Primary Program

The Primary Montessori curriculum is an integrated, holistic approach that is designed to help each child reach his or her full potential. Children aged 2 ½ to 6 are sensorial explorers, forming their intellects by absorbing their environment, their language and their culture. The Primary classroom provides a prepared environment that allows the children to respond to their natural tendency to work.

This environment includes four distinct areas. Practical life offers children the opportunity for care of self and the environment, exercises of grace and courtesy, and coordination of physical movement. The sensorial materials aid the children in learning to order and classify by touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, listening, and exploring. Mathematics helps children to understand abstract concepts by working with concrete manipulatives. The language area teaches oral and written language, vocabulary, reading, and grammar.

At Siena Academy, our Primary environment has an adjoining Atrium where the child’s spiritual development is nurtured through the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a method grounded in prayer, scripture, liturgy, and the Montessori pedagogy.

* The Primary program is based on a three year cycle. Parents are strongly encouraged to enter their child in the school year which the child will turn 3, so that the child may gain the optimal benefit of the program. Children over the age of 4 will be considered on an exception basis unless they have previously attended a Montessori school. Upon entry the child must have toilet independence and be able to separate from their parents.