The Blue Butterflies classroom is for children as young as 30 months old up to 5 years old. Our program is based on the Montessori curriculum which compliments and covers all areas of the EYFS – The Statutory Framework for Early Years Education in England, incorporating each child’s individual interests. Having a preschool room with a broad age range allows children to learn to help and be helped by others, in turn promoting a strong sense of community and stability where we work at the child’s pace, patience, and tolerance. This is called vertical learning.
When your child joins Blue Butterflies, they will be assigned a new Key Person who will ensure that all aspects of your child’s physical and intellectual development are met. The Key Person’s role is to encourage exploration and self-help. The child is the central figure and the teacher acts as a guide who observes and gives group or individual presentations to children depending on their stage of development. A method of encouraging independence is by representing how to do things for themselves and enabling them to practice at their own pace. The homely atmosphere in our classrooms influences children to take care of their environment through practical life activities, such as, food preparation, cooking, setting up tables for meals, tidying up after themselves, watering plants, dusting shelfs etc. These activities play a vital role in preparation for writing and mathematics. Additional to the three main meals we offer in the day, between 9.30am to 10.30am we provide rolling snack. This involves the children choosing when they have snack and often serving themselves rather than all being seated at the same time with no choice. This promotes the British values (individual Liberty), builds independence, confidence, self- esteem and awareness, children spend less wasted time seated waiting for everyone to sit down or finish and develops motor skills and self-help skills.
Peace education is a major part of Montessori philosophy, and it is a unique part of our classroom, we follow the programme created by Sonnie McFarland ‘Honouring the Light of the Child’. There is a peace corner where children learn how to resolve conflict in a peaceful form and in turn, make better choices next time. The activities in this programme help to develop respectful social skills, emotional intelligence, self-confidence, and self-management skills. It advises children to respect each other, all living beings and be kind to one another.
The Montessori philosophy understands that learning is a natural process and by gaining independence in certain areas. Children are given feedback about their activities and achievements, therefore, promoting and supporting intrinsic motivation, and understanding that the achievement is a reward in itself. It is important to teach children that mistakes are a part of life and okay. Instead of correcting children we continue to guide them and later observe if they need more support or alternatively take a different approach. This avenue gives them the confidence and resilience to not be afraid and try new things.
Children have continual access to ICT equipment, sand, water, role-play, books in the classroom and in our nursery library. We recognise the importance of your child’s physical development and therefore exercise and stretch every day to develop strength, gross motor skills and strong body co-ordination. There is a variety of opportunities with our great range of external extra-curricular activities (for more information click here) and science experiments to contribute to the child’s understanding of the world.
Our classroom is divided into six education areas. Where five of them are fully equipped with Montessori materials supporting development of all the areas of .
Click here to read more about the Montessori Curriculum.
Click here to read more about the Early Years Foundation Stage
Leaving Nursery (Pre-school) and entering ‘Big School’ is a significant step for children. All the above will contribute to your child having a successful transition, and help them settle in smoothly, learning and developing from day one, and as a result, your child will feel safe, confident, and ready to learn. At Blue Butterfly Montessori we like to work closely with our families and schools to give them the essential skills in which they can use throughout their continued education and into their adult life.