"A beautiful place where great minds begin."

Bella Montessori provides a Montessori educational program for children ages 6 weeks through 6 years. We are a year-round school and are open from 7 am through 6 pm.

 

Tuition and Scheduling

Tuition at Bella Montessori is due the first through the tenth of each month. We are unable to adjust tuition or substitute one class time for another in order to accommodate your family’s schedule, vacations, your child’s illness or enrollment in other programs. However, if a family needs to occasionally add a day to a child’s schedule, we will accommodate requests if space is available with a fee of $30.00 per day. Please contact us for tuition costs based on your child's projected schedule.

 

Illness

At Bella Montessori we try to keep children healthy. We clean materials hourly. Unfortunately, sometimes children get sick. Your child must stay home from school if they have had a fever of 99.9 degrees or greater, diarrhea or vomiting within the last 24 hrs. In order to return to school your child must be symptom-free, without medication, for 24 hrs. If your child seems to be acting in a way that leads you to suspect illness, please keep your child home.

 

Conferences

Regularly-scheduled conferences are conducted for 3-6 year old children. Parents may always request a meeting with teachers to address issues requiring special attention. We prefer not to discuss a child’s behavior while they are present.

 

Toileting

We work diligently to help with the process of potty training. If your child is ready to start potty training, the first step is to talk with your child’s teacher. At Bella Montessori, we try to stay consistent with the method you are using at home so your child’s teacher will require a lot of communication. We encourage the use of underwear instead of pull-ups as the children have an easier time feeling when they are wet. Bring lots of extra clothes and never worry if it is too much for us.

A fully potty-trained child in our school is one who is completely self-sufficient. They do not need to be reminded to use the bathroom or need help pulling pants up and down, and they can wipe themselves. A child who is fully potty trained but still sleeps in a pull-up is fine.

 

Lunches

Please provide child-sized portions of a variety of bite-sized nutritious foods. Teachers will assist your child in opening food containers and do their best to return uneaten portions to the child’s lunchbox. Desserts and candy are not allowed and will be immediately disposed of. We ask you the parent to focus on protein, fresh vegetables and fruits when preparing your child’s lunch.

 

Discipline

We know that children who are properly engaged in constructing themselves rarely have serious discipline problems because they feel happy and fulfilled. Children are highly capable of developing "inner discipline" when an environment fully meets their needs for learning and self-development. If needed, however, we use a positive approach to discipline and offer redirection to children who are having difficulties. We teach socially appropriate behavior through modeling, exercises of grace and courtesy, and lots of talking about problem situations. We encourage children to resolve conflicts verbally and thoughtfully with one another in meaningful conversation. We endeavor to be clear and consistent about basic ground rules and the importance of respectful encounters with others. If a child is having significant and ongoing difficulty with our classroom structure or positive social development, we work with his or her parents to solve the problem as quickly as possible. Occasionally we enlist the support of outside professional help.

 

Our philosophy at Bella Montessori is to guide the child to make good decisions and solve problems. We treat the child with dignity and respect. We do not employ punishments and rewards. Instead we offer appropriate choices, enabling the child to feel in control of his/her own behavior and as teachers we look for possible events that may lead to further conflict and try to redirect individuals beforehand.

 

Of course we experience behaviors that require the teacher to enforce various boundaries, i.e. a child may lose the “privilege” of using a particular material for a set amount of time because the child was using the material in a way that is damaging or disruptive to the class. A child that is disruptive to the class will be placed in designated space to think their own thoughts where they can still see and hear what is happening in their environment but cannot interrupt.

 

We often use the phrase “when and then” in our interactions with children. For example, if a child would like to have a snack but their work has been left out on the table we may say, “When you put your work away, then you may have a snack.”

 

Please request a copy of our school handbook for more information on our policies, or let us know if you have any questions. Contact us today to schedule a tour of our school. (Policies subject to change at any time.)