PRIMARY

In primary, the child will develop more social skills to facilitate group play instead of parallel play. They will become open to influences from adults and follow instructions in a pleasant manner, and will be open to writing, reading and mathematical activities.

The classroom is divided into areas corresponding to different ‘sensitive periods’ and they can interact with the appropriate materials for that period.

Many materials – especially those from the sensorial area – are provided again to give the children the opportunity to repeat and refine their movements. In the practical life area, the exercises are more complex and more challenging.

At primary level, this area provides opportunities to refine movement and to socialise. The activities are more complex and challenging than in nursery and offer practice for logical thinking as an indirect preparation of their mathematical mind. Older children also enjoy coming back to this area to choose activities they like to repeat, thus working on their concentration span and self-esteem.

Different groups of practical life exercises with increasing levels of complexity are:

1. Care for the environment

• • Care of the interior such as setting the table, food preparation, polishing, washing the tabletops, washing clothes, arranging flowers, taking care of plants.
  • Care of exterior such as outdoor sweeping, observe nature, feed the birds, watering garden, tidying up after play.

2. Care of self

• • Dressing frames such as safety pin, bow and lacing frame.
  • Washing hands or clothes, polishing shoes, sewing.

3. Grace and courtesy

• • Reinforcement of the ability to greet, saying thank you and goodbye, how to apologise, waiting for your turn, to make it their own.
  • Conflict solving by providing a protocol.
  • How to behave outside the school environment such as going to the swimming pool, theatre, museum, park or taking public transport.

4. Control and coordination of movement

• • Walking along a line forward and backward, while carrying objects.
  • Playing the silence game.

At primary level certain materials are used to create more challenging activities. The child refines his visual sense through applying combinations of materials while adding precise language (small-large, thin-thick, short-tall, long-short, their comparatives and superlatives) and auditory sense by naming bells, playing simple melodies and will be introduced to written music.

In the cultural area, children learn about the world through landforms, biodiversity, cultural influences and terminology. By using the materials that have been introduced during the Nursery programme the child will extend his knowledge by learning the exact names of i.e. countries, oceans, names of parts of flowers/animals, shapes of leaves.

Furthermore, the child will be taught about body functions, life cycle, timelines, calendars, evolution, electricity, condensation.

As a continuation of the Nursery programme we consolidate spoken and written language, and following the same process we used for learning the phonetical sounds but now for reading words: first hearing the individual sounds, then putting them together to create a word (blending) and finally reading the word. Next we create sentences, which involve knowing the order of words to create a phrase (the syntax), and read them to understand their meaning (semantics).

We do this through:

1. Reading activities, through using phonetic and phonogram boxes, puzzle words, command words and classification cards, matching games and reading books.
2. Learning about the function of words, such as articles, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, verbs, adverb games and the continuation of command words.
3. Reading analysis, such as simple sentences (with extensions) and question and answer exercises.

Your child moves from simple to more complex activities and isolates one difficulty at a time, making each activity the foundation for the following one. This allows for manipulation and repetition, taking into account the process of learning. This process has three phases: presentation of the activity, the child’s individual work and repetition and verification of the child’s own knowledge.

The activities are divided into major groups of exercises:

1. Numbers 1 to 10, using number rods, sandpaper numbers, spindle boxes, numbers and counters and the memory game.
2. The Decimal System, using beads and cards, the function of decimal system, formation of large numbers, collective exercises (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), stamp and dot game.
3. Linear Counting & Skip Counting, introducing teens and tens with beads, Seguin board 1 and 2, linear counting 100 and 1000 chain and skip counting.
4. Memorisation of Essential Number Combinations, using the addition and subtraction snake game, addition and subtraction strip board and charts, multiplication tables with bead bars, multiplication and division board and charts.
5. Passage to Abstraction, using the short bead frame.
6. Fractions