The Kindergarten Year
2024 Program Overview:
The Kindergarten Program runs Monday - Friday 8.30am - 3.00pm
Breakfast Club starts 8.10am and afternoon care is available 3.00 pm - 4.00 pm
How is it structured?
In tandem with the Montessori curriculum, Karuna Montessori offers the NSW government registered (NESA) Kindergarten program for the final year.
During the first 2 years in the Early Childhood classroom, Montessori students look forward to their turn to be a leader. In their third year, known as Kindergarten, children get their turn and take pride in being the oldest. They serve as role models for younger students; they demonstrate leadership and citizenship skills. They reinforce and consolidate their own learning by teaching concepts they have already mastered to their peers. In their Kindergarten year, they express confidence, develop self-esteem and self-sufficiency, and show responsibility.
Kindergarteners are introduced to progressively more advanced Montessori materials and sophisticated, fascinating lessons. They also experience an important period in which their previous learning from working with concrete Montessori materials begins to become permanently embedded. The Montessori Kindergarten student sees and feels their personal growth as they watch others learn the information they have mastered themselves.
Kindergarten is the culmination of the Early Childhood program. Children exhibit the independence, critical thinking, collaboration, and leadership that they have been practicing during their previous years in the Early Childhood classroom, exercising them independently as they prepare to transition into a primary school program.
Empowering children to become resilient and capable
At age five to six, children are still learning through heightened absorption of their surroundings; they still benefit immensely from hands-on, concrete Montessori materials and introductions to abstract concepts, and they are still wired to work individually so they can finish refining their sense of self. Montessori kindergarten mirrors these aspects of their development.
Kindergarteners heading for their primary year will undergo significant shifts. They will become more imaginative, capable of more abstract thinking, socially motivated, and hungry for intellectual knowledge, but the 3-6 classroom does not seek to rush this transition; it meets them precisely where they are — empowering them to “secure that roof.”
Preparing them for the next step
Children keep progressing by deepening their knowledge with new layers; it is not the same experience year after year. Instead of starting over in a new classroom, as is the case in mainstream schools, the Montessori Kindergartner experiences continuity through a “capstone year,” where they gain protected time to master all that they’ve learned and to take that knowledge to new heights. Academically, they have access to much more advanced materials — many of which compare to 2nd or 3rd primary level work. They will step into further schooling with self-confidence, knowledge, independence and responsibility.