Call: 510-236-7479 | Email: info@keystonemontessori.org
Auxiliary Classes
Keystone Montessori offers Auxiliary Classes from outside contracted teachers for an additional fee. Each teacher comes in 4 times a month and each class is 30 minutes long.
Music/Movement and Theater
Jonathan Green teaches Early Childhood Music & Movement classes at Keystone.
Classes include singing, dancing, movement, and the playing of instruments such as drums, tambourines, shakers, sticks, eggs, bells, and others. As we have fun improvising and creating, we are developing fine motor skills, expanding our ability to express ourselves through sound and movement, learning to match pitch and rhythm and exploring sound and the senses.
We'll also have fun exploring numbers, colors, letters and animals. Each lesson is designed around specific musical and developmental components which are organized to provide your child with experiences that will enhance his/her musical development.
In learning to use their voice for singing, playing simple instruments, developing careful listening skills, exploring expressive movement, and developing a sense of basic timing, a foundation is laid for future musical learning and growth.
Jonathan Green teaches one Theater Arts class on Wednesdays at Keystone at 10:40 AM to our Blue Heron and Snowy Egret children- ages 2.5-6 years.
Children are naturally brimming over with expression and talent and by offering drama classes, allows for further outlets for children to express themselves.
With acting and improv, children are given an opportunity to actively engage their imagination in a collaborative process with other children and adults, and moreover, are able to gain tremendously in their confidence and ability to communicate directly with others, both one on one and in front of an audience.
We also will put on periodic performances that would culminate in a performance that might compliment our final graduation assembly.
Classes would consist of improvisational exercises, movement, music, storytelling, incorporating well-known stories and fables as well as creating our own original stories and plays to perform. In addition, children will have the hands-on opportunity to help create the scenery, costumes and backdrop for our plays.
Mandarin
Lucy Weichun Liu teaches Mandarin classes at Keystone. Lucy also teaches Mandarin at Ocean View Elementary School in Albany.
Lucy likes making learning Mandarin fun and exciting. She uses songs, poems and stories to help the children learn Mandarin. The lessons start with learning numbers, the names of the parts of the body, greeting words, family member names (father, mother, sister and brother), the colors, the shapes of objects and words used in everyday life.
Eventually the children learn to speak simple sentences in Mandarin.
Spanish
Sarahi Morales teaches Spanish at Keystone. We believe that children will learn beginning Spanish through songs, games, chants, props, manipulative objects, finger plays, role playing, art, and grammar, according to the student's age.
The classes use developmentally appropriate teaching based on Total Physical Response (TPR) with an emphasis in lots of repetition to teach Spanish to young children in a fun, caring, and nurturing environment. The children will be able to listen to the perfect, native pronunciation and will learn the Spanish language structure that will facilitate the practical application of the language for later years.
On the final day of class in June we will sing songs in Spanish for our parents or any other visitors who are able to attend.