Montessori Meets Emotional Intelligence
Let’s start by explaining more in detail, why we chose a mixed methods approach of education to be provided at Little Forest Montessori School.
The Montessori method is in essence a child-centric approach that emphasizes each child’s cognitive, social/emotional, and physical development. It stems out of a belief that the young child should have autonomy selecting what it wants to spend its time on, and thus, ensuring that whichever self-guided choice the child makes, it will spend its full uninterrupted concentration on this task. This approach shifts the doing to the child (and does not assume the child is an empty vessel needing to be filled with knowledge) and cultivates self-esteem and intrinsic motivation in addition to enhanced cognition and overall personal development. Meanwhile, the role of the caretaker shifts from being an authoritative teacher to being a facilitator.
The concept of Emotional Intelligence encompasses awareness, understanding, and the ability to express and manage one’s emotions. Young children’s and toddlers’ outbursts of anger and frustration provide the perfect seeding ground to provide educative support on how to manage strong feelings and how to get back into a calm state. While their openness and curiosity open up the door to further explore topics around understanding their environment and grow their awareness. The techniques used at Little Forest Montessori School help to positively impact the Emotional Intelligence quotient of a young child, giving it the tools to self-regulate a wide variety of emotions, understand and relate to other children and adults in its environment and form strong human relationships.
The educative approach of Little Forest Montessori School aims to combine both educational concepts in a flexible, mixed method. We allow deep analytical understanding of each of our young school visitors through empathic listening and each child will receive a tailor-made approach and time to help unfold its full potential. We keep track of the development of your child and communicate each small step of growth with the parents in an open dialogue.
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This way we aim at growing young children that can express and regulate their feelings using a wider vocabulary of emotions and that showcase a natural self-confidence in everything they do.
Bilingual Education
Hola and Hello, at Little Forest Montessori, we choose to teach our young school visitors in Spanish as well as English.
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Our childcare is provided by trained caretakers in English and Spanish. Studies have shown that children can learn multiple languages with greater ease at an earlier age, and that true language acquisition takes five to six years on average, so we choose to teach your child early and get it used to the sound of foreign words.
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The bilingual approach has proven to have a positive impact on the children’s cognitive ability, mental flexibility and overall communication skills. Lastly, children that get the chance of a bilingual upbringing, especially when talking the two most spoken languages in the world, have a head-start compared to monolingual children and will have an easier start in their future school.
Child to Caretaker Ratio
At Little Forest Montessori School we ensure low child-to-adult ratios and small group sizes to help that your child gets enough one-on-one attention from an adult who is available to take care of each child’s unique needs. This responsive caregiving is extremely important to your child’s social and emotional development, physical well-being, and overall learning.
This one-on-one attention helps children feel safe and secure and reduces feelings of being overwhelmed—for both children and adults. A smaller group size with enough trained adults present is easier to manage. Because adults are better able to watch and respond to a smaller group.
