Ajyaal Montessori

Ajyaal Montessori, founded in 2006, was born from a deep desire to offer our children the best possible bilingual education in their most critical formative years. Like all mothers, we wanted our children’s unique and individual strengths to be recognised, developed and nurtured in a positive and empowering environment.

Montessori education is a highly developed and widely tested method which encourages the special abilities of each child. Celebrating its one hundred year anniversary in 2007, Montessori is one of the leading educational theories and methods around the world. It has been shown to foster personal independence, high self-worth, deep thinking, concern for others, and a love for learning and school.

Children choose work from the beautiful and well-defined areas of the classroom. Beauty is a key component of the classrroom. Montessori believed that beauty and nature brought forth the most positive instincts in the child. The classrooms are purposefully designed using neutral colours as bright and colourful rooms tend to over stimulate a child, whereas the natural tones enhance peace, calm and a better opportunity to focus.

Our setting is distinguished by its bilingual programme. Both English and Arabic teachers work daily, side-by-side, in the same classroom, offering children maximum exposure to both languages. From the moment children are born until about the age of five years a child attains language with almost no direct teaching, absorbing the language in his environment without difficulty, no matter how complex the language is.

Working with the materials helps develop coordination, concentration, independence, and a sense of order. Order was strongly emphasized by Montessori not because it keeps a room tidy but because it helps the child to organise his mental and physical development.

The Sensorial are materials are specially designed to help children learn accurate information about physical properties of the environment. Each piece of sensorial material isolates one quality such as dimension, colour, weight, smell, or sound.This area also enables the child to order, classify, and describe sensory impressions in relation to length, width, temperature, mass and colour.

The Mathematics area this area makes use of concrete manipulative materials to promote the child's innate mathematical ability in his early years.These materials enable the child to internalize concepts of number, symbol, quantity, sequence, and operations.

The Language are this area includes the development of spoken and written expression, reading, grammar, creative story telling, and children's literature. Basic skills in writing and reading are developed through the use of sandpaper letters, moveable alphabet, and various activities that aid children to link sounds with letter symbols effortlessly.

Physical Education In a Montessori classroom children are always on the move, carrying activities from the shelves to the tables or rugs to work, wiping up a spill or washing windows. All these activities aid children in refining their large and small motor skills. Games, music and movement activities are played daily indoors and children enjoy the freedom to run and play outdoors as well.

A sense of community is developed within the class as children learn how to live well together. Older children are responsive to the needs of the younger children. Children can choose to work alone or with others. This balance between the freedom of the individual and the needs of the group is fundamental to all Montessori environments.