About Us

At Brilliant Minds Montessori, we believe a child’s first school experience should be a joyful experience.  Our classroom is safe, spacious, bright, and welcoming. It is equipped with high-quality learning materials.  This inviting learning environment ensures the best possible in education and home-to-school transition outcomes. 

With gentle and cheerful guidance, our students are encouraged to explore the engaging learning materials as confidence and independence in learning develop.  Each child is valued as a unique and individual learner for which a personalized lesson program is developed by our team of well-educated professionals.  Our low student-teacher ratio means our students are provided with the very best in personalized attention and classroom support. 

Our class curriculum developed by Psychologist and Montessorian, Dr. Meredith McCurdy, is trusted by schools and homeschoolers around the world.  As owner and Head Teacher of Brilliant Minds Montessori, Dr. McCurdy is a constant presence in the classroom.   The success of the Brilliant Minds Montessori Curriculum is measured by the high level of achievement and progress seen in our young students.  Our students frequently exceed academic standards by leaps and bounds.  We are proud to regularly produce readers as young as 3 and 4 years of age and have children as young as 4 independently completing multiplication and division problems.

We proudly maintain high academic standards and the integrity of the Montessori Method without sacrificing the atmosphere of fun and joy in our classroom. Come by to see for yourself!

Reading and Writing

The early exposure to Handwriting Preparation, Penmanship, Phonics and Reading facilitates learning habits to last a lifetime.  Spatial perception, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, posture, and pencil grip provide the groundwork for the development of good penmanship skills. Through systematic exposure to increasingly difficult skill levels, these prewriting exercises are designed to prepare children for writing readiness.  Once the lower levels of handwriting preparation are mastered, penmanship skills are developed. Here the child is taught the correct way to form letters and numbers between the lines of a page.

As part of our phonics-based reading program the association between letters and sounds is highlighted.  Phonics concepts are taught in a fun and easy way through the use of sandpaper letters, manipulative objects, cards, worksheets and fun games.  Once mastery of the symbol-sound correspondence of the alphabet is achieved, reading lessons begin. Reading skills continue to be built and strengthened as the children progress through the material at an individualized pace.

Math

Math skills are taught using concrete, perceptually-based materials.  These Montessori materials successfully bridge the gap to abstract mathematical concepts and logical thinking in young learners. The children start the study of mathematics by learning the numbers and number symbols one to ten. This is accomplished using the classic Montessori materials/techniques such as the red and blue number rods, sandpaper numerals, association of number rods and numerals, and the spindle box. The children progress to the bead stair and then to the teen bead stair. Here they learn to count the bead bars and complete related worksheets. 

The decimal system is then introduced. Units, tens, hundreds and thousands are represented using specially prepared concrete learning materials that show the decimal hierarchy in three dimensional form: units = single beads, tens = a bar of 10 units, hundreds = 10 ten bars fastened together into a square, thousands = a cube that is ten units long, ten units wide, and ten units high. The children learn to first recognize the quantities, then to form numbers with the beads through 9,999. Reading and writing numerals up to 9,999, and exchanging equivalent quantities of units for tens, tens for hundreds, etc. is taught next.

As the children begin to show conceptual understanding of various prerequisite mathematical materials and concepts, they are introduced to Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division procedures.  Worksheets and independent study in these areas are encouraged until the children show advanced knowledge of these areas.

Science   

The scope of the Montessori science curriculum includes an introduction to botany, zoology, chemistry, physics, geology and astronomy. The Montessori approach to science cultivates fascination with the universe and helps to develop a lifelong interest in observing nature and discovering more about the world in which we live.