We are a trilingual project (english, catalan, spanish) in Barcelona and we welcome children from 1 to 6 years. Montessori education is our guide curriculum development. Meanwhile, we are conscious of the need to create a space for the expression of multiple languages of children. Sensitive and attentive, we carefully accompany the natural processes of children learning, ensuring that every child maintains their essence and their creative internal guide.
We have a ratio of 6 children per teacher, making sure that we provide emotional support that’s in accordance with the needs of children of this age.
Our educational project
We come into contact with the world through our bodies, our senses, our emotions and our mind. We value all these touchpoints with the world that surrounds us. So we create an environment where children, educators and families can grow as well-rounded individuals.
We create spaces that encourage contact between our bodies on one hand and, on the other, the material world, other people, symbolic play, instinctive games, expansive and contractive movements. Materials that bring about the most sensorimotor experiences possible, and that encourage us to create with our whole body or our fingertips. Various activities that help us imagine and create new worlds on our own terms, spaces for calm reflection and spaces for laughing and dancing together.
We want to widen our perspective on education and take our day-to-day practices to places that are yet to be discovered. This project is also an opportunity for us to connect with our own personal way of learning and creating, an opportunity to follow our instinct to create a project that places the child at the centre, as their own guide through their learning process. We believe that learning is something that comes from within, as an inner need that seeks fulfilment organically. That’s where we adults are, attentive and patient, taking care that this desire to learn can flourish in a peaceful, harmonious environment. With the calmness, happiness and craziness needed to get into a creative mindset.
Contextualizing Montessori
From Montessori, we take the sense of respect, love and trust in each child. At the same time, we use their materials and place them in the school environment in a way that is open, spontaneous and self-managed. We believe in children developing their own sense of self-regulation and experimenting with their own limits. That’s why we trust in the idea that they are their own best guides, and that if they are surrounded by motivating challenges, they will instinctively know which ones give them most satisfaction.
Our philosophy includes a real-life use of materials and integrates them directly into the children’s routines and activities, such as helping to prepare meals, cleaning dirty tools, cleaning and hanging out dirty clothes and looking after their environment.
From Montessori, we take the essence of each material and enable a transversal use across all abilities, languages and levels of potential of the children.
Art and creativity
We recognise children’s creativity and sensitivity when they communicate through expressive languages like dance, art, music or drama. We don’t try and instil specific artistic techniques, but rather we offer them a space and set-up that lets each child’s creativity come out in a natural, free and individual way.
We take inspiration on the Atelier experience in the Reggio Emilia approach, but at the same time, we want to put into practice other projects of our own. We consider educational spaces as places for research, for experiences that link the worlds of childhood and art.
We want to expand our school with creative projects and collaborations with artists and collectives connected to MA.
Emotional accompaniment
Children have the natural ability to flow between emotional states, whether it is happiness, sadness, anger, fear or any nuance in between. They self-regulate extremely well and are experts at moving from one emotional state to another. We value all their emotions without judgement, and we recognise the importance that each feeling has in everybody’s inner emotional flow. We want to create safe spaces where we can recognise, express and move between all the emotions that come from contact with our environment and with others, while being there in a loving and attentive way.