Children are welcomed into Les Petites Souris (the Little Mice) between the ages of 2 ½ and 4 ½.
Les Petites Souris is the first fully Montessori classroom of the Gower School, run by an excellent team of Montessori trained and fully qualified teachers, delivering a full range of specialist Montessori activities.
As a Montessori school, all of the children move at their own pace. We offer a full range of exciting and stimulating activities and have a classroom full of happiness to make sure that the children are content and confident when they come to school and they have the freedom to move within the classroom and to chose their own activities.
There are lots of practical life activities on offer to develop children's independence, confidence and fine motor skills. If the child is ready, they can learn to start reading words and understanding letter sounds. There is a home corner and puzzle area to play in. Other activities on offer include arts, crafts and modelling, cooking, nature walks and regular trips to the library.
Every afternoon there is a specialist teacher providing specific activities or trips. Children in Les Petites Souris enjoy two music sessions a week with Sarah or Louise, who accompany their singing on the piano or guitar and incorporate music and movement and percussion. Children can attend French lessons each week with Isabelle. A weekly PE lesson is offered on Thursdays, and all the children enjoy their football coaching session with Soccer Stars teacher, Danny.
From this classroom onwards in the school all children have a free snack time and help set the snack area out – and may help themselves to snack at anytime in the morning. Les Petites Souris introduces the Special Helper scheme too, which helps to build children’s sense of responsibility.
Children benefit from the independence of cutting up their own fruit at snack time and helping to serve their friends at mealtimes. The Montessori activities on offer range from simple pouring and transferring exercises to early math and language material. The children learn to roll and unroll table and floor mats – and learn that here they carry out their work. This creates a sense of their own workspace. We thoroughly enjoy our free play and music sessions also. And the children thrive on our creative activities. Our display of artwork is forever changing as are the beautiful faces of each child in our classroom of "The little Mice".
So that you can follow your child’s progress, there are weekly progress cards produced and emailed to you, as well as daily verbal feedback at collection time. Les Petites Souris also uses a message book for you to record your weekend news or any information to be passed back and forth. As with all the nursery, an annual written report is produced for each child, and also parents are invited to attend a termly parents evening to discuss their child’s progress.