Montessori Schools

2021/03/05 by R.M.S.

Hands-On Materials in Math

Using Montessori materials to learn place value in Senior Kindergarten

In Montessori, our Prep-ONE (Senior Kindergarten) students use concrete hands-on materials that make an abstract concept more clear to them in math class. Students can be seen using the Montessori approach to learning fractions while using the Fraction Circle Box, which makes learning about fractions easy and fun for them. The language Montessori materials, such as the Green Series Boxes (with pictures and labels for word building) and the Small Moveable Alphabet (for creating sentences and short stories) help improve students’ reading comprehension and writing skills. Built-in ‘control of error’ in many of the Montessori materials allow children to determine if they have done the exercise correctly, and to learn from their mistakes.

Rowntree Montessori Schools is Brampton’s largest and longest serving private school. We have been voted Brampton’s Best Private School for the past nine consecutive years and Brampton’s Top Private School for the past seven consecutive years. To learn more, please click here.

We are now accepting applications for our Prep-ONE class for September 2021. Spots are limited and are filling very quickly, so we encourage you to complete an Enquiry Form today.

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To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

2020/03/13 by R.M.S.

A Real World Lesson about Money in SK

Two students counting coins during a math lesson in Senior Kindergarten — Students counting coins and learning about money in Senior Kindergarten

Brought to you by Rowntree Montessori Schools

Nurturing Tomorrow’s Achievers Since 1969

At Rowntree Montessori Schools, we incorporate “real life” situations into our teaching as much as we can which provides us with an opportunity for cross-curricular teaching. Recently, during a math class, our Senior Kindergarten students used Canadian money to purchase items in their classrooms. This helped students to learn about the different Canadian coins and their values. Students also had an opportunity to test both their addition and subtraction skills, by adding and subtracting by 5s and 10s.

It was wonderful to see the children collaborating while they shopped and practice good citizenship; by using their manners, not pushing, being patient while waiting in line, and ensuring that they paid for all items that they picked out. Children were taught the importance of spending wisely, “saving for a rainy day” and using their money at the right time.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

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2020/01/31 by R.M.S.

Pizza as an Educational Tool

Brought to you by Rowntree Montessori Schools

Nurturing Tomorrow’s Achievers Since 1969

Our AHA! Moments take place in our classrooms, every day!

At Rowntree Montessori Schools, our younger students benefit from using Montessori materials to enhance their daily learning, and all RMS students are regularly engaged with sophisticated educational technologies. But sometimes, the simplest everyday items can make for the best teaching and learning tools. The pizza has become such a tool at Rowntree, and not just because recycled cardboard boxes make for great STEM building materials! Pizzas make for terrific real-world examples for fractions and pie-graph lessons in Mathematics, and our students also use pizzas as a way of learning step-by-step instructions and food-based vocabulary in French class. These happy Grade 5 students had just finished an oral presentation in which they described their perfect pizza and explained to their classmates how their pizzas were made.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

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2020/01/28 by R.M.S.

Science and Candy?!

Brought to you by Rowntree Montessori Schools

Nurturing Tomorrow’s Achievers Since 1969

Our AHA! Moments take place in our classrooms, every day!

For an inquiring young mind, what can be more exciting than a lesson that combines science with candy? At Rowntree Montessori, we combine modern and traditional methods to create a dynamic learning environment for all students. While our students are often engaged in hands-on activities using various Montessori materials and technological tools such as Chromebooks and interactive whiteboards, we have found that everyday materials can also help to enhance our young learners’ experiences. Our students can often be found using cardboard in creative ways in solving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) problems, and in the examples below, they are learning about colours and the Scientific Method with the help of milk, dish soap and Skittles! This type of creative and interactive teaching and learning sets Rowntree apart as a place where both academic expectations and fun in the classroom are set to a very high standard.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

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2020/01/10 by R.M.S.

The Benefits of using Montessori Materials to Teach Math

Recently in our PrepOne Math class, we have been using our workbooks a lot lately. So to try something new for our unit on creating 3D shapes, we implemented a hands-on STEM activity that helped students learn this skill. This teaching method is especially helpful to students who are kinesthetic or tactile learners. It provides them with a better understanding of the points and sides of each shape. Savera, has always done well in Math and she really loves to take part in any hands-on Montessori activities. During this lesson, she created 3D shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks and was able to identify each shape with its points and sides.

Rowntree’s mission is to use differentiated learning to teach our students various concepts and core skills. With this particular activity, students really benefited from the lesson because they were actively involved in joining sides and points of the 3D shape and were able to actively see the shapes come to life.

As today’s teachers, it is our responsibility to identify the various ways our students learn and encourage learning through different methods.
Savera was really excited as this was the first 3D shape she had created independently, without any assistance from her teacher.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

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2019/10/22 by R.M.S.

Kindergarten Students Learning to Spell and Read Using Montessori Materials

Our AHA! Moments take place in our classrooms, every day!

Brought to you by Rowntree Montessori Schools…Nurturing Tomorrow’s Achievers Since 1969.

A Movable Alphabet is a tool used in a Montessori learning environment to teach reading, spelling, and writing. The Movable Alphabet makes it fun for the child to practice alphabetical order, beginning sounds, ending sounds, middle sounds, and the formation of entire words. It is a wooden box containing 26 wooden letters.

Typically students are approximately 3.5 years old or older when they start using and learning with the movable alphabet. You will know when they are ready to use the movable alphabet when they are able to recognize 3-4 consonant sounds and one vowel sound.

The goals of this lesson are to familiarize the child with the movable alphabet, to teach students to be conscientious of their work by being careful with the letters, and by organizing and straightening letters in the box.

To learn more about the benefits of using Montessori materials in reading and writing, click here.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

Please kindly SHARE this post with others by clicking onto one or more of the icons below. We would appreciate it and thank you in advance.

2019/08/30 by R.M.S.

At Rowntree Montessori Schools, Math is Fun!

Not everyone will agree that math can be fun but the students at Rowntree Montessori Schools love math. As the great, William Paul Thurston stated, “mathematics is not about numbers, equations, computations, or algorithms; it is about understanding”. The teachers at RMS are excellent at teaching one of our core subjects, math, and fostering a love of this subject.

Rowntree Montessori School students shopping during Math Day

Math is one of the core subjects taught in Prep-ONE (Senior Kindergarten) that we teach at Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS). During our math circle time, we start the year with counting from 1 to 100, counting by 2s to 20, and 5s and 10s to 100. We often make this engaging for students by adding songs because studies how that children learn well when lessons are fun. We teach students greater than and less than, as well as before and after numbers (up to 100). Students really enjoy this because the lessons are conducted using Montessori manipulative materials. These materials include number cards and object counters.

We also teach our students addition and subtraction to 10 using the Montessori Addition and Subtraction Boards. When students are learning double-digit addition and subtraction, we use the Stamp Game. This provides children with a learning tool that they can touch and see. At an early age, we also introduce 2D and 3D shapes, sorting, time by the hour,m and by the half hour, graphing, fractions, and place value.

Recently, our students learned about Canadian money which they used it in a real-life setting, during our annual “Math Day.” On this day our whole school transformed into a shopping mall and all of our students became shoppers. They learned how to purchase items and budget their mock money to buy toys, books, clothing, etc. Another exciting activity was teaching our students about “place value” through the use of Montessori materials. In this activity, students were able to create numbers by using the Montessori Golden Beads.

As a Kindergarten teacher, I can truly say that our Math programme is well-organized, and well balanced to suit the needs and learning styles of our young children. Our programme is truly ahead of the Ministry set guidelines. I look forward to many more years of watching our young students build a love for math, as they become interested in it through well thought-out activities and an excellent planned curriculum.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

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2019/08/06 by R.M.S.

The Importance of Physical Education in Kindergarten

At Rowntree Montessori Schools, we also value the importance and necessity of physical education, because we acknowledge the importance of skill building and teamwork, as we try to make physical education engaging and fun. Phys-Ed at the Kindergarten level is an extension to academic learning within the classroom that refines each student’s fine motor and gross motor skills. The students start the year off by learning how to play run around games that help them learn to follow simple 3 step instructions, until they have become confident to follow more complex rules, as a result of becoming familiar with the structure of various games. When the students have established the understanding of the rules in a game, they are then taught a variety of sports and fitness drills. Other activities such as parachute, obstacle courses, fitness rotations, and free movement play, are also embedded into the Phys-Ed programme for Kindergarten students at RMS.

Phys-Ed class occurs twice per week, as students wear appropriate gym clothes and shoes at school. Health lessons are also part of the curriculum, which focus on personal hygiene, fire safety in school and at home, healthy eating and identifying road signs, completed through paper-based activities and movement around the gymnasium.

Age-appropriate equipment is used to learn the basic skills in a sport or in free movement activities. Eye captivating materials such as soft coloured balls and hula-hoops grab the attention of students, as teachers create multiple ways to make Phys-Ed engaging. The use of imagination is the most important part of Phys-Ed for Kindergarten students, as they use movement to express real life experiences. For example, when playing parachute, students can demonstrate the waves of the ocean on a sunny calm day or during a storm. This allows the young students to actively participate in an inclusive activity that can relate to their weather discussion later on during circle time in the classroom.

Recently during a Phys-Ed class at the RMS Downtown campus, students were mixed with different age groups from Kindergarten to Grade 2, to complete a teamwork activity similar to the popular children’s board game “Hungry Hungry Hippos”. The game required students to work in pairs, fetch the balls from the middle circle, and bring them back to their bowl as quickly as possible. The students quickly began to strategize, problem solve and work with their partner to be successful and accomplish the activity with a win. This was a great learning experience for students, as it involved multiple grades and ages, and challenged them to work together to create a space where meaningful social interactions and teamwork could occur.

Physical education is not just about being active, it develops skills when solving challenges, competing against a peer or developing fine motor abilities. Phys-Ed at RMS develops self-discipline, responsibility and improved judgement. Students have the opportunity to assume leadership roles, cooperate with others and learn regulations. With a strong Phys-Ed programme, students are supported in their mental health by using the class as an outlet for releasing tension and anxiety. It is a time for them to facilitate their emotional stability and build resilience. A great Phys-Ed programme can be a major positive influence in helping young children successfully socialize with others, and is an important part of peer culture.

At RMS, building a child’s self-confidence, self-esteem and self-worth are important to us. During Phys-Ed class, children feel included and are part of something great! They feel proud when mastering new skills and concepts, which helps them become more confident, assertive and independent.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

Please kindly SHARE this post with others by clicking onto one or more of the icons below. We would appreciate it and thank you in advance.

2019/02/27 by R.M.S.

Montessori Learning Time

When you look into one of our Brampton Kindergarten classrooms during Montessori learning time, you will see a variety of things taking place. For example, you might see children practicing their cutting skills, using scissors to cut along different kinds of lines. Maybe you would see a child practicing pouring sand from a jug into smaller glasses. You might see another child using tweezers to move pompoms or buttons from one container to another, counting as they go. Perhaps you would see a child using the Montessori Moveable Alphabet to practice making words on a Montessori mat on the carpet, or the sandpaper letters to practice writing individual letters. Another child might be using the Montessori Addition Strip Board to practice their adding. Continuing to look around, you might see children matching up letters to pictures or objects, working on their initial or ending sounds. No matter what, you will undeniably see a lot of different learning taking place in our Kindergarten classrooms during Montessori learning time!

Kindergarten students using Montessori materials at Rowntree Montessori Schools Private School in Brampton — Students using different learning and practical life materials during Montessori learning time

Montessori learning time has so much value in our Kindergarten classrooms. The hands-on nature of the Montessori Method truly allows for children to grow in their independence across multiple subject areas. The children have opportunity not only to work in areas such as Language and Math using Montessori materials, but also in practical everyday life ways, such as practicing using cutlery or practicing zipping up a zipper on a zipper frame. It is a valuable educational approach, used not only in these independent sessions but also in our lessons. Children respond so well to these materials, and can take the learning that they do here and apply it elsewhere with ease. Our students are always excited for Montessori learning time!

Please kindly SHARE this post with others by clicking onto one or more of the icons below. We would appreciate it and thank you in advance.

To learn more about Rowntree Montessori Schools (RMS), continue browsing our website and ideally drop by any of our welcoming, friendly and family oriented campuses for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm. If you prefer, call to book an appointment for a personal tour anytime Monday-Friday 9:30am-3:00pm.

More details about Rowntree Montessori Schools‘ approach to education can be seen by clicking here .

2017/07/20 by Contributor

Healthy Competition

The Chairman of The Independent Association of Prep Schools, Eddy Newton once stated that the best schools not only promote success and competition but also encourage the “life lessons of coping with defeat or a lack of success”. Newton takes an interesting perspective that is worth examining, because it is evident that the struggles of failure are necessary in order to succeed through healthy competition.

From an early age of a child’s life, the concept of competition is quickly learned. As individuals we long for our potential and skills to be recognized. For example, siblings at an early age will often compete for attention from their parents. Even outside of the household, the world is filled with competition. It is seen in sports or even when applying to post-secondary education. All of this competition can certainly be stressful for children; however, with proper guidance and support it can be an avenue for children to mature and grow as individuals.

Competition can be healthy for children because it teaches them that success does not happen overnight. In order to become the best or improve in an area, the child must work hard and learn from their mistakes. Academics is where students will face many of their toughest challenges and hardest failures. Children must be well equipped to realize that failure is not a dead end but an indicator of where further improvement can be made.

Working together to find the correct answer — Students working together to find the correct answer

Competition should not be seen as a race between individuals trying to get to the top. Rather, it is a competition with oneself. With that thought in mind one must forge ahead with the intention of improving and succeeding in life’s challenges. Therefore, competition is a way to avoid complacency and strive to become the best individuals these children can be. It also builds resiliency and adaptability towards any difficult situation that students may face.

We look forward to seeing you and sharing with you the private school community of which we are so proud!