EARLY CHILDHOOD (AGES 2 YEARS, 10 MONTHS - KINDERGARTEN)
PRACTICAL
LIFE
~Learning to care for oneself and one's environment through lessons in: grooming, dressing, pouring liquids
and solids, using sponges and scrub brushes, mopping, dish washing, food preparation, washing clothes, and other activities.
These are real activities, not make-believe. The children find real joy and self-esteem
in doing productive work.
SENSORIAL
~Special teaching
materials for developing the senses and academic skills including: color, texture, weight, dimension, sound, music, taste,
smell, temperature, stereognostics and geometry.
These activities
refine the children's sense of perception, which will increase their ability to differentiate and catalog all later learning.
LANGUAGE
~Sound games for developing the children's ears lead into
analysis of the sounds found in short phonetic words. Writing ability is developed through pencil exercises using special
apparatus. The sounds of letters are taught through various "games" and lessons. The shapes and "feel" of letters, as well
as the phonetic sounds of letters, are taught by tracing sandpaper letters with two fingers. This helps children learn all
of the skills for reading and writing as simple independent lessons. When skills are mastered, a spontaneous synthesis of
knowledge and coordination occurs. This results in reading and writing of phonetic words. After children can synthesize
increasingly longer phonetic words, they learn non-phonetic elements one at a time.
MATHEMATICS
~Beginning with concrete materials children learn the quantities to ten. Simultaneously, they learn the symbols
for the quantities. Finally, they learn to combine the symbols with the quantities for a true understanding of numbers. The
same approach is used with fractions and the decimal system. As the children gain confidence they learn how to manipulate
the concrete materials to perform the basic math operations using thousands, hundreds, tens, units. They also duplicate the
procedure with the abstract number cards. Eventually, they no longer need the concrete materials to perform the operations.
As a result of this method the children have a firm conceptual grasp of abstract mathematical operations.
SCIENCE
AND NATURE STUDY
~Classification cards and lessons in learning the parts of animals and plants are the first
introductions to science and nature study. Intuitively, with the help of the materials, the children learn how to differentiate
the classifications in the animal and plant kingdoms. Simple science experiments are also available for the children to use
in the discovery of natural laws.
HISTORY
~Children
begin learning history with time lines. These show the development of life, presidents, a person, etc. by using pictures
to show change. The children place the pictures on the time lines in the proper sequence.
GEOGRAPHY
Some examples of lessons are briefly described here. Land and water trays which depict basic forms (such as
island, peninsula, isthmus, etc.) show the land forms three dimensionally so when the children pour water in the trays an
island becomes an island in a miniature sea. A land and water globe (showing no political divisions) provides a picture of
the world in its true form, a sphere with oceans and land. Later a continent globe is introduced which shows each continent
in a different color. These colors correspond to picture packets of the continents and a color coded puzzle-map. Other puzzle-maps
show each continent divided into countries and the United States into states. The knobs on the puzzle-maps locate the capitol
of each country or state.
