Elementary I (1st through 3rd grade)
Ages: 6 – 9 years

At the Elementary Workshop Montessori School, we recognize that children change and grow daily and with each change comes new needs, expectations, abilities, and sensitivities on the part of the child. The six to nine year old classroom must be an environment that embraces these changes in the child and makes the child’s continued social, emotional, intellectual, and physical development possible.

The six to nine year old child is in a period of moral development and is learning to distinguish between things based on values. Social concerns are very important to him; the child perceives himself as a member of society, and is eager to form groups and clubs (with sometimes intricate) rules. Six to nine year old children begin to see themselves as separate from their families.

Children at this age are beginning to think and reason abstractly. This is a period of great intellectual growth, when children begin to enjoy research and like and need variety in their work.

They typically like to work in groups. At EWMS, lessons are often given to a small group of children who are at similar academic level. New concepts are presented in a concrete manner with many varieties of follow-up work. Children move from concrete to abstract at a natural pace and develop a strong conceptual base on which to build their knowledge.

At the six to nine years, children are learning to read, an essential skill stressed in every aspect of our curriculum. EWMS employs a combination of phonics and whole language in teaching children to read. Through regular language lessons, spelling work, writing sessions, and assignments, children internalize the rules for reading, writing, and spelling.

Organizational skills are stressed as children learn to plan their workday and allot time for longer term projects.

Children in first, second, and third grade are highly inquisitive and love to learn about people, places, and how things work. Geography, history, and science are topics of great interest to them and are an integral part of the six to nine curriculum. Field trips and research help these topics come alive for children. The use of computers as a tool is crucial. Children have regular computer lessons in the lab and use their classroom computers as part of their assigned work.

Math concepts are presented using concrete materials and children practice these concepts with a variety of hands-on manipulatives as they move toward conceptual understanding and abstraction.