Rock Prairie Montessori :: About Us :: Going Beyond the Common Classroom Experience (SM)

About Rock Prairie Montessori School

Rock Prairie Montessori is a non-profit school that began in September 1994 through the efforts of several parents seeking an alternative education for their children.

Rock Prairie Montessori's program purpose is to operate a child centered school for children in accordance with the Montessori method to encourage the development of every child to his or her maximum potential and to aid parents/guardians in the education of the child by involving them in the school.

The day-to-day operations of the school are managed by the Head of School. The school is governed by a board of trustees consisting of parents, community members, and the Head of School. Parents also serve on various committees to assist with the planning of social events and fundraisers. Children and their families from throughout southern Wisconsin, as well as teachers and staff, comprise the Rock Prairie Montessori community.

Rock Prairie Montessori offers Parent & Infant Classes (held 1x monthly), Young Child Classes for ages 2 to 3 years, Children's House classes for ages 3 to 6, and an Elementary program for ages 6 through 12. Before- and after-school care is also available, as well as music and foreign language lessons and summer enrichment programs.

Rock Prairie Montessori is affiliated with the American Montessori Society and our teachers are all certified Montessori instructors.

About Our Community

Janesville is located in Rock County, the gateway to Wisconsin. With a population of nearly 60,000, Janesville has a small-town feel with big-city amenities including shopping, recreation and more than 100 area restaurants. Termed the City of Parks because of its more than 2,000 acres of parkland, Janesville is also a convenient drive to the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Milwaukee, Rockford and Madison. Janesville, nearby Beloit and other stateline communities offer a wealth of festivals, cultural events, antique shops and recreational areas that provide year-round opportunities for outdoor enjoyment.

About Maria Montessori

maria1 Maria Montessori was born in Ancona, Italy in 1870. When she was 12, her parents moved to Rome and encouraged her to become a teacher, the only career open to women at the time. She was first interested in mathematics, and decided on engineering, but eventually became interested in biology, and finally determined to enter medical school.

In 1896 she became the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome Medical School and joined the staff of the University's Psychiatric Clinic. As part of her duties, she visited children committed to the insane asylums. She became convinced that these mentally deficient children could profit from special education and studied the work of pioneers Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin.

Montessori was named director of the State Orthophrenic School in 1898. She worked with the children there for two years. All day she taught in the school and then worked preparing new materials, making notes and observations and reflecting on her work. These two years she regarded as her "true degree" in education. To her amazement, she found these children could learn many things that had seemed impossible. This conviction led Montessori to devote her energies to the field of education for the remainder of her life.

Dr. Montessori returned to the University of Rome to study philosophy, psychology and anthropology. She also served on the staff of the Women's Training College in Rome (one of the two women's colleges in Italy at the time), practiced in the clinics and hospitals in Rome and carried on a private practice of her own.

In 1907 she was asked to direct a daycare center in the housing project in the slum section of San Lorenzo, Italy. Montessori accepted, seeing this as her opportunity to begin her work with normal children. She was to have the care of sixty children between the ages of 3 and 7 while their illiterate parents were working. The sparse furniture was similar to that used in an office or home, and the only educational equipment was the pieces of sensorial apparatus Montessori had used with her mentally defective children.

Montessori says she had no special system of instruction she wished to test at this point. She wanted to compare the reactions of normal children to her special equipment with those of the mentally defectives. She attempted to set up as natural an environment as possible for the children and then relied on her own observations of what occurred. After instructing the teacher in the use of the sensorial apparatus, she remained in the background, and waited for the children to reveal themselves to her.

There was one startling development of direct academic significance. Montessori had not intended to expose children so small to any activity bearing on writing and reading: the mothers began to beg her to do so. She finally gave the four and five-year-olds some sandpaper letters to manipulate and trace over with their fingers. Some children eventually began to connect sounds with the letters, and try to sound out and put together words.

Soon, they had taught themselves to write. They would read the words they had written, but were uninterested in those anyone else had written. They then began to read with the same enthusiasm that they had written, reading every extraneous item in their environment-street signs, signs in shops, etc. They showed little interest in books, however, until one day a child showed the other children a torn page from a book. He announced there was a "story on it", and read it to the others. It was then that they seemed to understand the meaning of books.

They began reading them with the explosion of energy they had previously exhibited in writing and reading words encountered at random in their environment. The process was interesting on three counts: one, the spontaneity and direction of this activity from the beginning belonged to the children; two, the usual process of reading preceding writings was reversed; three, the children involved were only four and five years of age.

In observing all these developments in the children, Montessori felt she had identified significant and hitherto unknown facts about children's behavior. She also knew that, in order to consider these developments as representing universal truths, she must study them under different conditions and be able to reproduce them. In this spirit, a second school was opened in San Lorenzo that same year, a third in Milan, and a fourth in Rome in 1908, the latter for children of well-to-do parents. By 1909, all of Italian Switzerland began using Montessori's methods in their orphan asylums and children's homes.

Word of Montessori's work spread quickly. Visitors from all over the world arrived at the Montessori schools to verify with their own eyes the reports of these "remarkable children". Montessori began a life of world travel- establishing schools and teacher training centers, lecturing and writing. The first comprehensive account of her work, The Montessori Method, was published in 1909.

Montessori made her first visit to the United States for a brief lecture tour in 1912. An American Montessori Association was formed with Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell as president and Miss Margaret Wilson, President Woodrow Wilson's daughter, as secretary. So pleased was Montessori with her reception here, she returned in 1915, this time to give a training course in California. During this visit a Montessori class was set up at the San Francisco World's Fair and received much attention.

During the years of 1916-18, Montessori herself traveled between Spain, where she was directing the Seminary Laboratori di Pedagogia at Barcelona, and the United States. Except for the temporary closing of Montessori schools in countries taken over by the Nazi and Fascist regimes, Montessori continued to flourish in other parts of the world without interruption. Much of this activity today is directed by the Association Montessori Internationale with headquarters in Amsterdam.

Montessori was appointed Government Inspector of Schools in Italy in 1922. However, she was increasingly exploited by the Fascist regime, and by 1931 she had begun to work chiefly out of Barcelona and she established permanent residence in the Netherlands. Her work was interrupted in 1939 when she went to India to give a six-month training course, and was interned there as an Italian national for the duration of World War II. She established many schools in India, however, and today it is an active Montessori center. Montessori died in the Netherlands in 1952, receiving in her later years honorary degrees and tributes for her work throughout the world.

Recent Flickr Pool

Our Mission

Oct. 1 2007Headline

RPMS Held it's 6th annual Fall Festival. The turnout was wonderful. Many thank to all those who supported and volunteered their services . . .
» Read More

Subscribe to the regularly updated RSS news feed.