Montessori Discovery School Project

TAP TAP

Goal

The outdoor equipment design

Montessori schools attract today's parents and children. This project aims to discover the characteristics of the Montessori educational philosophy and design outdoor equipment for children in this school.

In MDS (Montessori Discovery School) classrooms, you won't see the color in that environment. Most things are using the original colors and materials for children(see Figure 1). The stuff they play in class is not called toys; they have another name, Working Materials. 

Figure 1 Montessori Discovery School classroom

Find 1

Current Approaches

• Encourage children to work together and learn from each other.
• Encourage children to have their own independent space.
• Freely choose their favorite work materials according to their interest (Place it in a fixed position after use）.
• Reduce screen usage.
  

Position the Montessori Discovery School

• The main style of School is simple and peaceful.
• Encourage children of all ages to learn together.
• Children have their own independent space.
• The courses (work materials) mainly involve geography, natural studies, science, mathematics, etc.

Find 2

Why do parents send their children to Montessori programs?

• Most parents are attracted to the school environment. They believe that this environment can help children focus on the task without being distracted by noisy colors.; it can also promote children's independence and creativity.
• The learning methods of Montessori education are very interesting. These methods make children feel pressureless when learning new things.
• Develop children's independence.

Find 3

What do children like about their Montessori education?

• Brown tower and pink tower: Children use different-sized building blocks to stack different shapes, compare objects of various sizes, and exercise their ability to measure.
• The beads: children can learn about decimals through different numbers of beads.
• Movement room: It's a great place to stay active and give them away to rest after studying (See Figure 3).
  

Figure 3 Children's favorite 

Solution

Design Guidelines

• Playground toys mainly consider original materials and original colors of materials.
  Wood can be an option, which is currently the main material in classrooms.
  We can think about adding some original colors to increase the vitality of the toy.
  
• Challenge toys can be designed to increase children's interest.
  Consider it should be suitable for children aged 3 to 7.
  
• The toy would be suitable for two people or above use.
• Design the real activities for children.

My design

Tap Tap

TapTap is an interesting music structure. Children can create different music through everyone's cooperation, and feel different materials can make different sounds during the process of tapping.

• Categories and GoalsMusical structure
  Sensory Station (sound, texture, temperature)
  developing gross motor skills
  supporting creativity and cooperation
• Relationship with the Montessori approach to education
  The materials of the structure use original colors and materials.
  Children can help and cooperate with each other.
  Suitable for children of all ages.
  Material stitching also has some similarities with Montessori's
  tool materials.

The music structure is suitable for children from 3 to 7 years old. Children can beat different materials at different heights. The xylophone height also takes into account 3-year-old children, let them play at a suitable.

1. Use plastic rods as handles and rubber balls as the head of mallets.
   
2. The whole hammer is made of wood, and the head is polished into a ball.
   
3. Rubber drum sticks mix rubber with wood and allow children to beat using two different materials.

The entire music structure will be fixed using two methods at the same time, one is to set the wooden board to the fence, and the other is to set the wooden frames on both sides in cement and bury them in the ground.

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