Programs

Montessori Preschool Classes

Children’s House of Hershey (CHH), a full member school with The American Montessori Society (AMS), NYC, NY., has been providing Montessori preschool classes in central Pennsylvania for 30 years. Our classroom is located on an acre of farmland, in an original 120-year-old one-room schoolhouse,
formerly Roundtop School. Our central location is easily accessible for families from Hershey, Hummelstown, Elizabethtown, Middletown, Annville, Cleona, Palmyra, and Harrisburg.

Classes begin the last week of August and run through the first week of June. Each class is comprised of a mixed-age group of children between the ages of 2.6 – 6.6 years.

The comprehensive Montessori curriculum directed by AMS certified teachers ensures an outstanding
learning experience for every child regardless of chronological age, developmental age or learning
abilities. The program is designed as a 3-year continuum that encourages older classmates to act as
leaders and role models helping and often “peer-teaching” their younger classmates. This group
dynamic is an integral part of the Montessori Method. It serves the younger children by fostering
interest in all areas of the curriculum while observing the older children’s work and preparing them for
the time they will be the class leaders. This dynamic also helps to develop in the older children a
mindfulness for the needs of others. This often results in children learning to place the needs of their
fellow classmates above their own. Together these outcomes create a cooperative, loving, family-like
classroom climate, indicative of a typical Montessori learning environment.

Classes are comprised of a two-hour work period where free choice, skill development and
independence are encouraged. This is followed, every day, by a 20-minute whole group activity involving either gross motor development, rhythms, patterning, music, dance, foreign language enrichment, literacy development, cultural awareness and grace and courtesy lessons. Additional time is spent in outdoor free play every day. Outdoor learning experiences also include planting and maintaining the Children’s House Garden, group games, raking leaves, shoveling snow and nature walks.

  • AM Montessori Preschool Class – 5 days a week, 8:45a -11:45a
  • PM Montessori Preschool Class – 5 days a week, 12:30p – 3:30p
  • ALL Day Montessori – 5 days a week, 8:45a – 3:30p
    (only for children who no longer nap)

K+ Program – for children of kindergarten age who have attended Children’s House for at least one year. This program is based on the Montessori primary curriculum and the Core Knowledge Sequence and is designed especially for the Montessori kindergarten child. Special activities in language arts, math, the sciences, world history and ancient civilizations are included during the PM Class 2 – 3 times a week. There is no additional charge for this program.