Core Takeaways of Montessori Elementary Schools’ Five Great Lessons

 

For 110 years, Montessori Elementary Schools have engaged students about the world via a gifted schooling approach: teaching Five Great Lessons as intersecting elements in learning and understanding.

 

These lessons—presented throughout the school year as stories--are:

   • The universe and the earth

   • The coming of life

   • The coming of human beings

   • Communication in signs

   • The story of numbers.

 

Starting with the Big Bang, Montessori elementary school students discover astronomy, meteorology, chemistry, physics, geology, and geography as an outgrowth of the first lesson. How? Curiosity!

 

Just like us, our children want to explore and engage with the world to learn about the ‘who, what, when, where, why and how of our planet, our universe, and the estimated two trillion galaxies in space.

 

When presented in a demonstration-style format, young people see, hear and imagine our past as a first step in understanding how they will shape the future.

 

Once children grasp the concept of the universe and earth, we discuss a timeline of life—starting with microorganisms, plants, and animals. As befitting this ‘gifted schooling’ approach, the diversity of life is examined as well as the jobs that each living thing contributes to life on earth. 

 

As you would expect, the ‘Life Lesson’ leads to the study of biology, botany, animals, habitats, ancient life, eras, and evolution.

 

Human beings comprise the next step. From timelines and man’s rudimentary first tools, this lesson highlights three gifts that make humans special: our minds, our hands, and our emotions. The lesson expands through history, culture, social studies, discovery, and invention to show children how mankind has progressed.

 

Writing is the core of the next lesson. Our ability to communicate through signs, the alphabet, reading, writing, and language separates our species from the animal kingdom. The extended lesson: understanding man by his literature, poetry, stories, and common history.

 

The common language of humans is mathematics. Over our 30,000-year history, we’ve built a system of numbers from arithmetic to math to geometry to algebra to statistics to a decimal system. The emergence of the story of numbers leads students into a world of applications.

 

The Five Great Lessons may not seem different from traditional elementary school lessons—but they are. They are not faith-based. They are not ‘line by line note by note’ rote teachings. Rather, they are five conceptual, impressionistic stories that are ‘starting points’ or a ‘springboard’ to deeper insights—not the total focus. 

 

By sharing these stories, Montessori elementary school teachers give students the opportunity for further study, discovery, and engagement in these various sub-topics. It isThisvidualized and personalized research opportunity that the child the ability to work on his or her own to learn more about what excites them academically. 

 

So, the lessons become a unifying, coherent topic while our six-year-olds delve deeply into their imagination, independence, and selves to put the world together—and put themselves into that world. They gain a sense of responsibility while learning more and a degree of gratitude for all life that has come before them.

 

At Lifetime Montessori Elementary School in Santaluz, located in the middle of San Diego County, we work daily via a philosophy that seeks to build average children into excelling children who succeed via a gifted schooling curriculum. 

 

Lifetime Montessori teaches nearly 200 children aged eighteen months to ten years, primarily from the Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos, Rancho Santa Fe, 4S Ranch, Carmel Valley, and Del Sur communities. Schedule a tour today!