The Lethbridge Montessori School Goals

The main objective of the Lethbridge Montessori School is to provide a carefully planned, stimulating environment, that will help children develop within themselves the foundational habits, attitudes, skills and ideas essential for a lifetime of creative thinking and learning, of social integration, and emotional well-being.

The specific goals are as follows:

1. To develop a sense of high self-esteem.
2. To develop a positive attitude towards learning.
3. To develop social skills.
4. To build habits of concentration and persistence for life long study skills.
5. To develop and foster an abiding curiosity.
6. To develop habits of initiative.
7. To foster inner discipline and a sense of order.
8. To develop sensory-motor skills in order to sharpen the ability to discriminate and judge.
9. To help develop each child’s innate, ultimate potential.

The Montessori Philosophy

The fundamental tenet of the Montessori philosophy of education is that all children carry within themselves the person they will become. In order to develop their physical, intellectual, social and emotional potential to the fullest, the child must have freedom – a freedom to be achieved through order and self-discipline. The world of the child, say Montessori educators, is full of sensory impressions which at first seem chaotic. From this chaos, children must gradually create order, learn to distinguish among the impressions that assail their senses, and slowly but surely gain mastery of themselves and their environment.

Lethbridge Montessori children celebrate 100 anniversary of Montessori education, 2007.

Dr. Montessori developed what she called the “prepared environment”, which presents a certain order and allows children to learn at their own speed, according to their own capabilities, and in a non-competitive atmosphere, “Never let children risk failure until they have a reasonable chance of success”. The years between birth and six years are the years in which children learn the rules of human behaviour most easily. These years can be constructively devoted to freeing children through the acquisition of good habits to prepare them to take their places in society.

Dr. Montessori recognized that the only valid impulse to learning is the self-motivation of the child. Children move themselves toward learning. The teacher prepares the environment, directs the activities and offers the child stimulation, but it is the child who learns, who is motivated through work itself (not solely by the teacher’s personality) to persist in a given task. If Montessori children are free to learn it is because they have acquired an inner discipline from their exposure to both physical and mental order. Patterns of concentration, perseverance and thoroughness, established in early childhood, produce a confident, competent learner in later years. Montessori teaches children to observe, to think, to judge. It introduces children to the joy of learning at an early age and provides a framework in which intellectual and social discipline go hand-in-hand.