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Our Promise
At Atlas Academy, we promise to give your child an Authentic Montessori experience–which means that we’ll do our best to help your child find meaningful, stimulating work which builds knowledge and skills.
We promise to get to know your child extremely well, in order to lovingly support his or her strengths and weaknesses
We promise to prioritize your child’s comfort, happiness, and well-being while at school and to give your child a positive and safe learning environment, as the necessary foundation for learning
We promise to communicate with you sooner rather than later about any difficulties or challenges that your child appears to face.
We DO NOT promise that your child will reach a certain skill level by a certain time; however, we do promise to do EVERYTHING in our power help your child in ALL curriculum areas, as we communicate regularly along the way.
Our Programs
Toddler
Our Montessori Toddler program is for children aged 1 and 2.
Children at that age have two main drives. They like to explore. And they like to imitate. They explore by pushing chairs around, taking items out of a cubby, or dropping things in a basin of water. They imitate by sitting in a chair, getting dressed with the items in their cubby, or washing dishes in a basin.
Our Toddler program supports both of these drives. We offer a rich environment full of opportunities for exploration. And we offer plenty of adult-lead modeling to show toddlers many kinds of activities that they can copy or imitate.
Primary
Our Montessori Primary program is for children ages 3, 4, and 5.
Our Montessori Primary program offers children the perfect blend of freedom and structure. On the one hand, there is a tremendous amount of freedom for children to choose what they’d like to work on, from a classroom full of interesting learning activities. On the other hand, there is a tremendous amount of structure surrounding how to perform each of these activities. The teachers show the children exactly how to use each material and perform each of the classroom routines. To varying degrees, children attempt to imitate the teacher and do as they were shown.
This is why, when parents tour our program, they comment both on the amount of busyness and activity there is; but also on the amount of calm, orderliness, and structure there is. The kids all seem to know exactly what to do, and they do so independently.
Elementary
Our Montessori Elementary proram serves children from grades 1 through 6.
This is the age where curriculum matters a lot. Not only because there are State Standards which we have to keep in mind; but also because children at this age love learning new facts about the world. The teachers are busy most of the day giving lessons to small groups of students. And the children are each busy working on their own thing, by themselves or with a partner. It’s quite amazing to see a classroom full of twenty 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders each working independently on activities they’ve chosen out of a robust curriculum.
Our math curriculum offers interesting materials for children to practice arithmetic and geometry in an appealing, hands-on way. The materials show them the mechanics of opeprations like multiplication or division, instead of just showing them how to get the right answer; that way, students actually have an intuitive understanding of the operations. Children move at their own pace through the math curriculum. Some struggle with math and so we dip back into easier materials, and other excel and we move forward as fast as they can handle. It’s not uncommon to see the same long division math lesson being given to both a second grader and a fourth grader.
Our language curriculum offers a variety of interesting materials for reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary. Through our spelling materials children can independently practice the full system of phonics. Through our word study drawers children can acquire new vocabulary and learn new grammar and punctuation rules. Through our grammar materials students learn to symblize the parts of speech. And through our rich and robust cultural curriculum, children acquire a vast background knowledge of the world, supporting their written comprehension and expression.
Lastly, our cultural curriculum offers children a wide variety of learning opportunities in the areas of science, history, geography, and literature. Children listen to a sequence of novels during read-aloudn throughout the year. They put on a play for parents once a year. They take care of their class pet. They learn about reptiles, birds, and amphibians. They participate in art class once a week. They work with maps and learn about the various landforms on earth. They learn about the coming of life and the coming of humans from our history materials. Maria Montessori viewed the cultural curriculum as so many “seeds of interest” which we plant in a child’s personality; and when these seeds germinate, we see intense and persistent effort in consuming all available knowledge in a given area. Elementary students love learning about the wider world, so that’s what we offer them.