Welcome to Acorn Montessori School's web site.
We invite you to call and visit to experience Acorn Montessori for yourself.

"The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the period from birth to the age of six... for that is the time when intelligence itself, her greatest implement, is being formed... and carried on throughout a lifetime."
Maria Montessori

INTRODUCTION
Acorn Montessori is celebrating 21 years of providing excellent early childhood education for the children of families of Carmel, Indiana.  We are committed to the learning philosophy founded by Maria Montessori.  Acorn is located in a safe, peaceful, and carefully prepared child-size environment for children 3 to 6 years old.  At Acorn Montessori School, we believe the best transition from the warmth of family to a school should start with a warm and cozy environment that is familiar, yet stimulating to each child. Our concept has been to afford the child a home-like setting, not an institutional one, to ease this transition.  This heritage started with Maria Montessori’s first Children’s House in Rome.

Montessori children think of the Children’s House as THEIR school.  The children create a community of which they are its caring citizens.   Rather than replace the security of their homes with the sterility of an institutional setting, Acorn creates a sense of family amongst the children.  This natural environment promotes caretakers, not passive visitors with no control of their indoor or outdoor surroundings.  It is this engagement of the child with his world that is the center of the Montessori method.

Acorn Montessori's goal is to provide the best possible environment for the children to be able to grow and to continue to develop their sense of themselves and the world around them.

"My vision of the future is ... of individuals passing from one stage of independence to a higher one, by means of their own activity, through their own effort of will, which constitutes the inner evolution of the individual."
Maria Montessori

Our spacious environment allows active movement engaging the intellect of your child. Each child has the freedom to move within the classroom and select from previously presented materials and lessons. This sophisticated balance between liberty and discipline is established at the inception of the class. Acorn seeks to create a place in which children have a wide variety of materials that are interesting, mentally challenging, and sequentially designed.

Acorn's greatest success is encouraging the child's independence, love of work, personal responsibility, and cooperative nature. The curriculum and environment are designed to help each child with the unique task of creating himself as a loving individual. Positive social traits and healthy cohesion comes first from the development of the personality. The growth of self-esteem and purpose leads organically to social, moral and intellectual development. From this foundation, the sensorial explorer is free to daily construct his intellect by absorbing every aspect of his environment and social community.

"The study of child psychology in the first years of life opens to our eyes such wonders that no one seeing them with understanding can fail to be deeply stirred.  Our work as adults does not consist in teaching, but in helping the infant mind in its work of development."
Maria Montessori

We invite all parents of preschool age children to come see what a true Montessori House is like.  We look forward to being of service to both you and your children.

"The period when discipline becomes established (is one) of active peace, of obedience and love, when work is perfected and multiplied, just as when the flowers in spring get their colors and prepare a distant harvest of sweet and nourishing fruit."
Maria Montessori

"The objects surrounding the child should look solid and attractive to him, and the "house of the child" should be lovely and pleasant in all its particulars. It is almost possible to say that there is a mathematical relationship between the beauty of his surroundings and the activity of the child; he will make discoveries rather more voluntarily in a gracious setting than in an ugly one."
Maria Montessori