Extensions – A way to keep the curriculum growing with the children

One of the teacher’s jobs in a Montessori classroom is to observe each child and then chose the right material to present to them at the right time. The material should be age-appropriate, engaging, and just the right level of difficulty where the child feels challenged but not discouraged. When this is done successfully, the child will want to go back to the same work and repeat it over and over again until they mastered it and are ready for the next challenge.

Once a child experiences the inner satisfaction of being capable of mastering a new skill, there is nothing to stop them from wanting more.

It is a constant cycle in our classroom – the teachers watch as the children work in the classroom; when the children are ready, the teachers show them the next work or the next level of difficulty; the children work on their skills until they master them and are ready for the next challenge.
By the end of their third year at My Own Montessori, our oldest students are constantly hungry for the next challenge, and the teachers are constantly creating new materials or extensions to the classic Montessori materials to satisfy the children’s hunger for more.

Here are some examples:

After mastering laying out the Knobless Cylinders from biggest to smallest both horizontally and vertically, doing the work with a blindfold on or combining all four sets and laying them out on a large grid based on each cylinders parameters is a fun next step.

Once the children have a solid foundation of number/quantity association, they are ready to experiment with simple operations such as addition and subtraction.

A favorite Eric Carl story that started off as a vocabulary building exercise in the first year, can turn into a measuring and graphing work for a 5-year-old.

Object-to-picture matching works are regularly part of the pre-language shelf int the Montessori classroom, but using art prints to be matched with objects may turn them into an art-viewing experience and may inspire some older friends to engage in creative writing.

When a child has mastered both the 100-Board and the Bead Chains, they may be up for the next challenge to lay out a mini 100-board with skipping certain numbers.

The possibilities are endless and the beauty of the Montessori curriculum is that it is never stagnant – it is constantly evolving as the children are growing, developing new skills, and changing.