Montessori Lower
Elementary Programs
(Limited Spaces Available)
Grades 1 – 3
Full Day: 8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.All Year Full Day: 7:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Program Detail Lower Elementary
Our lower elementary program serves students ages 6-9 — from first to third grades. Lessons in the elementary classes are always given in small groups giving each student ample opportunity to express interests, ask questions, and make meaningful contributions. The student-teacher relationships that develop over the three years they spend together allow for the unique role of teacher as mentor to impact students in unparalleled ways. The teachers are continuously assessing whether a student understands a concept or needs further instruction. They also help students realize their individual interests, recognize and apply their strengths, and overcome more challenging content or tasks.
The mixed-age classrooms allow students opportunities to “practice life.” They start out as the youngest, and work their way to become the oldest, the role models and mentors admired by their younger peers. The teacher is not the only one giving lessons or the only one managing the class. The classroom is filled with little teachers, each student realizing over time what he or she will contribute to the success of the classroom.
It is this unique experience that helps CDS students develop into remarkable students, citizens and leaders. Whether it is teaching a friend how to find the square root of 64, organizing and planning a field trip on their own, or mediating a disagreement between friends, CDS students thrive.
Curriculum Detail
History
- Time telling
- Clock and calendar work
- Fundamental needs of a man
- Agricultural Revolution
- Study of river civilizations (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Yellow River, Indus Valley)
- Civics
- Election process
- Three branches of government
Language Arts
- Literature study
- Reading
- Mechanics and conventions of writing
- Parts of speech and further study of grammar
- Sentence analysis
- Paragraph writing
- Personal narrative, expository writing with notetaking, letter writing, poetry
Math and Geometry
- History of numbers
- Place value
- Operations with whole numbers
- Divisibility
- Multiple and factors
- Fractions
- Decimal fractions
- Squaring and cubing
- Integers
- Currency
- Measurement
- Square root
- Simple word problems
- Probability
- Graphing
- Geometry nomenclature
- Equivalence, congruence and similarity
- Area
Research and Reference Skills
- Use of a variety of non-fiction texts for research and reference
Science
- Creation of the earth
- Coming of life and human being
- Sun and the earth
- Three states of matter
- Properties of air
- Botany, zoology, ecology
- Concepts of globe and map
- Land and water forms
- Telling time
- Days of the week
- Months of the year
- Exposure to other cultures
- Citizenship and community
- Exposure to holidays and influential people throughout history
- Learning names and locations of continents, countries and states
Social Studies
- Arctic, tropic, and temperate zones
- Continents and oceans
- Land and water forms
- Map skills
- Current events
- Economic geography
Where Learning Meets Life
Students gain confidence and develop public speaking skills when they present research projects to other students in the class who are interested in what they learned.
Students learn to tell time by writing the name of and starting and ending time of each work they do throughout the day in their personal journals.
Students learn conflict resolution skills by mediating social disagreements after observing teacher modeling.
