"We then found that individual activity is the one factor that stimulates and produces development, and that this is not more true for the little ones of preschool age than it is for the junior, middle, and upper school children."
Maria Montessori    from "The Absorbent Mind"

The school’s curriculum is child-centered and teacher-guided, authenticated by AMI training.  No subject is taught in isolation.   Acorn's curriculum is interdisciplinary and interactive and it's unique atmosphere enables our students to expand the boundaries of their classroom to the outdoors!

Great education happens when the curriculum and the environment are carefully designed and integrated into a comfortable, clean, beautiful, and appealing school. The journey at Acorn starts with this foundation and continues through each child’s sensitive periods.


                                                  The environment is divided into six major areas of development:

                                   

                                                                                    
                                                                                    

Practical Life
    For young children there is something special about tasks which an adult considers ordinary - washing dishes, paring vegetables, polishing shoes, arranging flowers, sweeping, etc. They are exciting to children because they allow them to imitate adults. Imitation is one of the strongest urges during children's early years.
    In this area of the environment, children perfect their coordination and become absorbed in an activity. They gradually lengthen their span of concentration. They also learn to pay attention to details as they follow a regular sequence of actions. Finally, they learn good working habits as they finish each task and put away all the materials before beginning another activity.
    Practical life exercises develop in a child the ability to care for themselves, others, and for the environment.  Their primary goal is to foster independence, self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-control.  These first steps are crucial in subsequent intellectual growth.

Sensorial
    The sensorial materials in the Montessori environment help children to distinguish, to categorize, and to relate new information to what they already know. Dr. Montessori believed that this process is the beginning of conscious knowledge. It is brought about by the intelligence working in a concentrated way on the impressions given by the senses.
    Through specially designed materials that focus their attention on one of their senses, children build cognitive capability and learn to order and classify these impressions.   They do this by touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, listening, and exploring the physical properties of their environment.  Some of these exercises prepare for work in language and mathematics.

Mathematics
    Dr. Montessori knew that children are born with a mathematical mind and encounter mathematical concepts every day.  She demonstrated that if children have access to mathematical equipment in their early years, they can easily and joyfully assimilate many facts and skills of arithmetic. On the other hand, these same facts and skills may require long hours of drudgery and drill if they are introduced to them later in the abstract form. Dr. Montessori designed concrete materials such as the number rods, sandpaper numbers, spindle box, and golden beads to represent all types of quantities.   She observed that children who become interested in counting like to touch or move the items as they enumerate them. By combining this equipment, separating it, sharing it, counting it, and comparing it, they can demonstrate to themselves the basic operations of mathematics.  Children in a Montessori class never sit down to memorize addition and subtraction facts; they never simply memorize multiplication tables. Rather, they learn these facts by actually performing the operations with concrete materials.
    When the children want to do arithmetic, they are given a sheet of paper containing simple problems. They work the problems with appropriate materials and record their results. Similar operations can be performed with a variety of materials. This variety maintains children's interest while giving them many opportunities for the necessary repetition. As they commit the addition facts and the multiplication tables to memory, they gain a real understanding of what each operation means.  This work provides the child with solid underpinnings for traditional mathematical principles, providing a structured scope for later abstract reasoning.

Language
    Language development is an integral part of the total program.   Language cards, sound games, sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, and metal insets are used to teach phonetics, the function of words, and sentence analysis. 
    In a Montessori environment children learn the phonetic sounds of the letters before they learn the alphabetical names in a sequence. The phonetic sounds are given first because these are the sounds they hear in words that they need to be able to read. The children first become aware of these phonetic sounds when the teacher introduces the consonants with the Sandpaper Letters.
    The individual presentation of language materials in a Montessori environment allows the teacher to take advantage of each child's greatest periods of interest. Reading instruction begins on the day when the children want to know what a word says or when they show an interest in using the Sandpaper Letters. Writing - or the construction of words with the movable letters - nearly always precedes reading in a Montessori environment.
Gradually the children learn the irregular words, and words with two and three syllables, by doing many reading exercises which offer variety rather than monotonous repetition. Also available in the Montessori environment are many attractive books using a large number of phonetic words. Proceeding at their own pace, children are encouraged to read about things which interest them. Their skills in phonics give them the means of attacking almost any new word, so that they are not limited to a specific number of words which they have been trained to recognize by sight.
    The children's interest in reading is never stifled by monotony. Rather, it is cultivated as their most important key to future learning. They are encouraged to explore books for answers to their own questions, whether they are about frogs, rockets, stars, or fire engines.
    In a Montessori class, the children are introduced to grammar by games which show them that nouns are the names of things, adjectives describe nouns, and verbs are action words. The activity becomes most enjoyable.

Language Extensions
The following areas are some of the extensions to the curriculum that are used to enrich the child's vocabulary.

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
    The large wooden puzzle maps are among the most popular activities in the environment. At first the children use the maps simply as puzzles. Gradually they learn the names of many of the countries as well as information about climate and products. The maps illustrate many geographical facts concretely. Children also learn the common land formations such as islands and peninsulas by making them.

HISTORY
    Montessori offers the children a concrete presentation of history by letting them work with Time Lines. Time Lines are very long strips of paper which can be unrolled and stretched along the floor of the classroom. The line is marked off in segments which represent consecutive periods of history.
    As an introduction to the idea of history, the children begin by making a time line of their own lives, starting with their baby pictures.

MUSIC AND CREATIVE MOVEMENT
    The music, creative movement and dramatics program is an on-going flexible process that integrates itself into the academic program of Acorn Montessori School. The philosophy brings together the graphic notation symbols, the instruments and sound textures, and the principles of movement. The musical element of primary appeal to young children is rhythm and the natural response to rhythm is physical; therefore, the body is the child's instrument through which the movement in music is reflected and interpreted.

SCIENCE AND NATURE
    In science, the children's natural curiosity is stimulated through discovery projects and experiments, helping the children draw their own conclusions. The plant and animal kingdoms are studied in an orderly fashion to foster a love and appreciation for all living things.