The learning environment is open, non-competitive, supportive and stresses responsibility and independence on the part of the student.

Montessori is a philosophy of education formulated by Dr. Maria Montessori (1970 – 1952), an Italian physician who had a particular genius for observing children as they are, rather than as adults wish them to be. She felt that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill children with an assortment of pre-selected facts, but rather to cultivate their own natural desire to learn. With the hand being the primary teacher of the child, the Montessori classroom is a meticulously designed and cared for environment where the child can handle and manipulate materials that demonstrate basic universal concepts. The beautiful and orderly equipment invites him to do this at his own period of interest and readiness. Through this enriched environment, children learn to read, write and calculate in the same way that they learn to walk and talk – one experiential step after another, teaching themselves.

A Montessori classroom is a unique delicately balanced community of young people between three and seven years of age in which the absorbent mind is allowed the freedom to work and assimilate without pressure or interruption. Generally, a child starting at three years of age will venture into reading between the ages of four and vie. He explores creative writing between the ages of five and seven. As the entire program is sequential and is designed for the sensitive periods of the young child, optimum results cannot be expected for a child who misses the early years of three and four, or for a child who does not complete the entire program.

It is an unfortunate historical fact that the term "Montessori" was never copyrighted and is therefore widely and freely used to describe any environment that uses Montessori materials or that is unstructured. To protect the efforts, philosophy and methodology of Dr. Montessori, the Association of Montessori Internaionale (AMI), the accrediting agency for the original Montessori program, visits affiliated schools every three years to ensure that high standards are maintained and that all teachers are AMI certified.

The Montessori classroom is prepared to meet the specific development needs of young children. Montessori teachers act as guides using their continuous observation of the children’s ability to help them construct themselves. The teacher is the link who connects the children to their environment. The activities begun in the primary class are repeated on higher and broader levels as the children move through elementary school.

The Montessori classrooms are uniquely designed with over $10,000 worth of European teaching materials placed at the children’s reach. The rooms are prepared to allow the children the freedom to move and develop at their own rate. Children work alone or in small groups, learning spontaneously from one another, with the director acting mainly as a guide. Inherent in the design of the Montessori materials is self-correction, so the children can see their mistakes. The children are never held back in their quest for knowledge.

The teacher gives individual and small groups instruction amidst the working and the social atmosphere in the classroom. It is the role of the teacher to be example, to give the children encouragement for their development and to bring them in touch with the pedagogical materials so that they children may feel the independence of being their own guide.

A sense of order in the environment and among the children is essential. It is important that the teacher work on the basis of mutual respect with the children, always encouraging self-discipline. If a natural order arises from the children through their own control it is not necessary that the adults impose their authority, but instead, nourish the constructive will of the child.

Practical Life exercises involve dressing skills and care of the environment, promoting coordinated movement. They are designed to foster independence, self-control, coordination of the hand and concentration.

Mathematics is a continuation of the earlier sensorial material interrogation. The child works form the concrete toward abstraction through repeated sensorial impressions of geometry, relationships of quantity, the processes of addition, multiplication, subtraction and division. These muscular impressions are continued in a more abstract way at the next level. The primary aged child is a "fact seeker." Consequently, this is the time for the foundation of memorization of math facts.