International Montessori schools in Tokyo, Japan

The Montessori School Of Tokyo, Tokyo:
The Montessori School of Tokyo (MST) offers educational opportunities for students unrivalled by any other school in central Tokyo, eastern Japan. Together with the close to 100 families who form our school community, we cultivate an atmosphere of joy, wonder and appreciation for life. We invite you to join us at MST as we offer the opportunity for a vibrant and fresh vision of education for your child.

The Sunshine Montessori Programme:
For ages 2 years 8 months to 6 years

When you walk into a Montessori classroom, the first thing you will notice is that everyone is busy and interested in what they are doing. One child is counting beads, others are working together on a puzzle map, and in the corner of the room a teacher is introducing a small group of children to a new language activity.

Maria Montessori said “To aid life, leaving it free however, to unfold itself - that is the basic task of the educator”. Our classrooms are spacious, bright and carefully designed to provide a stimulating learning environment. The activities are attractively displayed on open shelves enticing children to experiment with them.

Being responsible for the prepared environment, the teachers present these purposeful activities at critical periods using their knowledge of each child’s developmental stages. Acting as a link between the child and the material, the teacher assists the children as they progress along the learning path from the concrete to the abstract.

Children are free to choose their own work and can proceed at their own pace. While not compulsory, they are all encouraged to join the group for circle time, the forum for songs, discussion of the current topic, show and tell, and other group activities.

The Elementary Montessori Programme:
For ages 6 to 12

The elementary programme provides a full expression of the Montessori principles of self-directed, individualised learning in a truly integrated curriculum. By building on the basic skills acquired in the 3 to 6 programme, the elementary child now moves from concrete to abstract reasoning.

By the time students graduate from the elementary programme, they have evolved from five-year-olds manipulating sandpaper letters, golden beads and sound cylinders into twelve-year-olds dissecting owl pellets, reciting Shakespeare and calculating the squares of binomials and trinomials. The environment and curriculum offers the following:

* Integration of the arts, sciences, geography, history and language that evokes the native imagination and abstraction of the elementary child.

* Presentation of knowledge as part of a large-scale narrative that unfolds the origins of the earth, life, human communities, and modern history, always in the context of the wholeness of life.

* Presentation of the formal scientific language of zoology, botany, anthropology, geography, geology, etc., exposing the child to accurate, organized information and respecting the child’s intelligence and interests.

* The use of timelines, pictures, charts, and other visual aids to provide a linguistic and visual overview of the first principles of each discipline.

* A mathematics curriculum presented with concrete materials that simultaneously reveal the correlations between arithmetic, geometric, and algebra in a manner that links abstract concepts to the physical universe.

* Montessori-trained adults who are “enlightened generalists” — teachers who are able to integrate the teaching of all subjects, not as isolated disciplines, but as part of a whole intellectual tradition.

* Emphasis on open-ended research and in-depth study using primary and secondary sources framed by logical argument and the scientific method.

* “Going out” to make use of community resources beyond the four walls of the classroom.