MONTESSORI 3-6 (AGES 3, 4 AND 5)

Our preschool and kindergarten curriculum, inspired by Maria Montessori and Sofia Cavalletti's Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, provides a systematic and orderly framework for learning in the earliest years. By means of experiential learning, children at Holy Family Cathedral School discover freedom in truth by experiencing directly the simple truths of the world around them. Rocks are hard. Water is wet. Fragile things break. Enduring things endure.

Maria Montessori’s methods emphasize the importance of order, the place of discovery in the process of learning, the dignity of the child and the world of created things, and whatever in reality is really real—wood and stone, and above all authentic praise for genuine accomplishment. All of these methods are in service to an intuitive and implicit initial catechesis in nature, complemented in religious instruction by Catechesis of the Good Shepherd.

One might wonder, "How does the Montessori Method 'fit' with classical education?" As Plato has written, “No enforced study abides in the soul.” Like the Montessori Method, classical education aims above all to allow children to explore truth and reality through experience. The "work" of the Montessori classroom therefore eventually gives way to dialogue beginning in First Grade. Dialogue is then the chief mode of learning for all the years that follow.

St. Thomas Aquinas has written that “the first things perceived by the intellect are being and essence” (cf. On Being and Essence). Thomas was of course writing about infants and especially newborns: seeing mom for the first time, a child know that mom is (being) and that mom is unlike anything else (essence). The preschool curriculum at Holy Family Cathedral School begins with this crucial insight and builds upon it in preparation for the child’s initial study of grammar and arithmetic, their “first steps” along the seven “ways” of the liberal arts.