Welcome! Now accepting applications for the summer and fall school sessions of 2024-2025
A Place To Shine!
We have been helping children become eager, confident, capable, respectful, and contributing members of the community since 2001.
Our Environment
Quemazon Montessori School is located in the residential Quemazon neighborhood (north community) in Los Alamos. The school is surrounded by beautiful pine trees and spacious playground areas. The classrooms have large sunny windows and open classrooms. It’s a comfortable environment where numerous learning activities await each child’s creativity and energy.
Our Staff
Quemazon Montessori's staff is comprised of a diverse family of teachers. As a team, we strive to create experiences and environments in which all children feel safe, cared for, and free to fulfill their potential. We follow and support each child on an individual basis to ensure developmental needs are met.
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Each Early Childhood classroom is led by a Montessori-credentialed teacher who is assisted by an additional teacher and a teacher’s aide. Many members of our staff have been with Quemazon Montessori for 15 years or more.
Our Classrooms
At Quemazon Montessori, children learn and grow in a prepared environment where they know specially designed materials are always available. The teacher serves as a guide for the child, drawing out their unique and individual potential and respecting their unspoken desire to "help me do it myself".
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The materials take children beyond traditional learning methods to a vibrant world of senses including touch, smell, sight and sound that their minds are naturally attuned to. The curriculum is a rich mixture of practical life exercises, sensorial exploration, language, math, geography, botany, history, music, art and creative play, all geared to the development of the whole child.
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Our unique child-centered school provides a noncompetitive setting in which the children freely seek out and engage in activities that build the independence, confidence and love of learning that are essential to their development and satisfaction in life.
Our Programs
The Infant/ Toddler/
Transition Programs
The infant/Toddler/Transition Programs are open to children from ~6 weeks to ~3 years of age. Its focus is to respect this period in the young child’s life as a constructive, developmental period in and of itself. The staff and learning environment promote the development of a sense of order, language, sensory skills, and the formation of fundamental concepts through experimentation and the manipulation of object.
The Early Childhood
Program
The Early childhood Program is available to children ranging from ~3 through 5 years of age, and is the natural next step after the Infant/Toddler/Transition Programs. It is in this period that a child’s inherent desire to learn becomes apparent. During this phase of a child’s education, concentration, coordination, independence, and a sense of order are encouraged. Parents will see their children developing initiative, inner discipline, and a deep respect for themselves, others, and their environment.
Extended Care
Many families in our area require care of their children for a full workday. We believe that it is in the best interest of these children to offer extended care that provides a consistent environment where the child’s’ sense of security, belonging and order can be nurtured.
The extended care programs include outdoor playground time, story time, indoor and outdoor games, and arts and crafts. Our before school program runs from 7:30 am to 8:30 am and our after school program runs in additional 30 minute increments beginning at 4:00 until close at 5:30 (see Tuition and Fees). The Infant and Toddler programs close at 4:30 and the Transition – Early Childhood programs close at 5:30.
Montessori Difference
Montessori education offers our children opportunities to develop their potential as they step out into the world as engaged, competent, responsible, and respectful citizens with an understanding and appreciation that learning is for life.
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So, what makes Montessori schools different? There are many ways that Montessori schools are distinctive from traditional daycares, preschool programs and other types of schools.
12 Ways Montessori Schools Are Different from Traditional Schools:
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Respect for Children as Unique Individuals
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Fostering independence
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Engaging a variety of learning styles
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Teachers serving as guides
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Mistakes are part of the learning process
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Children learn best in social environments
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Learning in unique, inspiring environments
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Specialized materials that stimulate learning
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Instinctive and active learning
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Building a strong sense of community
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Inspiring love for the natural world
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Creating global citizens
Key Areas of Montessori
Language
Many of the primary language materials are strongly dependent on the young child's sensitivity to sensory experience. Among the areas of concentration are: spoken language, vocabulary enrichment, writing, and reading. Children learn the shapes of letters by tracing with their fingers the "sandpaper letters," which are cut from rough sandpaper and mounted on smooth cards. This exercise is a preparation for eventual writing of the letters.
One of Dr. Montessori's discoveries was that a child's usual natural inclination is to learn to write - to form letters and words - before learning to read. Interest in reading grows naturally out of work with writing. As with all learning in the Montessori environment, learning to read occurs at various ages and according to the child's individual pace.
Practical Life Exercises
These constitute the foundation of the program, and include such activities as pouring water, spooning rice or beans, preparing vegetables, polishing silver, mirrors, or shoes, tying bows, washing tables, sweeping, buttoning and unbuttoning, zipping and unzipping, buckling and unbuckling. These activities lay the groundwork for the general atmosphere of the Montessori environment. They also help the child grow in independence and competence with respect to care of his/her individual person, care of the environment, performance of physical movements, and interactive social behavior. Concentration and a sense of order are developed, along with good work habits that strengthen and train muscles which will eventually be used for such activities as writing. For the child, there is pleasure in imitating and participating in "adult" activities that lead toward mastery of the environment and self.
Cultural
Maria Montessori designed the curriculum of the cultural subjects as an interdisciplinary study of the life of man on earth throughout time and in all geographic regions. It includes the study of geography, history, music, art, botany, zoology, language and mathematics. It encompasses all cultural subjects as part of a meaningful whole. Maria Montessori's primary goal was for education to help the child become a fully developed individual adapted to his time and place and culture; to be a citizen of tomorrow; a participant in a harmoniously functioning society. The cultural subjects give the child an understanding of unity. The child gains an understanding of unity, of variety and of the inter-relatedness of all things; both living and non-living.
Math
These activities enable children to form one-to-one correspondence, understand sets of items, numerals, and number operations. Hands-on materials are used such as number rods, sandpaper numbers, number boards, spindle box, number tiles, beads and games. Each exercise builds upon another and the child gradually moves to from concrete to abstract.
Art and Music
These programs are incorporated into the core curriculum to develop our students love of the arts and music, and to ensure a well-rounded curriculum
Sensorial Exercises
By manipulating the Montessori sensorial apparatus, the child achieves a concrete understanding of such concepts as graduated size, weight, and texture. The sensorial exercises also include work with differentiating and grading color shades, as well as matching odors and sounds. Each exercise focuses on refining a specific sense. All sensorial materials serve as keys to all the other areas of learning.
Admissions
Please see our current application for tuition costs and program hours. To apply for admission, please complete the fillable PDF application and return to quemazonmontessori@gmail.com
To schedule a tour, please call our school Director at
505-662-3000.