The prepared environment and the guidance of the director help children attain the following goals during their preschool years:

1. To master practical life skills by which they learn to care for themselves and their environment and so develop a sense of order, coordination, concentration, and independence.
2. To refine the senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste so that they can more accurately perceive the world around them.
3. To acquire language skills corresponding to their times of high interest in sounds and the alphabet, words and stories, and finally, writing and reading.
4. To internalize the concepts of numbers, symbols, sequence, operation, and memorization of basic facts through manipulation of the Montessori mathematics materials.
5. To explore the cultural subjects, including the arts and sciences.

Allegro also offers music and physical education for all students, and core French for children in the third year of preschool. The integral three-year preschool program culminates in the third year when academic skills along with personal and leadership development come to a new height. These provide an excellent foundation for continued education, whether in regular school or in Allegro's elementary program.

Our preschool classrooms each have a maximum of 21 children under the supervision of a Montessori Director and a teacher's assistant. We consider a 10-1 student to adult ratio to be ideal.

Admission Requirements

• entry at age 2 ½ - 3 ½ years, at the child's time of readiness
• toilet trained
• developmentally ready, as assessed through an interview

Admission Procedure

1. Forward inquiries to the school at 931-4000 or email us
2. Classroom observation will be arranged for you
3. An interview will be held with parent,child and director

Extended Day Care Program

Allegro Montessori offers an extended day program from 7:45 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. This is offered on a regular or pre-arranged casual basis. Registration and fees are in addition to school tuition. Please direct all inquiries to the Office.

The child's mind from birth to age six is truly the "absorbent mind", to use the description of Maria Montessori. During these early years, children unconsciously absorb and accumulate impressions from which they will later develop their conscious life. Each child eventually brings these impressions to consciousness through movement. It is at this stage that the child enters the Montessori environment and follows a planned program of self-education.

Every child passes through successive stages of limited duration in which the sensitivity for acquiring certain knowledge and skills is at a peak. The abilities mastered in a "sensitive period" become the foundation upon which new skills are based. In the Montessori classroom a child learns, for example, to manipulate small inset puzzle pieces at 2 1/2, thereby strengthening the hand muscles needed for writing at 3 1/2 or 4.

By nurturing the child's own capabilities for concentration, perseverance and thoroughness, the Montessori approach fosters feelings of security, self-esteem, competence and pleasure in accomplishment. The aim for the young child is to establish foundations for a lifetime of creative and joyful learning.

Practical Life Exercises

Children in their early years are very attracted to tasks which an adult considers ordinary -- cleaning furniture, polishing shoes, paring vegetables, and so on. By engaging in these activities, young children follow one of their strongest inner urges which is to imitate the adult.

In the practical life area of the classroom, children develop and perfect their coordination. They gradually lengthen their concentration span. They learn to pay attention to detail as they follow a sequence of actions. The children acquire good working habits as they complete each task and put everything away before starting another activity.

Sensorial Exercises

By the use of special sensorial materials -- things to be touched, shaken, heard, smelled, and visually examined -- children learn to distinguish and categorize, and to integrate new information into what they already know. The child's acquisition of conscious way on impressions given by the senses.

Language

In the Montessori classroom, young children learn the phonetic sounds of the alphabetical letters before they learn the alphabet names and sequence. The phonetic sounds are presented first because these are the sounds children hear in words that they will shortly begin to read. As soon as a child exhibits interest in some area of language, the classroom director introduces specific language material to the child. Writing and/or constructing words with moveable letters nearly always precedes reading in a Montessori environment.

Gradually, children learn the irregular words and words with more than one syllable. Whenever they are ready to read, their skill in phonics allows them to approach new words and not just a specific few which they might have been trained to recognize by sight. A child's interest in reading is cultivated as a most important key to future learning.

The children are introduced to grammar with enjoyable games which show them the difference between nouns, verbs, and adjective. This experience becomes the foundation of language analysis in the elementary years.

Mathematics

Given access to tangible mathematical materials in their early years, children can easily assimilate many facts and skills of arithmetic. (These same facts and skills, if introduced later in an abstract form, are often cause for much drill and drudgery.)

As children become interested in counting, they greatly enjoy touching or moving the items they are counting. The concrete Montessori materials for mathematics -- designed to be combined, separated, shared and compared -- enable children to discover for themselves the basic operations of mathematics.

In a Montessori classroom, there is a variety of materials that can be used for numerization, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. This variety maintains children's interest while giving them many opportunities for the necessary repetition.

Geography

Large wooden geographical puzzles provide some of the most popular activities in the classroom. At first, the children use the maps only as puzzles and later as tracing pieces to create their own maps. Gradually, they learn the names of countries, their land formations climate and products.

History

The older preschoolers explore the concept of history with "time lines", long strips of paper which are unrolled and stretched along the classroom floor. The line is divided into segments which represent the consecutive periods of history.

As an introduction to the understanding of history, the children make a time line of their own lives, beginning with their baby photographs.

Cultural Enrichment

Children enjoy the experience of other cultures, their customs, food, music, religious traditions, costumes, and language. Classroom presentations in these areas by parents and other guests gradually help the children to develop an appreciation of our diverse cultural heritage and an understanding of others.

Art

In the preschool environment, projects in art foster the joy which the young child finds in creating something. The children have the freedom to explore a variety of media and to express their imagination. The process, and not the end product, is the important element.

Music

According to Maria Montessori, the child absorbs the musical sounds of the environment with the same ease as a native spoken language. The composer-educator Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967), developed a method to enable very young children to acquire a musical vocabulary of rhythmic and melodic patterns through singing, clapping, and other rhythmic movement.

Kodaly ,music education is integrated into the preschool program. The aim of the music session at this early level is to help children find delight in making music and to develop basic musical skills.

French

The child between 4 and 6 years, is at a sensitive age for learning two or more languages. Vocal chords are still sensitive and adaptable to new sounds at this age. The full day students have two French lessons per week and are encouraged to practice new words and phrases in the classroom whenever possible. The primary aim in the presentation of a foreign language in a Montessori school must not be the teaching of that language but to stimulate such interest and love for it that the child will want to learn it.

Science and Nature

Children's innate curiosity about the natural world is stimulated through nature walks, the sharing of special items discovered in nature, and later through projects and simple experiments. The enjoyment of the plant and animal kingdoms fosters a love and respect for all living things.

Physical Education

Preschool children are still developing and fine-tuning their basic motor skills. Thus the emphasis is on making the activity fun and stressing a non-competitive atmosphere. Exercise not only increases a child's strength, flexibility and coordination but has been shown to provide a sense of well-being, which in turn, benefits the child in other ares of life.

Movement activities in the classroom include exercises to music, games and action songs. Recreational activity includes outdoor exercises in all seasons. The school gym is available on a regular basis where such skills as ball-handling, loco motor exercises and simple floor work are developed.

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