At Little Moon, our wish is for children to never lose the curiosity, creativity, and imagination they were born with. The focus of our extensive curriculum is not to impose education on the child by filling them with information, but instead to allow their education to be a kind of dance wherein a child's sense of wonder and imagination is awakened.
“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.”
The Children's House
Little Moon's classroom community - commonly known as The Children's House, will be a safe and welcoming place where the uniqueness of every child is highly respected. Our community of children 3 to 6 year olds is intended to be a beautiful place where consistency and calm abides, where the children's physical and psychological (emotional, social, spiritual) needs are met.
Throughout the day children will be given many opportunities to practice making choices and to experience the consequences that follow. They will learn through play and interactive group experiences how to make choices that are representative of their feelings of self-empowerment. They will learn creative problem-solving and practice finding peaceful solutions to problems, where no one gets hurt and everyone gets what they need.
Montessori found that children possess an intrinsic desire to work together. Over time the children in the Children's House will form a mini society where they will gradually learn to work together for the good of the community. This building of community happens without needing rewards and without competition.
The Prepared Environment
The Children's House classroom will provide a carefully prepared environment where children are free to respond to their natural tendency to investigate and work. The classroom is a meaningfully structured, open, and accessible learning space where everything has a purpose and a place. The furniture is child-sized, the learning materials are orderly, and beautiful, and designed to fit in your children’s hands. Our prepared environment will activate a love of learning through curiosity, stability, and the freedom to choose.
Freedom to Move:
Each child will have the freedom within limits to choose, to move, to correct their own mistakes, and to work at their own pace. Children learn by doing. Intelligence and creativity develop as children physically interact with and explore their world - especially as they figure out on their own how things work. Through years of study and scientific research Dr. Montessori developed specific didactic materials for the purpose of sensory education. The materials in our classroom at Little Moon will provide opportunities for a high degree of hands-on, interactive learning.
Follow the Child:
No one has to bribe babies and small children to learn. They are born to learn! Montessori used the words ‘absorbent mind’ to describe the child’s sponge-like capacity to absorb information. During this stage, the child's absorbent mind unconsciously or unknowingly absorbs the whole of the child's environment.
Children will show you what they need to do, what they need to develop in themselves, and what area they need to be challenged in. To follow the child is to observe them. The primary role of parents and teachers in guiding the development of the child is to first watch and listen to them.
In observing a child carefully, one will notice that they are showing you everything you need to know. In observing what interests them and what is exciting to them, we are able to know when to guide them to a new lesson, to the next step or to adapt the lesson to follow their excitement. At Little Moon we will guide children to learn in a way that aligns with who they are.
The Power of Self-Responsibility
& Informed Choice:
As children grow, they will come to understand that consequences exist for all choices and that they can choose to make constructive ones.
To live a life of authenticity takes courage.
A Montessori education at Little Moon will help your child develop independence, self-appreciation, a sense of empathy and social justice, and a lifelong love of learning.