Montessori Luna Bilingual Day Care, Pikesville

Montessori Luna Bilingual Daycare strives to guide children through their unique pathway toward their full potential by: Enriching the quality of children educational and developmental pathways of life. Providing a structural environmental designed to promote academic learning within the framework of respect and responsibility. Understanding the commitment to our global community. Creating a nurturing environment that provides a sense of self-worth and independence. The curriculum is taught in English and Spanish. Practical Life: Through the exercises and repetition of “practical” skills, children learn how to complete work from beginning to end by following a sequence of performance steps. These activities include many of the tasks children see as part of the daily life in their home such as buttoning, zipping, setting the table, watering plants, preparing food, arranging flowers, etc. Grace and courtesy presentations help children to understand the practice of culturally appropriate social behaviors in a fun way. Sensorial: The Sensorial materials serve as tools for development. The materials in this area include various activities to teach the children shapes, colors, spatial relationships and logical thinking skills. By touching, seeing, smelling, tasting, listening, and exploring children learn to order and classify the physical properties of their environment. Such activities increase the child’s awareness and provide a repertoire of sensorial experiences through which they will use to perceive the world around them. Language: growth is vital to a child’s development. The Montessori environment is rich in oral language opportunities, allowing the child to experience conversations, stories and songs. Beginning with the sandpaper letters, children link sound and symbol, encouraging the development of written expression and reading skills. At the next level, the children move on to reading comprehension, sentence structure, vocabulary development, and writing skills. Math: materials help the child learn and understand mathematical concepts by working with concrete materials. This work gives children a solid understanding of basic mathematical principles, prepares them for later abstract reasoning, and helps to develop problem-solving capabilities. This area includes a range from number recognition, place value, subtraction, addition and ordinal counting; all the way to multiplication and division. Art: Finger paint, clay and lots of hand on activities will help the child to develop their fine motor skills. Cultural Studies: include geography, biology, botany, zoology, physical science, art and music. These subjects are usually presented to reinforce another concept in the classroom. For example, children learn about people and cultures in other countries alongside their geographical studies. Broadening the scope of their basic studies will offer children an underlying knowledge, overall understanding, and earned appreciation for the world around them. Spanish: As part of a global community, Spanish is taught as a second language. Lessons are delivered in both English and Spanish and children are constantly exposed to folkloric Spanish music.