FAQ
Montessori education views teaching and learning as inseparable.
The act of playing and work in school is learning and growth.
In First Bridge, when your child learns about “Myself”, he is also learning about others too. In its truest fundamental philosophy – a mixed age grouping – your child learns and teaches by applying his knowledge onto another peer.
When a senior girl is competent in reading her favourite Eric Carle’s Hungry Caterpillar, she naturally takes on the role of a ‘teacher” – and begin reading to her fellow junior friends. She learns the skills to manage a mini class. She learns to project her voice louder so her lines could be heard.
She feels good to lead, to mentor and to inspire. Her juniors – listen to her with admiration, in awe that she is their
teacher and day after day, task after task.
These juniors adopt a very internalised sense of motivation and discipline – for they simply cannot wait for their turn to be the “teacher”.
You can feel good about entrusting us with your toddler. First Bridge – being a mixed age school with many independent and self-motivated seniors – will give your child abundant care and attention.
With Trust and Respect as our philosophy in teaching, we encourage your child to learn to trust his new outside world. By encouraging him to “work” on practical life activities, your child will learn to trust himself – trust that he can try and succeed.
Standing in a room with many fun and interesting activities, there’s no reason to cry after a while. However, sometimes, the crying do persist.
Then, it is essential to analyse if the persistent crying is to seek for more attention. It is necessary for our experienced teachers to decide – to continue to reassure and provide more, or to ‘nip it in the bud”.
Most of the time, your separation anxieties have rubbed off onto your child – all without your knowledge. Our advice is : Be brave, be cheerful, give a big hug, bid your farewell with a “ Have a lovely day my Darling and I’ll pick you up later!”, and Go with a smile.
Each child is unique. This uniqueness must be respected.
Your son “takes a longer time to learn” – does that make him a slower child?
In First Bridge, we take this challenge seriously and dutifully. We will observe his learning behavior.
Perhaps his learning module needs to be dissected into smaller steps – then, design a suitable worksheet for him.
Perhaps he needs to work on a more concrete apparatus to learn an abstract concept – then, introduce the box of puzzle or Montessori material that allows him to move and learn.
Perhaps he has shorter attention span – then, prepare work, enough for him to complete with success within a certain timeframe, enough to make him commit his attention without being labelled.
The long in the short, our teachers adopt different approaches in teaching – to suit the uniquenesss of each child. In our mixed age grouping, your child will always have opportunities to lead and to mentor – yes, to a younger group of juniors – and feel successful and confident!
Learning is not about winning or competition. There is no finishing line.
Hence, learning does not stop.
In a mixed age group, when your child is more advanced for his age, there’s always a few other seniors whom he can look up to, to motivate him, to inspire him with their academic and global knowledge. His best friend may not be from his age and gender group.
There’s always opportunities to stretch his potential – be a ‘teaching assistant”, conduct Tuesday’s Circle Time, be a story teller and role play , be the umpire and score keeper for Mini Sports Day… there’s simply no room for boredom!
Our answer is : How not to?
At First Bridge Montessori , we believe it is our responsibility to help parents and children make the smoothest transition to their next school.
Our program and curriculum groom children to learn within a quiet confidence and self-motivation to understand things around them. These are the building blocks of future learning , hardwiring your child’s capacity to engage with new environment ( Primary school), new information and new challenges.
Your child – a First Bridge graduate by then, would have been groomed to be a respectful multi-tasker.
In his new ‘big” school, he’ll easily be spotted as a dependable student to assist the teacher – be a monitor, an English leader, to support an anxious shy classmate, to assist Form Teacher in taking attendance, to partner a foreign classmate – a leader in his own right.
Academically, he is already competent. With that empowerment, he will continue to work hard, respect his opportunities and welcome, all possibilities that come his way.
We view language as an agent of learning.
Our classroom explodes in freedom of movement and speech – children of preschool age learn best with movement and discussion.
Circle Time and Theme Learning are accompanied with language – words, vocabulary, expression, description , exchange of ideas– all essential tools to the written language. First Bridge uses Phonics – an excellent approach to teaching reading and writing that focuses on the sounds of letters and syllables.
Our founder Ms Jessica Chong is an author of her series of phonics reading books and has published another series of workbooks with literacy activities to support and reinforce English literacy.
