Montessori Characteristics

The following characteristics are hallmarks of the best Montessori schools and the basis of programs at Sea Pines Montessori Academy:

• Mutual respect: teachers and administrators hold a deep respect for children as individuals. The classroom environment is carefully structured to meet children’s natural needs. Children respect adults, their own responsibilities, classmates, classroom, and the community at large.
• Emphasis on character development: a conscious effort to instill children with kindness, peacefulness and respect for others and the world around them.
• Joyful atmosphere: classrooms that are bright and peaceful are joyful learning environments where children have both structure and freedom.
• Multi-age groupings (each class spanning three age levels) in which young children learn from older children and where older children reinforce their own learning and build self-confidence as they lead others. Children form close relationships with peers they are together with for several years. The classroom is a family setting with realistic expectations and boundaries.
• Self-sufficiency: students are expected to take care of their environment, community, and each other to develop leadership skills, self-sufficiency, and independence.
• Respect for individual learning styles: a recognition that each child is born intelligent, yet learns in different ways and at an individual pace. All kinds of intelligences and styles of learning are supported (musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, intuitive, and the traditional linguistic and logical-mathematical). Students move ahead as they master new skills, not by a predetermined schedule. They are free to work with any materials in the classroom when they are ready. Many return to the same work over many weeks until it becomes something “so easy” they can teach others what they have mastered.
• High academic expectations: for all children, not just those who are “gifted.”
• Highly integrated curriculum: lessons are interwoven from an early age. A history lesson, for example, might link together architecture, the arts, science, and technology. To learn more, see: The Spiral of Learning.
• Three-hour work periods: uninterrupted work periods each day to allow individual focus and progress on work. Students know what is expected of them and may be assisted by a teacher in one-on-one lessons or in small groups.
• Community: not just a school, but a warm, home-like supportive community of students, teachers, staff and parents.
• Focus on nature: lessons often focus on or incorporate natural science and outdoor exploration, and encourage a love for the natural world.
• Freedom in learning: Montessori children are given considerable freedom of movement and choice in the classroom within limits. If they stray from expectations, they are quickly and firmly redirected. In their work, students are free to make mistakes and come to see failure as part of the natural learning process.
• Hands-on learning: the Montessori method emphasizes direct contact with concrete learning materials. Children learn through doing: investigation, research, and memorable self-discovery. Maria Montessori found that these methods have far more impact than than rote memorization and large group instruction.
• Nurturing of spirit: the social community embraces the individual child so that students grow to know and feel that they are important, respected and worthy members of a larger social structure.
• A focus on personal best: activities that stress collaboration and cooperation, rather than competition.

No one brings alive the beauty of the Montessori Method better than the children themselves. Please join us for a Campus Tour to see for yourself.