Northfields International Nursery and Junior School is a private pre-nursery school which caters for children from 18 months to 3 years.

Maria Montessori observed that young children learn through use of their senses. She also found that if a child’s mind is fully stimulated by purposeful activities in a rich environment in the first three years of life, the brain will develop a stronger ability to learn throughout his or her lifetime. Therefore, a Montessori Toddler Community is a carefully prepared environment in which children can explore with all of their senses to meet their physical, social, emotional, and cognitive needs. As they explore, toddlers learn independence and follow their interests.

Our staff are trained to prepare the Toddler Community environment and provide each child with the opportunity to follow his or her unique path of development.

Called “practical” because they are activities that allow children to contribute to caring for themselves and their environment. This area consists of indoor and outdoor environments designed to aid the child developing concentration, independence, and coordination of movement. The practical life area learning is divided into elementary activities, care of the person, care of the environment both in and out of the classroom. Some typical practical life activities include:

• preparing food
• setting a table
• sweeping and dusting
• caring for plants
• flower arranging
• washing dishes
• dressing and undressing
• toilet learning
• eating with utensils
• cleaning up spills

A child is curious and in need of sensorial exploration. As our toddlers are able to move about freely, they are now at the sensitive stage of the senses as they want to explore through the inner guidance of their own intelligences. At Northfields International School in our Montessori class we give toddlers an opportunity to use all their senses not just on sight and hearing. We use the whole school building as a classroom bringing nature into the love of learning for the toddler. Sometimes you will see us outside doing our activities and exploring with nature by using our senses to learn. We are here to direct our toddlers and give them opportunity to explore and learn on their own with our guidance. As adults we slow down our pace and follow the child.  Some Sensorial Activities include:

• Identifying our primary colours
• Identifying our facial features and body parts
• Exploring our tactile sense through different tactile exploration
• Going for nature walks
• Building with the pink tower and broad stair
• Listening to different sounds

Language development is a large part of toddlerhood as children learn to name the objects around them and verbally express their needs. Toddler confidence builds as they gain greater skill and experience with expressing themselves. Some Language Activities:-

• Naming facial features and body parts
• Phonic sound and objects
• Phonic sound and pictures
• Matching alphabet symbols
• Telling a story with pictures
• Learning the phonetic alphabet

Northfields also incorporates French into its curriculum, giving toddlers exposure to more than one language during this key period of language development.

In our Montessori classrooms we deliver activities that provide our toddlers with experimenting, thinking, solving problems and learning all the time. It is through the exploration and experimentation, our toddlers progress with the ability to think, understand, communicate, make memories, imagine and work out what might happen next. Relationship building between friends, family and others also support his cognitive development. The start of maths development comes through the excitement of experimenting in moving objects, touching real objects, gathering them in groups, counting each one, one at a time. It is with time that our toddlers learn that a word stands for quantity using objects. The toddler later determines that these concepts are used and understood all over the world. Some Cognitive Activities

• Building puzzles
• Matching geometric shapes
• Learning the difference between same and different
• Matching numbers
• Classifying objects to groups
• Sequencing of events

As we continue to build on a healthy emotional foundations and by transitioning from the first year of the toddler. We see their world in their eyes, their feeling of security as a member of the family and culture. As we give support to the toddler in caring for him at school we provide a strong bonding experience, attitude towards oneself by fostering through respect for each child’s individual timetable where they are in their development emotionally and socially. As a school we provide a classroom that provides tools for recognising others emotions, peaceful ways to solve problems and conflict and opportunities for quiet sharing as well as more social interactions.

Another area of exploding development at this age is gross and fine motor skills. Using large and small muscle groups, toddlers take advantage of indoor and outdoor environments and specially designed equipment to engage in movement games, climb, and develop eye-hand coordination.

Music and movement give toddlers many creative ways to express themselves. Singing, dancing, playing instruments, drawing with crayons, or manipulating clay can all strengthen independence, coordination, and motor development.