The Palisades Montessori Center curriculum is designed to unleash the cognitive and academic talents of each individual child. Balancing this, we also provide plenty of time for enrichment, friendships and fun! In this way, we help to create happy young students who have a love for learning and a thirst for knowledge.
The basic Montessori curriculum is divided into five parts. The Practical Life section is devoted to teaching the child how to master everyday, self-reliance skills such as dressing one’s self, preparing one’s own snack, pouring one’s drink, cleaning up after one’s self, etc. How proud our students are when they can peel and slice a banana (safety cutters, of course!) on their own and serve it to their friends for snack.
The Sensorial exercises help to teach children to use their senses as a pathway to discovery. By using their sense of touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing, imaginations are built, knowledge is acquired and an understanding of reality begins to be achieved.
With specially designed Montessori materials, the Math section of the program provides an opportunity for children to visualize the structure of our numeration system in a very concrete way. They learn mathematics with a hands-on approach so as to internalize mathematical concepts rather than simply memorizing factual information without a firm understanding.
Again, with a vast array of Montessori materials in the Language section, children learn the phonetic sounds of letters, trace letter shapes, listen to sounds, play word games, listen to stories, read independently and much, much more. By the time our students graduate PMC, many are already reading and have a fundamental grasp of the English language.
The Cultural Studies dimension of the curriculum includes exposure to geography (maps, globes, land forms, ecology, etc.) biology (care and study of plants and animals) and social studies (exposure to different countries, cultures, customs, holidays, etc.).
When children graduate from PMC, they enter Kindergarten with a heightened skill set, often reading simple books and understanding and performing various mathematical tasks.