Methods

We have a unique and innovative approach to child care. We offer both Traditional and Montessori-based Methods of education for young children. We believe that both provide important lifelong benefits to children. We believe that a mix of both is the best and safest way to develop the “whole child”. We provide a mix of these two proven methods in a safe, clean and stimulating environment for children to play, learn and grow in, while teaching the children respect, manners and responsibilities.

In everything we do, either with the Traditional or the Montessori-based Method, we encourage independence, self-direction and autonomy. We focus on developing socialization and self-help skills needed to succeed while encouraging the talents in each child.

In our family-owned child care facility, your precious little ones will receive the foundation they need to be prepared for school and life in society. Your child will have a ton of fun, useful, and practical learning experiences here at Maison Kinder!

Traditional

We are traditional in the sense of teaching common sense values. Those core values that everyone agrees on and recognizes merit but that unfortunately few institutions still teach nowadays, such as the sense of responsibility, discipline, respect, courtesy and good manners. Many have abandoned this form of conventional teaching and have turned themselves exclusively to new fashionable and trendy methods. Children are often left without boundaries where nothing is right or wrong anymore, where everything is fine and allowed, which often leads to disorientation, stress and misbehavior. Children need rules and limits to feel secure, happy, and to develop themselves. We believe that teaching these core values is still appropriate for our day in order to give a good foundation for our children, to help them develop their potential and their personalities, and to prepare them for life in society. To become responsible, confident, happy, and fulfilled individuals, it is still important for children to learn at an early age manners and the basics of etiquette.

We have developed an etiquette course for children that teach them a whole range of common sense manners. They learn to take turns, help others and care for the center materials. By respecting others, children learn at the same time to respect themselves and that helps them develop their self-esteem. They also learn how to eat properly, how to behave in different situation and settings with others, how to socialize in a courteous and friendly manners etc. And not only they learn these etiquette rules, but they put them into practice here at the center in their daily routine and activities that are based on real life experiences. Teaching etiquettes to your children give them the tools needed to succeed later in life. You will see, your children will impress you!

Montessori

Montessori is one of the fastest-growing and most popular forms of education used in North America today. It was founded in the early 1900’s in Italy by Maria Montessori, a physician and educator who achieved worldwide recognition for her educational program centered around the child’s inner desire to learn.

The basic idea of Montessori education is that unseen within every child is carrying the person the child will become. In order to develop his/her physical and intellectual powers and personality to the fullest, the child must have freedom…a freedom, with limits, achieved through order, which leads eventually to self-discipline. The world of the child is full of sights and sounds, which at first appear chaotic. From this chaos, the child gradually learns to create order and distinguish among the impressions that assail his senses, slowly but surely gaining mastery of himself and his environment.

Dr. Montessori developed teaching materials, each designed to give the child a new life experience and develop a specific educational concept. The method uses hands-on material that enables young children to develop attention span, concentration and hand and eye coordination while also learning language skills such as reading and writing along with math concepts, geography and science.

The Montessori Method aims to develop and refine the skills and the five senses of a child. The five areas of activity of the Montessori pedagogy are:

•  Practical life activities (learning to tie shoes, dressing, cleaning, tidying, preparing snacks, set the table, etc.).
• Sensory activities (activities that appeal to the senses such as recognizing similarities and differences, and making decisions based on sensory characteristics).
• Mathematics
• Language activities
• Geography
• Botany

Dr. Montessori recognized that very young children go through periods of sensitivity in particular areas during which they learn more easily than at any other time in their lives. Between the ages of 2-6, children have an extraordinary capacity to learn from their surroundings. Dr. Montessori called this “the absorbent mind”. At Maison Kinder, we honor “the absorbent mind” by giving children the type of environment they need to flourish!

The most important periods of life is not the age of the university studies, but the first one, the period from birth to the age of six. For that is the time when man’s intelligence; the full totality of his physic powers is formed… at no other age has the child greater need of intelligent help, and any obstacle that impedes his creative work will lessen the chance he has of achieving perfection.Maria Montessori