Joyful Kids Montessori School

More than a preschool, we are planting seeds for a lifetime of learning. Joyful Kids Montessori School is the only school in Brunei Darussalam that applies a full montessori method patterned to the culture and practices of asian children. We offer individualized academic lessons that allow our students to obtain mastery at their own pace and skill ability level.

Our students receive a strong academic foundation utilizing a holistic approach that prepares them to continue to thrive beyond their experience here at Joyful Kids Montessori School. Our school does not teach the students “what” to think but rather “how” to think. The teachers guide students through the process of discovery that in turn leads to growth and increased self-confidence.

The Joyful Kids Montessori School started its operation in January 2006 with one child and grew by 2008 to four classes. Joyful Kids Montessori School envisions promoting and furthering the Cause of the Child. Each child has a mind with enormous capacity to absorb impression and knowledge from the environment and the power to construct himself or herself.

The mission of Joyful Kids Montessori School is to provide each of our children an environment where they can develop their full academic, social and physical potential, based on the Montessori principles of learning.

The school is dedicated to the philosophy and principles of Dr. Maria Montessori, who lived from 1870 to 1952. She was the first female physician in Italy. Her work in medicine and anthropology led her to observe young children's behavior. She concluded that the child learns best in a homelike setting, and that the learning environment should be filled with developmentally appropriate materials to provide experiences that contribute to the growth of self-motivated, independent learners. She established these revolutionary premises:

• That children should be respected as different from adults and as individuals who are different from one another.
• That the most important years of learning are from birth to six.
• That each child 'creates' herself or himself through purposeful activity.
• That each child possesses unusual sensitivity and mental powers for absorbing and learning from his/her environment, which includes people as well as materials.

Montessori teaching is a scientific way of being committed to laws of nature with children to support their true natural development. This distinctive new education first emerged from the scientific research and discoveries of Dr. Maria Montessori while observing young children in Rome, Italy in the early 1900’s.

In 1907, Dr. Montessori observed young children given freedom to interact with a variety of self-teaching materials. In this way, she discovered they changed from the ordinary pattern of disorder, inattention and fantasy to a totally new state of spontaneous self-discipline, love of order, peace, attachment to reality and complete harmony with the environment. The consistency of this transformation led her to conclude that she had discovered the child’s true normal way of being.

True natural Montessori teaching functions to control the environment, not the child, viewing the child as an unknown spiritual being and the environment as everything around that child, consisting of other children, physical objects, and adult personality. Controlling the environment means to experimentally remove its various detrimental influences by various experimental actions according to observable changes in the children’s outward behavior.

In 2003, a specific technology emerged to implement true natural Montessori teaching, consisting of a series of techniques, protocols, lesson presentations, and safe words. Using this technology, anyone can now consciously conduct Montessori teaching to bring about the child’s true nature in a reliable, objective manner that was never possible before.

​The Montessori learning environment is much different than the traditional model. Instead of information passing from the teacher to the student, the teacher is skilled in putting the child in touch with the environment, and helping him learn to make intelligent choices and to carry out research in a prepared environment. The teacher then protects the student's concentration from interruption. This fosters a love of lifetime learning in the student. Keep in mind a triangle: the student, the parent or teacher, and the environment. It is the role of the adult to prepare, and continue to prepare, the environment, to link the child to it through well-thought-out introductions to books and materials, projects, and lessons, which nurture the child's exploration and creativity. Children thus taught often surpass both the level of education of their peers, and the knowledge of the adult in all areas - then they learn to find answers for themselves. The Montessori school environment is arranged according to subject area, cooking, cleaning, gardening, art, caring for animals, library corner, etc. Children always free to move around the room instead of staying at desks. There is no limit to how long a child can work on something she has chosen. At any one time in a day all subjects practical work, math, language, science, history, geography, art, music, etc. Will be being studied, at all levels, by children of mixed ages learning from each other, facilitated by careful observation, individual lessons, record keeping, and help of the teacher.