The Five Primary Curricular Areas

Classroom works and materials are in sequential order within the five curricular areas listed below from left to right, top to bottom, gross to fine, simple to complex, and concrete to abstract. Students receive lessons, practice and progress through the works when readiness is demonstrated.

1. Practical Life: The Practical Life materials are designed to aid the student in developing necessary practical living skills including care of self, care of the environment, and socially acceptable behaviors, including grace and courtesy. In addition, the Practical Life works aid the child in developing skills that meet his/ her natural need for order, concentration, coordination, and independence. These skills improve every time the child chooses the materials and are “carried over” to other classroom areas as well as to other areas of the child’s life and education such as a love for work, a love for learning, and a desire for self-growth. The materials also aid in the teaching of A Cycle of Activity, which includes: 1. beginning––choosing a work from a shelf, 2. middle––doing the work, and 3. end––returning the work to the shelf, ready for the next student.

2. Sensorial: Along with teaching order, concentration, coordination, and independence, the Sensorial materials are designed to teach discrimination of the senses as well as discrimination of geometric form. These materials increase the child’s sensitivity to their senses as well as the child’s discriminating and differentiating skills that lead to abstract thinking. The materials make a child aware of their unconscious impressions and bring those impressions into conscious awareness. They allow the child to create a basis of order in their mind and allow intelligent exploration of the environment. The child’s motor coordination improves and, as the senses become refined, the child can gather more reliable and accurate information that allows for the awareness of beauty and enhanced artistic creativity. In addition, the materials aid the child in becoming more articulate, more analytical, and more prepared for intellectual activities.

3. Math: The Math materials are designed to develop the child’s logical mind. They represent the abstract concepts of numeration, place value, addition, multiplication, subtraction, division, and algebra concretely. This allows the child to have a concrete foundation of mathematical concepts.

4. Language Arts: The Language Arts materials are designed to teach effective use of language skills. The children work with materials that will aid them in developing their recognition, vocabulary, speech, listening, conversation, prewriting, writing, pre-reading, reading, and research skills. A phonetic approach to reading is used, and cursive writing is taught. Letter formation, placement, and spacing lessons are usually taught to the older Primary student, while younger students are introduced to prewriting works, letter sounds, and an environment rich with letters and words. To support your child’s reading development, please note that children need first to be introduced to a letter’s sound rather than its name and first to lowercase letters rather than capital letters for writing and reading success. While writing with and for your child, we recommend using lowercase letters such as c-a-t, as opposed to C-A-T. In addition, please use capital letters only for proper nouns such as Janet, as opposed to JANET.