discover our toddler studio
“There is in the soul of a child an impenetrable secret that is gradually revealed as it develops.”
– Maria montessori
Curriculum
Practical Life
Activities in this area revolve around everyday life. Children practice real life skills to take care of themselves and the world around them. They enhance their coordination, concentration, sense of order, independence, eye-hand control, and fine motor skills as they cultivate a positive self-concept.
Care of Self
Activities in this area focus on helping toddlers develop skills for taking care of themselves independently. This may include tasks such as Dressing and undressing themselves (e.g., putting on and taking off shoes, jackets, and hats).
- Washing hands and face
- Brushing hair
- Using the toilet (if toilet learning is underway)
Care of Environment
These activities help toddlers learn to care for their surroundings and develop a sense of responsibility for their environment. Examples include:
- Cleaning up spills
- Sweeping or mopping small areas
- Watering plants
- Wiping tables or other surfaces
Food Preparation and Serving
Toddlers are introduced to simple food-related activities that promote independence and practical life skills. These may include:
- Self-Served Snack
- Spreading, slicing, cutting, and sorting/serving food
- Pouring water from a small pitcher
- Setting the table (placing utensils, napkins, and plates in their proper places)
Grace and Courtesy
This area focuses on teaching toddlers social skills, manners, and kindness toward others. Activities may include:
- Greeting others with a smile or handshake
- Saying “please” and “thank you.”
- Taking turns during group activities
- Offering help or assistance to others
Language
This area focuses on language skills development that nurtures and supports a child’s ability to communicate. Vocabulary development is promoted in the language area through daily interactions, storytelling, songs, and rhymes. Teachers and caregivers create an environment rich in language by introducing materials designed to specifically support the children’s language development, such as picture cards, vocabulary objects, matching objects/cards, descriptive activities, and engaging in conversations with the children.
Fine/Gross Motor
This area engages children to use their senses to learn about the world around them. It provides space and comfort for stacking, nesting, building, bead stringing, and refining the pincer grasp. All of these activities aid children in eye-hand coordination, fine and gross motor development, and concentration.
Art & Music
This area allows toddlers to explore their creativity and express themselves through movement, songs, changing, fingerplays, art and sensory experiences. Materials in this area may include crayons, markers, paint, playdough, clay, collage materials, costumes, and various other tools and instruments.
Outdoor
Our Outdoor area is an essential part of the Montessori toddler experience, providing opportunities for exploration and connection with nature. It includes a garden area, sand and water tables, outdoor practical life activities (raking, wheelbarrow, sweeping, etc.), and outdoor art (easels, paintbrushes, sidewalk chalk, natural materials).
Playground Gross Motor
Toddlers have opportunities to engage in gross motor activities to develop their large muscle coordination and physical skills. This area includes climbing structures, balance beams, tunnels, slides, tricycles, balls, and other age-appropriate gross motor equipment.
Beginnings
From the moment a new baby opens her eyes, the journey of absorbing and learning begins! The first 1,000 days of life and the development that takes place in that window sets the stage for how the brain will work for the rest of the person’s life. Dr. Claire McCarthy, senior faculty at Harvard explains it like this, “How the brain begins is how it stays.” So we take this early window very seriously. As soon as your baby is able to walk, which is often around the age of one, he or she is a “toddler.” So, we begin at one. They are ready for stand-up-diaper changes, ready to choose their activities from our shelves, and most of all, ready for freedom of movement to explore intentionally designed as well as wild spaces. Our Montessori toddler space, which we call a studio, feels like home, offers almost unrestricted movement and freedom (we call this freedom within limits) and facilitates the daily experiences that lead to basic language skills, problem solving, visual discrimination, physical coordination and concentration.
Our motto is the toddler IS the curriculum
While older Montessori children work within areas of specialized curriculum and primary guides appraise growth and development based on refined social, emotional, physical, and academic goals, children under the age of three are unconsciously absorbing their environment and wiring their brains in such a way that our focus is the child, not a curriculum. Carefully chosen activities are arranged and made available so that a curious toddler can explore a variety of materials that develop the whole child toward independence. For example, to promote a toddler’s independence with self care we practice using the bathroom, washing hands, dressing, and making food. To promote large-motor skills we lean and roll, lift heavy things, attend to school plants and animals, run, balance, climb, and jump. To promote fine motor-skills we grasp, reach, use utensils, paint, and transferring objects. To promote care of environment we prepare food, clean messes, and take care of plants and animals. To promote social skills we talk and interact throughout the day as a community (adults model a culture of positivity, truth telling, friendship and kindness). Finally, to promote language skills we sing, discuss, converse, name things, ask questions, say what we see, and slow down our speech so toddlers can understand us. And, we wait for the time it takes for toddlers to formulate a response (if they are speaking.) Toileting is led by the child and facilitated with the help of guides. We begin gently and consistently on day one, and it’s not uncommon for children as young as two to begin practicing underwear and phasing out diapers.
Daily routine
A trained Montessori guide and two assistants are with up to 18 toddlers in a beautiful space that looks more like a home than a school. Our day starts with a careful greeting ritual in the morning that flows naturally into an uninterrupted work cycle. Around 10:15, the children go outside for unstructured outdoor time. The group comes back inside and shares a family-style lunch around 11:45. By 12:15, most toddlers are washing their dishes and cleaning up to prepare for a nap. Everyone receives a fresh diaper or visits the toilet and is tucked in around 12:30. Children are protected to sleep as long as they need. As they wake up naturally, they are greeted by their guides and invited to the toilet, wash their hands and face and have their hair brushed, braided, etc. Dismissal is at 3:00. For children who stay late, our extended day time is a mixture of indoor and outdoor play.
We redirect gently, lovingly, and calmly; there is no time out, no harsh words, and we are not in a hurry to change, fix, or improve children; our default is that all behavior is a response to an unmet need, not an invitation to label things as right or wrong. Our toddlers are given space to grow, learn, express themselves, and follow their curiosities. We trust that week by week and month by month, each toddler will refine, coordinate, use more words, connect socially, and problem-solve with personality and innate intelligence.