What your child will learn at Karuna
About Our Programs
Curriculum Overview
What your child will learn at Karuna
Rigorously trained teachers carefully observe their children in the Early Childhood environment, identifying their interests and abilities and developing personalized learning plans tailored to each child’s needs. They guide the learning, introducing new lessons and levels of difficulty as appropriate. The teacher offers the encouragement, time, and tools needed to allow children’s natural curiosities to drive learning, and provides choices that help them learn, grow, and succeed.
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After participating in a demonstration of a material from a teacher, your child is free to choose activities and to work on their own or with a partner for as long as they wish. Since there is usually only one of each material, your child will develop patience and self-control as they wait for a material to become available.
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The Montessori Early Childhood curriculum follows a 3-year sequence. Because the teacher guides your child through learning at her own pace, their individualized learning plan may exceed the concepts they would be taught in a classroom environment in which all children learn the same concept at the same time. As children move forward, they develop the ability to concentrate, make decisions and solve problems, along with developing self-control, courtesy, and a sense of community responsibility.
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In Montessori schools, academic growth is seen as just one part of children’s healthy development. The method nurtures their social, emotional, and physical growth, ensuring that they are, as Dr. Maria Montessori put it, “treading always in the paths of joy and love.”
The Curriculum
Practical Life
​Children learn daily-life skills, such as how to get dressed, prepare snacks, set the table, and care for plants and animals. They also learn appropriate social interactions, such as saying please and thank-you, being kind and helpful, listening without interrupting, and resolving conflicts peacefully. In addition to teaching specific skills, Practical Life activities promote independence, and fine- and gross-motor coordination.
Sensorial
Math
The Curriculum
Children refine skills in perceiving the world through their different senses, and learn how to describe and name their experiences—for example, rough and smooth, perceived through touch. Sensorial learning helps children classify their surroundings and create order. It lays the foundation for learning by developing the ability to classify, sort, and discriminate—skills necessary in math, geometry, and language.
Through hands-on activities, children learn to identify numerals and match them to their quantity, understand place-value and the base-10 system, and practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They also explore patterns in the numbering system as well as skip counting, squaring and cubing. With an exploratory approach, children do more than just memorize math facts; they gain a firm understanding of the meaning behind them.
Language
Activities throughout the Early Childhood classroom teach language, help children acquire vocabulary, and develop skills needed for writing and reading. The ability to write, a precursor to reading, is taught first. Using hands-on materials, children learn letter sounds, how to combine sounds to make words, how to build sentences, and how to use a pencil. Once these skills are acquired, children spontaneously learn to read.
Cultural Studies
A wide range of subjects, including history, geography, science, art, and music, are integrated in lessons in the cultural area of the curriculum. Children learn about their own community and the world around them. Discovering similarities and differences among people and places helps them develop an understanding and appreciation of the diversity of our world, and a respect for all living things
Extra Curriculum Activities
Our children enjoy a wide range of activities that focus on community connection, emotional and physical well-being and taking care of their environment. Our weekly program includes gardening, composting, cooking, yoga, music, art and outdoor play. Throughout the term, the children will have various educational visits which are in line with their learning for that term. This might include a visit from our local ambulance or surf lifesaving teams, visits from the coastal environment center or cultural programs that focus on sharing Indigenous Australian perspectives.
Our parents are always welcome to lead group times and talk to the children about what they do or share with them a part of their own culture. Further activities include things such as fundraising for good causes, supporting animal wellfare organisations or going on short walks to the park or the local shops. To learn more about our programs, send us an enquiry below!