Montessori
Our History
In 2003, a group of Montessori Early Education Centre (Donvale) parents and a Directress approached the Principal at Mitcham Primary School with a proposal to establish a Montessori stream within the school. By the beginning of 2004, after much hard work by the school, teacher, parents and children, the first Montessori class began at Mitcham Primary School.
The class started with 18 students in a fully-equipped Montessori Cycle 2/3 room, with a qualified teacher.
The program has since grown, and there are now three Montessori Cycle 2 rooms and two Cycle 3 rooms at Mitcham Primary School.
Children have an innate passion for learning, and the Montessori classroom encourages this.
Get in Touch
294 Mitcham Road, Mitcham, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 3132
mitcham.ps@edumail.vic.gov.au | (03) 9873 1551
Our Classrooms
Our Montessori classrooms provide a specially crafted learning environment where children are able to respond to their natural tendency to work. Children have an innate passion for learning, and the Montessori classroom encourages this by giving them opportunities to engage in spontaneous, purposeful activities with the guidance of a trained Montessori teacher. Through their work, the children develop concentration and joyful self-discipline. Within a framework of order, the children progress at their own pace and rhythm, according to their individual capabilities.
"The passage to the second level of education is the passage from the sensorial, material level to the abstract ... The child in the second stage needs wider boundaries for his social experiences...It is also at this age that one can notice the judgement of acts as right, or wrong or unfair ...
These three characteristics - the child's felt need to escape the closed environment, the passage of the mind to abstract, and the birth in him of a moral sense - serve as a basis for a scheme at the elementary level."
- Dr. Maria Montessori
The Montessori Approach
Dr Maria Montessori, a physician, anthropologist and pedagogue, developed her unique method of educating children over a professional career that spanned over fifty years. The Montessori approach was developed through intense scientific observation of children from many ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds from birth to maturity. It is based upon a deep understanding of child development.
All Montessori classes are multi-age; the three-year age group is at the core of the Montessori Method giving each child the opportunity to learn from others and the flexibility to develop their personality at their own pace, both socially and intellectually. Children usually stay with the same teacher for three years, and this leads to strong teacher-student bonds and a deep understanding by the teacher of individual student characteristics.
Learning and Facilities
The children in the Cycle Two and Three classes at Mitcham Primary School not only have the benefit of a Montessori education, but also participate in the specialist subjects: Indonesian, AUSLAN, Visual Arts, Physical Education, Performing Arts, Library Studies and other extra-curricular subjects. There are Chromebooks and iPads in the Cycle Two environments, and the Cycle Three students each have their own devices.
The children have sessions to explore Information Technology and can access the multi-media studio. All key areas of the Victorian Curriculum are presented within the Montessori curriculum.
In Victoria there are only two Public Primary Schools offering a Montessori Stream, Mitcham Primary School and Karingal Primary School in Frankston.
Enrolment
It is a prerequisite to complete a 3-year Cycle One program to gain entry to the Cycle Two and Three programs at Mitcham Primary School.
Please contact Mitcham Primary School by telephone (03) 9873 1551.
Please email our Montessori Co-ordinator for more information about our Montessori programs.