Toddler (15 months – 3 years)

Harbour Oaks provides a prepared environment to meet the needs of the child. Children work individually and cooperatively with materials that engage their curiosity through the senses. Each child has freedom to explore and to observe. The materials are scientifically designed to engage the child with math and language, writing and reading, art and music – the tools of abstract reasoning and communication, and the basis of creative imagination and self-directed learning.

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Curriculum

“By twelve months of age, children are experimenting with their voices, imitating sounds, and generally saying a few words. Between the ages of 15 – 18 months, toddlers have a new awareness of themselves as separate, unique people.  They want to imitate what they see adults doing, and they want to gain independence.”               Tim Seldin

Harbour Oaks provides a prepared environment to meet the needs of the child. Children work individually and cooperatively with materials that engage their curiosity through the senses. Each child has freedom to explore and to observe. The materials are scientifically designed to engage the child in activities that will provide preparatory skills in math and language, writing and reading, art and music – the tools of abstract reasoning and communication, and the basis of creative imagination and self-directed learning.

“As I have so often said, it is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to each individual the chance to fulfill his potential possibilities.” Maria Montessori 

Dr. Maria Montessori believed that no human being is educated by another person. He must do it himself or it will never be done. A truly educated individual continues learning long after the hours and years he spends in the classroom because he is motivated from within by a natural curiosity and love for knowledge. Dr. Montessori felt, therefore, that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill the child with facts from a preselected course of studies, but rather to cultivate his own natural desire to learn.

“…the secret of good teaching is to regard the children’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the children understand, and still less to force them to memorize, but so to touch their imagination as to enthuse them to their inmost core. We do not want complacent children but eager ones… “ Dr. Maria Montessori