, it provides an affirmative answer to questions about whether Montessori students will be successful in traditional schools.”. “A significant finding in this study is the association between a Montessori education and superior performance on the Math and Science scales of the ACT and WKCE. In essence, attending a Montessori program from the approximate ages of three to eleven predicts significantly higher mathematics and science standardized test scores in high school.”
3) A Comparison of Montessori and Traditional Middle Schools: Motivation, Quality of Experience, and Social Context by Kevin Rathunde
With the help of co-investigator Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Dr. Rathunde compared the experiences and perceptions of middle school students in Montessori and traditional schools using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). Montessori students reported a significantly better quality of experience in their academic work than did traditional students. In addition, Montessori students perceived their schools as a more positive community for learning, with more opportunities for active, rather than passive, learning. This study was sponsored by the North American Montessori Teachers’ Association (NAMTA, an affiliate organization of AMI) and published in The NAMTA Journal 28:3 (Summer, 2003), pages 12-52.
In the next section titles the Montessori Preschool System, we will show you in detail the type of education and environment that your child will received. The environment of a Montessori School is specially designed to enhance a child’s learning experience through their 5 senses and critical thinking.