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Admissions Process

About Our Admissions Process

Conestoga Valley School District

Home // USA // PA // Lancaster // Conestoga Valley School District
(717) 989-2725

Our Primary Program

"The essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality."

As the cornerstone of Montessori education, the cycle of the Primary experience supports the 3- to 6-year-old child’s natural inclination to seek out a wide array of life skills and cognitive abilities. This hands-on learning approach includes relevant curriculum areas for this stage – motor skills, socialization, self-esteem, independence, a sense or order, concentration, and cooperation – as well as an atmosphere that allows children to develop at their own pace.

Each Primary classroom provides a warm and secure community designed to meet each child’s needs at every developmental step. Guided by Montessori-certified primary teachers, children build and master important skills at critical sensitive periods – the moment they are most sensitive to acquiring a new skill or concept. Our method creates the optimal environment to foster these budding developments, building independence, establishing a sense of empowerment, and creating the foundation for a lifelong love of learning.

What Parents are Saying

Our greatest advocates are our families.

"Bright Horizons offers an incredibly rich and nurturing learning environment - the staff truly cultivated my son’s desire and interest in learning. One of the most impressive and unique aspects of your program is how much importance is placed on fostering respect and community within the classroom."

Our Curriculum Components

“The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.”
-Dr. Maria Montessori

  • Practical Life Purposeful activities enhance concentration and focus through caring for the self and the environment, fine motor coordination, and practicing grace and courtesy. These appeal to the child’s need for movement and order, independence, and social relationships.
  • Sensorial Montessori materials and hands-on activities stimulate sensory discovery and description, while maximizing the child’s natural desire to explore, classify, and order their surroundings. Children learn concepts of mass, width, length, temperature, and other physical properties.
  • Math Using carefully prepared tools and manipulative materials, children are led through a logical mathematical thought process— from concrete to abstract – to understand concepts like linear counting, the decimal system, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
  • Language Our implementation of the “Balanced Literacy Approach” encourages growth in oral language, written expression, reading, and grammar elements. This approach to reading instruction is phonics-based and highly sequential while taught within contexts that are whole and meaningful. Additional accommodations are made to adapt to different types of learners.
  • Culture Multicultural studies lay a foundation of mutual understanding by exposing children to geography, history, physical, and life science basics. Children gain an awareness of the world around them by exploring other countries, their customs, foods, languages, and wildlife.
  • Peace Peace education consists of opportunities and experiences for children to develop an ability to understand and access peace within themselves, interact peacefully with others, and eventually engage in activities that create a peaceful planet.
  • Art The art area in a Montessori classroom provides developmentally appropriate and open-ended experiences that foster creativity and sensory development.
  • Foreign Language Capitalizing on each child's propensity for language acquisition, foreign language is integrated into the prepared environment through individual and small group instruction utilizing hands-on materials and experiential, conversational interaction.
  • Music From transition times to lessons, music and song is infused throughout the day. Montessori bells and other instruments are available for experimentation and formal instruction.
  • Garden Lessons in the outdoor environment help children develop an understanding of and appreciation for the complexity and interdependence of our living world. The children develop the skills of exploration, observation, experimentation, and conservation.

Learning at Home

Family Band Making Tambourines

You Will Need:


Paper plates, beans, rice, small pebbles, paint, and stapler

Directions:

Have your child paint or decorate the bottom (underside) of two plates. Face the plates together and help your child staple around the perimeter. After the plates are mostly attached to each other, he can fill them with beans, rice, or small pebbles to make tambourines. Finish stapling them together so that the beans or rice do not spill out. You and your child can take turns shaking and tapping out rhythms.

Tip:

Notice and comment on the difference in sounds between rice, beans or perhaps small pebbles. Watch for choking hazards at all times when using any small items. Each family member can make a different instrument and all together, you can create a band and/or have a parade.


More Ideas