Arts Integration
“If we try to think back to the dim and distant past… what is it that helps us reconstruct those times, and to picture the lives of those who lived in them? It is their art… It is thanks to the hand, the companion of the mind, that civilization has arisen.”
— Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind
Time and again, important components of the Montessori approach, developed over one hundred years ago, are proven to be beneficial in a modern context. One of these is the benefits of integrating arts into other components of the curriculum. In our authentic Montessori classrooms, drawing, music, drama, and performance are integrated as a means of learning and expressing all areas of the curriculum.
Arts integration is something that Hilltop Montessori School does amazingly well. The regular classroom teachers are at least bilingual, if not trilingual, in “academics” and art, music, and/or drama. Some of them have professional or educational backgrounds in the arts, while others have strong “hobbies” and passions that they bring to the classroom and share with the students. All have a deep appreciation for the arts as a means to further explore and express both personal ideas and knowledge gained.
The math manipulatives, language, science and cultural lessons, all can have follow-up works that use art. At Hilltop, art, music, and drama are integrated in such an amazing, organic, and natural way!
Here a just a few examples of note:
- Elementary Poetry Performances that include music, naturally keeping more children engaged in each poem and considering how to express the tone, emotion, and content of the spoken word.
- All School Gathering where students of all ages find being on stage a natural and familiar forum to share their work weekly (with an audience of 150!).
- Cultural and geography studies grow into beautiful artistic map work, timelines, charts, board games, animated films and any number of imaginative ideas put into personal expressions of choice.
This integration of the arts not only grows students who view themselves as artists, musicians, and performers but has been proven to help children learn and retain academic skills and information.