Practical Life and Cosmic Education
Explore the underlying reality of the human child as a developing subject within family life, society, and the Church. Children and adults who are living authentic lives thirst to bring beauty and goodness to all that they do. Lessons and materials in art, music, drama, poetry, language, and dance provide children with a profound sense of the dignity of their own lives and all of creation. This unfolds into a cosmic narrative regarding all of life. Through a close examination of key practical life and cosmic lessons, students will be introduced to the nature of each sensitive period of the child, how the lesson fits into the larger growth of the child, and how the lesson opens the doors to some feature of the cosmos or history. As well, students will learn how these lessons provide keys into a life of common sense and creativity, and how these various activities fulfill curricular requirements of the state and the Church.
Motor-Sensory Development
Experience materials developed by Maria Montessori and others that foster the development and refinement of the senses and motor control. These lessons will be examined across all stages of human development from the youngest stages of childhood through adolescence. Over time, these help to build a strong imagination and memory that then differentiates in signs and symbols for language and higher orders of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. Children will learn their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as how their differences, especially as male and female, provide a complement throughout the fabric of creation and salvation.
Intellectual Development
Discover the development of the intellect in math, science, language, history, geography, and arts across all developmental stages through the lessons used in those stages for teaching math and science. It helps the child to learn the power of wonder and how to liberate that wonder by asking questions in a focused and orderly manner. Throughout history, math has helped children and young adults learn the fruitfulness of asking the right questions and pursuing answers in the light of right order and mystery, humility and patience, self-control and help from others. At the higher levels, these lessons will introduce philosophy and a deeper understanding of creation and history.
Moral Development
Determine the ways in which the human person is a moral actor on the stage of cosmic and social history. This course will introduce how Catholic Montessori lessons and materials prepare students to become attuned to conscience within personal and social life, and how to bring peace, justice, and hope into all relationships at home, in work, and with friends. It will examine this moral life as it comes alive through a variety of lessons introduced at various stages of development. Thus, students will discover how free will in its thirst for goodness unfolds at different development stages (sensitive periods). This will include living at peace with the whole order of creation; how to foster life in fields, in cities, and in families; and how to help others find their home in God’s love and mercy.
Religious Development
Examine key lessons and materials on the bible, on the life of the saints, on the sacraments, on the creeds, and on prayer, and how these open the doors to living a life as a son or a daughter in the Holy Trinity. This will introduce the child and student to the depths of the human soul and to the wonderful expanse of all creation and its salvation as it glorifies the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.
Classrooms and School
Determine in this course 1) how all the various materials, lessons, and activities can be pedagogically, aesthetically, and practically set out in various spaces; 2) how to make albums and keeps records of children; 3) the importance of observations and self-correction of the guide/teachers; 4) how to host and relate to parents and visitors; 5) how to work with children throughout the room; 6) how to make the most of the entire school. Students within a Montessori classroom setting will understand how all the various kinds of lessons unite together into a whole that is rooted in the integrity of all the facets of the human soul, human civilization, and the Church.
