Willistown Country Day School offers elementary education Kindergarten – Sixth Grade.

The Elementary program was built on the rich foundation the child has experienced during his 2 to 6 year period. When he was in Pre-school/Kindergarten he wanted to know WHAT; he wanted to know WHERE. He wanted the facts about his environment The first through sixth grade student is different. He has gathered facts in his early “absorbent period.” During his early years he built extensive awareness of the world around him. Now he wants to know HOW AND WHY. He wants to find out how one thing relates to another. He wants to see relationships. This elementary school child has entered a new plane of development and unlike the unconscious absorption he first experienced from birth to six, his second mental growth period is one of a conscious will that leads him to explore intriguing relationships in all disciplines.

Giving the child the liberty to explore the cultural relationships of his existing world is a very necessary and essential step in his development. The importance of continuing the child into the Elementary and early teen years in a Montessori program is simply that the Montessori environment allows the child to work in close harmony with his physical and psychic development, not against it. His body is relatively at rest, so his mind is free to work. The patterns of lifelong learning take firm hold in these elementary years when the child is strong physically and emotionally.

Elementary Work Waiting until the middle adolescent years to intensify cwork assignments and fill him with factual material is often too late. He is by that time beginning to enter a new plane of development, almost a rebirth where huge physical changes can disrupt him. This is not the time for heavy mental overloads of work since the teenager is increasingly becoming concerned with his own personal relationships. Willistown Country Day Montessori Schools includes students through the sixth grade. Here the stable environment of the Montessori classroom offers the emerging adolescent an atmosphere of serenity so necessary for his optimal development.

So in the Elementary years a lifelong enthusiasm for knowledge takes firm hold. In the years from six to early teens, the roots of his entire conscious will work at finding his place in the whole scheme of life.