ABOUT US
Frinton Montessori
We are based in Frinton-On-Sea, open for day sessions Monday to Friday between 8.30am-4pm. Our setting is open-plan with floor space and tables for play cycles, as well as a snug with a quiet tent.
One of the fundamental principles of of The Montessori approach is what we call 'the prepared environment'. Both inside and outside environment are child-orientated, well organised and offer free choice across the whole curriculum and beyond.
We teach our children using the Montessori approach applying the full Early Years Curriculum, as well as including extra curricular activities such as dance lessons, yoga, Modern Foreign Languages, singing lessons and nursery day trips.
Read our Outstanding Ofsted report
What is Montessori?
Maria Montessori was a true pioneer of child-centred education over 100 years ago. She saw that children learn best by doing and that happy self-motivated learners form positive images of themselves as confident, successful people. She created specially designed resources to foster independence and a love for learning from an early age.
The Montessori approach is holistic and aims to develop the whole child. Fundamental to the approach is the belief that a child’s early years from birth to six are the period when they have the greatest capacity to learn.
Our Montessori Curriculum
Activities of Every Day Life
The young child is attracted to activities that he sees going on around him and that give him independence and control of his own life. She therefore introduced into her classrooms materials and exercises that allow children the maximum possible opportunity to learn how to both look after themselves and their environment. In the practical life area you will see things such as special frames to help children learn to do up and undo clothes, lots of spooning and pouring exercises, stirring, sorting, cutting and threading activities and many other activities that children see going on around them at home. Practical life also includes helping children do other important tasks such as opening and closing doors, carrying trays and chairs, washing and drying hands, caring for books and blowing noses.
Learning through senses
The need for order, exactness, self-correction and quiet reflection are all qualities that Montessori saw are needed for children to develop as they should. When she saw that children are particularly drawn to certain activities she concentrated on developing materials that would extend that interest. She carefully took each of the senses and thought how best she could help the children to clarify and expand their existing experiences. By isolating specific qualities in the materials and by grading each set in ever-refined series, she was able to give the children the ability to increasingly refine each of their senses. Many of the exercises in this area are also indirect preparations for later mathematics and language work as they enable the child to order, classify, separate and describe sensory impressions in relation to length, width, temperature, mass and colour.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World
Montessori saw that young children were full of curiosity and loved exploring new things for themselves. She developed a wide range of beautiful materials that allowed the children to gain an appreciation of biology, geography, simple science and history. Each of these areas then allowed the children to explore and experiment with concepts such as metamorphosis, life cycles, land formations, the planets and time lines. As in all other areas of her work she was careful to let the children lead her in their interests and she was surprised to find that they very easily learnt not only the simple, but also the technical names of the new things that they were introduced to. In fact, Montessori children frequently astonish adults with their in-depth knowledge of the subjects they are studying.
Language and Literacy
Montessori was a great believer in indirect preparation. By this, we mean that she found clever ways in which children can learn how to do things without even realising that that is what they are doing. For example, she created sets of metal insets that children use for drawing but that actually help form the fine motor skills for subsequent writing. Many of the practical life and sensorial exercises were designed with this in mind. When the child is ready, we begin to teach the phonetic sounds of the letters; then we move on to word building and recognition, and then book reading. She found that writing comes as part of the child’s natural desire to express his or her new knowledge and nearly always precedes reading. One of the most wonderful times for children and teachers is when the children share the excitement of finding that they can put their thoughts down on paper and there is a subsequent explosion into emergent writing.
Mathematics
Montessori believed that children have mathematical minds and she revolutionised the way in which mathematics is taught. She developed a wonderful set of materials, many of which have now been copied by educators throughout the world. The mathematical concept is presented firstly in a very concrete form followed by the abstract written version. The materials for mathematics introduce the concept of quantity and the symbols 1 through to 10. Then, using a variety of beads and symbol cards, the child becomes familiar with the numbers as a decimal system by means including concrete experiences with the operation of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. These operations not only teach the child to calculate, but they provide a deep understanding of how numbers function.