Typical Day

Arrival: Toddlers arrive for the school day between 7:30am and 8:15am They start their day by hanging up their coats, putting away their lunches, putting on their indoor shoes, and greeting their teachers and friends.

Work Cycle: Children have an uninterrupted morning of hands-on activities, and the teachers work with children one-on-one or in small groups. Types of activities include:

• Practical Life: Children delight in doing activities from everyday life that are scaled down to toddler size. Examples include pouring, scooping, transferring, flower arranging, and practicing zippers.
• Fine Motor: We have variety of manipulatives, such as puzzles, shape sorters, and stringing beads.
• Language: We offer language objects, pictures, songs, books, and poems.
• Art: The Montessori philosophy is “process oriented, not product driven” and we have all kinds of media for children to explore including paint, clay, finger crayons, and chalk.
• Outdoors: Weather permitting, we spend a lot of time outdoors in our spacious playground equipped with a play structure, gigantic sand box, tricycles, basketball hoop, balls of all sizes and an ever popular parachute.
• Lunch: We have a group lunch at 11am. Hot lunch is available for purchase, or children can bring a packed lunch from home. Weather permitting, we eat our lunch on the benches under an awning. Toddlers retrieve their own lunch pails, open up their lunch boxes and clean up after themselves afterwards.
• Half-day children go home at 12:15pm
• Nap: Children start napping between 12:15-12:30pm
• Afternoon: Toddlers eat a snack, go outside again or continue exploring the classroom until their parents pick them up. The school day ends at 3:15 pm and after school care ends at 6:00pm
• Toileting: Using the toilet is part of the routine throughout the day. To facilitate toilet learning, all children wear pull-ups or underwear, no diapers. We help with toilet training and partner with parents on best practices for the youngest students.