Primary Division
The child's educational journey starts here as a part of the very special experience that is Westminster School. Caring and knowledgeable teachers create an orderly aesthetic environment. Primary teachers develop a relationship with parents and child, vital toward establishing the education, personal fulfillment, happiness, and well being of young children. The Primary Division curriculum reflects the Montessori content areas of practical life, language, sensorial, and mathematics. Personalized lessons promote a formal sequence of activities appropriate to each child.
Practical life offers daily living exercises such as pouring, sponging, tying, and cutting designed to coordinate and strengthen the hand and eye muscles. These are foundations for writing and reading. Language activities range from naming objects to writing down observations of the class parakeet. In the mathematics area, very young children might sort out objects, count, or explore the decimal system with the golden beads Store Game, "the most wonderful store in the world and you can have anything you wish." Sensorial materials draw the child's attention to complex concepts such as diameter, size, or plane figures of geometry which can be explored and compared to objects in the child's world. PE, art, and music occur outside the classroom with specials teachers.
