Cultural Studies and Geography Curriculum

At Vruksha – International School of Montessori, we help our students acquire the essential knowledge, thinking skills, and strength of character required to flourish as joyous children today, and as successful adults tomorrow. We want to equip them with a wealth of knowledge that enables them to understand and delight in both the wondrous world around them, and their personal identity within.

The Cultural Subjects in our Montessori preschool classrooms provide our students with a first exposure to the many areas of knowledge they will encounter later on – and enable them to acquire an early interest in learning about the world, its natural wonders, its people, history and culture, its music and art.

Historically, many of mankind’s greatest thinkers were travellers. Through their travels, they acquired a deep interest in people and societies, in landforms and physical materials. This knowledge, gathered through experience, formed the foundation for their later work in history, science, literature, business. So it is with the Vruksha Montessorian student. The Montessori cultural studies offer each preschool child the opportunity to “travel” and explore the world from within the classroom, and to thereby acquire the knowledge base that will inform, motivate, and ground the systematic studies they will pursue in elementary school and beyond.

By starting early, and drawing on the child’s natural interests, we enable our students to gain a head start in numeracy and, more importantly, a confidence in their own ability to do math, and to do it well. Instead of the math phobias that many children acquire in elementary school, where arithmetic operations are introduced as abstract, mechanistic operations to be memorized even if not understood, our 6-year-old students master the basics of arithmetic using concrete materials, and they therefore acquire a grounded understanding of the meaning of these operations. When they leave Vruksha Primary Montessori School, our students have a double advantage: they have learned many mathematical concepts and math facts typically only taught in 2nd or 3rd grade, before they even enter elementary school and they have learned to enjoy math.