TMS Toddler Program

Montessori for Toddlers

The Montessori School offers a pre-primary class that serves children starting at twenty-four months of age. Children are encouraged to attend before starting a three-year cycle in our Primary programs. Students will explore developmentally appropriate works at their own pace in a prepared Montessori Environment. The classroom will prepare your child for the next steps in their Montessori journey. This will be lead by experienced staff who have an abundance of knowledge and are passionate about Montessori.

Programs run Monday through Friday, five days per week
Varying schedules available (view our program chart)
This program runs from late August through early August with a year-round contract (12-months)
Emotional & social development, self-care, health & nutrition, daily outdoor experiences, mathematics, geography & cultural studies, care of the environment, art & music, and so much more!

Young children are eager to learn from new people and experiences. Dr. Maria Montessori discovered that the most important time for learning is the period between birth and six years of age. This is when children absorb everything the environment has to offer. During this time, your child’s brain is developing more rapidly than at any other time.

It’s known that many caregivers don’t seek out a formal education program until their children have passed this crucial stage of their formative years. The Pre-Primary Program is specifically designed for this formative period to construct their foundation for self-esteem and all future development.

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Pre-Primary Program's Classroom at The Montessori School

Our Pre-Primary Program is a more intimate setting with lower staff to student ratios. The maximum class capacity allows up to 12 students. The classroom space is child-sized, well kept, tidy, and welcoming. There is a large emphasis on independence in the classroom and is worked on through the child’s natural passion for curiosity, exploration, independence, and discovery. Montessori classrooms support your child’s drive towards independence in a safe way. This aids their development of confidence and allows them to discover their own abilities by conquering previous limitations. The language-rich environment exposure aids in the development of a broad vocabulary; TMS staff will be using proper nomenclature — not baby talk — and support toddlers in communicating with each other.

Their environment consists of a self care area, child-sized bathrooms, and a sleeping area with individual cots - allowing them to get up or rest independently. The dining area with kitchen has low tables that enable them to help prepare, serve, eat, and clean up their snacks and meals. The larger space is for gross motor activities that help children with coordination and movement. Pre-primary students will also take advantage of our large outdoor space on a daily basis.

Independence & Movement:

Child-sized classroom’s foster their independence — a functional environment with low tables and chairs, child-sized plates, silverware, brooms, dustpans, and toddler-sized toilets. Children will learn to explore, guided by their curiosity and interests while having the challenge of the responsibilities when caring for themselves and their community.

This age group tends to gravitate toward activities of movement. Within the classroom and the outdoor environment, children are offered a wide variety of activities to refine motor skills: pouring water, polishing objects, washing tables, running, shoveling snow, and painting on the easel. Such activities enable children to care for themselves, learn to use the toilet independently, and prepare the table for community meals.

Physical development is essential and our goal is to build their large motor and fine motor skills while helping them gain understanding of body awareness and control. Developing coordination, balance, flexibility, and stamina will be accomplished through these activities.

Pre-Primary Program at The Montessori School

This is the time for children to explore and discover through active play, since children learn best by doing. The routines of everyday living are the foundation of Montessori pre-primary programs. Activities promote independence, order, coordination, and concentration, as well as support social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development. In addition, our educators give toddlers responsive, individualized attention to help build many skills:

Emotional & Social: As your child grows, our school curriculum builds upon their understanding of, what we call, “big emotions” and emotional competency. They learn to recognize different emotions, express wants and needs, show empathy toward the feelings and needs of others, and develop a sense of self-understanding with their many opportunities to learn these skills! Students begin the process of understanding and responding to social cues then dive into parallel play and develop a concept of space as well as ownership for their work. Our staff assist your child in navigating difficult conversations and finding words to express emotions through interactions with peers, staff, and guided small group activities as well as one on one.
Cognitive & Math: You will notice a difference in your child’s attention span as it is strengthened in our Pre-Primary Program. Little ones begin to understand functional relationships and learn the basic qualities of their environment. To build their cognitive function, toddlers observe others and things from various perspectives while applying learned skills in these new situations. Children build the foundations for mathematical comprehension through early quantity and number concepts like filling and emptying, putting in and taking out, taking things apart and putting things back together, identifying familiar objects, and exploring the number of things.
Language: As a toddler, your child is starting to explore language and learn how to communicate. Through our Pre-Primary Program, your child develops speech-like patterns, learns and uses new vocabulary, understands the reciprocal aspect of language, and learns how to verbalize their needs. They will learn to follow instructions with no additional prompting, follow two- and three-part instructions, respond to their name being called, follow cues from the environment, say their name/age/names of caregivers’, communicate what they want in two or three sentences, hold a conversation using three or more sentences, understand and correctly use certain prepositions, correctly use pronouns, name objects, and describing actions and intentions.
Art & Music: Toddlers learn to listen and respond to music, hold a steady beat in weekly music circles, and feel a steady beat. Children explore through building and art materials, imitating sounds, and vocal pitch sounds. They enjoy pairing singing with controlled movement; all of which supports your child’s language development and memory through rhymes and new vocabulary.
Care of the Environment: Students clean their own table after snack/lunch. Children also learn food preparation, food service, packing up after nap, plant care, animal care, and taking care of one’s own things by placing back in their cubby.

Self-Care: Toddlers learn to drink from a cup, use utensils while eating, pour from a pitcher, serve food, and cleaning up after eating. They learn to be able to wash hands at a sink, select activities and objects from a shelf and put them away when finished using them, use the toilet (with little to no assistance from staff or other caregivers), dress independently, and eat to their individual capacity.
Concentration & Focus: This is built on when spending greater amounts of time with an activity, showing they are able to continually focus on an object or activity (despite nearby distractions), and when they express a greater interest in objects or activities.
Science: Toddlers will explore and note how things are the same or different, explore objects with the hands, feet, mouth, eyes, ears, and nose, and begin showing interest in various objects in the natural environment (fish tank, plants, insects). They will explore taking things apart and fitting them together.
Geography & Cultural Studies: Students learn to anticipate familiar events, notice the beginning and ending of a time interval, repeat an action to make something happen again, experience cause and effect, and observe people and things from various perspectives.
Health & Nutrition: Children learn to understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods, identify differences between breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner, understand the importance of sleep in health, and explore and experience different textures, smells, colors, and tastes.

Toilet Training in the Pre-Primary Program

Our staff provide an expert toilet training experience and partner with families on this life-changing development. Being fully toilet trained is a requirement for our Primary Programs, which is one of the reasons we work so hard on this skill, as well as growing their independence and facilitating developmentally appropriate communication. Toddlers who are ready to transition into the Primary Programs must be fully potty trained without having any accidents. Specifically, they are able to:

Communicate the need to use the bathroom
Does not ask for or need adults to accompany them
Manages their clothing requirements independently (taking pants up and down)
Wipes themselves appropriately and thoroughly
Flushes the toilet without fear
Washes their hands with soap and water after each toilet use
Clean themselves and change their clothes independently (if soiled)
A self-care area to foster toilet awareness and independence
Maintains own personal hygiene (wiping one’s nose)

Transferring to the Primary Program

When students are ready to transition to the Primary Programs, they must be 2 years, 9 months and prove they are able to:

Exhibit successful toilet training on a regular basis
Consistently dress themselves and put items away in their own cubbies as well as change from indoor to outdoor shoes independently
Confidently put on, carry, and take off their own backpacks as well as re-pack with lunch boxes, thermoses, art…
Use zippers, snaps, and other closures
Locate their belongings by sight and by name labels
Make transitions with ease throughtout the day
Scrape plates into the compost bin and wash their plates, cups, and utensils
Independently find a material to work on, can find a seat of their choice, and put the material back in the right place when completed
Sit through a story and a ten-minute lesson without getting up

In preparation for preschool, they will learn the necessary social, verbal, and motor skills to communicate with this older age group. These language skills will prove especially important because, at the next level, they will be more formally introduced to the symbolic elements of language (like handwriting and basic literacy skills).