About Us
Montessori Academy LLC has been a fixture in the Lafayette community for over 20 years. We are a family-owned business started by Jean Chorbajian and continued by her daughter, Beth Weekley. We pride ourselves on our dedication to fostering a love for learning for our students and building community for our families.
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Montessori Academy has two classrooms, one for toddlers and one for preschool.
Teaching the Whole Child
Philosophy
To offer the child the help they need, is to carefully prepare an environment for each of them. This must be an environment in which each child is free to choose their own work. In a Montessori classroom there is a hum of activity. Children work individually or in groups. Different activities include pouring water, mixing colors, washing doll clothes or dishes, mopping floors, watering plants, building towers, feeling textures, matching weights, painting, cutting, pasting, learning numbers and letters, labeling, counting, measuring, reading ....and discovering.
The room is bright and well ordered. Children feel comfortable and confident when they know where things belong. The furniture is child size, lightweight and portable. Everything is scaled to match the physical abilities of small children. All the equipment invites children to use their hands for learning.
The core of the Montessori approach to pre-school education is individuality. More important than any of the countless ways in which children are alike, are the ways in which each is different. A child must and will develop in his/her own unique way.
The school environment is carefully prepared with exclusive concern for the well being of young children and with the goal of fostering the joy of learning in each child.
Understanding teachers gently guide and evaluate each child's own unique progress as a free human being. This is the essence of the Montessori philosophy as practiced at the Montessori Academy.
The Montessori Method
A Montessori program differs from others in that there are no set times or limits upon a child's interest in reading, math, geography, or other activities. The child enters in the morning, chooses his/her own work, completes it alone, or with another child, or with the help of a teacher, puts it away and chooses another activity. The room includes the following areas.
Practical Life
The practical life exercises provide meaningful activity for young children who are anxious to imitate adults. Children work to perfect themselves. There is real joy in learning to pour water without spilling, to beat soap suds until the bowl is full, to zip your own jacket, to tie your own shoes. In so doing, coordination, concentration and good work habits are formed. Practical life exercises build self confidence and a sense of independence.
Sensorial
The sensorial exercises develop the powers of observation and sharpen the senses. What is red? What is blue? What is a triangle? What is rough? What is long? What is cold? How do sounds differ? Practice with sensorial materials such as sandpaper, blocks, bells, colors and fabrics help the child to discriminate and appreciate what he/she perceives. Little by little he/she is able to bring order out of chaos, to distinguish, categorize and relate new information to what he/she already knows.
Academic
The academic exercises are a natural continuation of the sensorial and practical life experiences. Children who have learned to listen carefully are able to perceive subtle differences in the sounds of letters. Discrimination of size by using cylinder blocks as well as the fine control of small finger muscles help prepare a child for reading and writing. Children use rods, beads and spindles to sort, count, and measure in preparation for the mathematical operations.
Although some children read at four or five years and may be able to tell time, understand the calendar or add and subtract, it is not the practice of the Montessori Academy to push children into academic activity. Pre-school children can and do absorb many difficult concepts if they meet them in concrete form at an early age when they enjoy manipulating material. But each child has his/her own sensitive periods, and his/her own timetable for development.
