We believe that children are naturally born with the inner directive to meet their own needs and to learn. Our goal as Montessori educators is to embrace this innate drive by providing optimal learning environments for our bright, engaged, and inquisitive students. Regardless of developmental stage, the opportunity to choose your own activity, to move and work freely within the ground rules, and to work for long blocks of time without interruption are fundamental elements of learning the Montessori way. The Montessori education method was developed over years of research in classrooms, discovering how children learned and developed. The Montessori curriculum is customised to meet the developmental needs of the child each step of the way. Your child has the opportunity to explore their own passions, while being guided to develop the needed skills which sets them up for success later in life!

At IMS, the children are completely immersed in a truly dual-language Montessori environment. Each classroom is guided by two teachers, one a Putonghua-speaker and one an English-speaker who exclusively speak their native language to the children. The children are exposed to speaking, listening, reading and writing from the earliest ages in both English and Chinese, very naturally. Children are constantly picking up new vocabulary from their teacher and their peers in both languages. In the Elementary programme, children attend separate small group Chinese lessons based on their ability. These lessons allow them to learn new vocabulary and skills to reinforce later in their dual-language classroom.

Children are born with the inner directive to meet their own needs and to learn. Regardless of developmental stage, the opportunity to choose your own activity, to move and work freely within the ground rules, and to work for long blocks of time without interruption assures motivated learning, extending curiosity and creativity. This is learning the Montessori way. https://youtu.be/BasltXkmOb8

This is a common question directed at Montessori teachers and administrators from people who are just beginning to learn about the Montessori method. Newcomers are often shocked to hear about the freedoms that Montessori children are allowed. They imagine that the Montessori classroom must be chaotic. Yet when they come to visit a Montessori Elementary classroom for the first time they are shocked once again. They see children engaged in a buzzing hive of productive work, showing each other care and courtesy as they collaborate on ambitious projects. Why is this? The first reason is that children have a natural tendency toward productive and meaningful work, a tendency which is drawn out by the Montessori teacher and the environment. The second reason is that, given the right support from the teacher, the children are quite capable of holding themselves accountable to the goals that they set for themselves as well as the goals that are set for them by society. The Montessori student and teacher have three tools at their disposal to track progress and allow the child to hold himself accountable for his own learning: the work journal, the student/teacher conference, and external benchmark assessment.

The Casa dei Bambini classroom is only a beginning. It is a means to equip the child with the tools and attitude he will need to learn, discover, explore, and seek knowledge. A foundation is laid for the future disciplines of study, including geography, botany, social studies, and the arts. The knowledge gained here offers opportunities for spontaneous activity, leading to knowledge gained through experience. Science, like art and music, is not a limited set of activities pursued by a specialist at a particular time. If given the richness of experience in the world, rather than an isolated experience, the child will find scientific principles everywhere. This creates the foundation for more imaginative exploration later. Work with these materials encourages each child to set about seeking new information and answers to questions. At age of three, these questions are most typically “What” questions, even when phrased as “Why” questions – the child is seeking to increase the fact base needed to understand and categorize the world around. As the child matures and gets ready for the 6-12 transition, the questions typically change to more “Why,” “How,” and “When” questions. The 3-6 child observes, describes, and identifies phenomena as a foundation for later understanding in the Elementary programme when he can explain, discuss, experiment, describe, investigate, and theoretically explore these phenomena.