Elementary school is a critical stage in your child’s journey of self-discovery and learning about the world around them. Creating an atmosphere where children love to learn is vital.

Dr. Maria Montessori was an innovative, revolutionary woman who was not only the first female physician in Italy, specializing in psychiatry, but also the founder of today’s world-renowned Montessori philosophy of child development and education.

Montessori teachers use a student-focused approach to lessons. Traditional school teachers build lesson plans based on pre-approved criteria. These traditional school lesson plans focus on rigidity and compartmentalized learning. Instead of forcing children to learn at the same pace across the board, Montessori schools focus on allowing children to learn at their individual pace and skill level.

We all want our children to be academically successful but also realize that they possess talents and needs that go beyond the academic. Most educators talk about meeting the needs of the whole child but somehow, miss the boat, in the implementation of various programs. Some schools are so concerned about the child’s social and emotional development that the academics suffer while others are so academically oriented that everything else is eclipsed. Montessori strikes a perfect balance between the two ends of the spectrum because we realize that unless the social and emotional needs are met little academic progress is possible.

At Apple Montessori, we take our teachers’ continuing education very seriously. We are proud to provide our teachers with opportunities to be the very best role models and teachers they can be, strengthen important skills and learn the latest techniques.

By about age six children enter into what Maria Montessori called the second plane of development. The child becomes less dependent on imitation and much more concerned with the how and why questions. Social interactions with peers become more important, discovery of, and pride in, one’s personal heritage and family customs becomes fascinating, and knowledge is no longer accepted at face value. These children are hungry for intellectual challenges, open-ended questions, and lots of facts.