Cassia House · An independent Montessori school · 18 months – 6 years
Children here pour, sweep, button, and build. Independence is the curriculum — not a poster on the wall.
Tours run weekly, children mid-work. Four families at a time.
What we hold
Coats on their own hooks, tables wiped by their own hands. Help me do it myself — one real task at a time.
A three-hour uninterrupted work cycle, because focus is a skill you protect — not interrupt.
How to greet, wait, offer help, and disagree — taught as carefully as letters and numbers.
Glass pitchers, real brooms, bread that needs slicing. Children know the difference, and rise to it.
A morning at Cassia
Scroll through one morning. The sun keeps the time; the children keep the rhythm.
One morning, kept at a child's pace
A handshake at the door, a coat on its own hook. Children walk in on their own two feet — that's the point.
Three uninterrupted hours. A child chooses a material, carries it to a mat, and works until the work is done.
Apples sliced and bread buttered by small hands. Snack is a task children serve each other — not a bell everyone obeys.
Watering cans, worm sightings, and lunch at tables the children set themselves — then clear themselves.
The youngest sleep on low cots. Older children return to the room for an afternoon of the same unhurried work.
The prepared environment
Nothing in a Cassia room is miniature theater. Everything has a place, a purpose, and a height. Touch the numbered points.
Water at child height — a real pitcher, a real basin, a towel on a reachable rail. Spills are part of the lesson.
Programs
Children stay with the same guide for the length of the cycle — years, not semesters.
Language, movement, and first independence — pouring, dressing, helping — in a room that expects capability.
The full three-year cycle: practical life, sensorial work, language, and mathematics — with the kindergarten year as the harvest.
Mixed-age rooms are the method, not a compromise: the younger ones watch and reach; the older ones lead and consolidate.
Our guides
Every lead guide holds an AMI diploma — a full year of training in observing first and intervening last.
Primary Guide · Directress
Founded Cassia House after a decade guiding in public Montessori. Keeps a notebook of what each child chose, and when.
AMI DIPLOMA (3–6) · 11 YEARS IN THE ROOM
Toddler Guide
Runs the toddler community at a volume just above a whisper. Believes every eighteen-month-old deserves real bread to butter.
AMI DIPLOMA (0–3) · INFANT MENTAL HEALTH CERT.
Primary Guide
Built half the shelves in the primary room to the centimeter. Gives the quietest, most exact presentations in the house.
AMI DIPLOMA (3–6) · FORMER CABINETMAKER
PARENT GUIDE · 14 PP · PDF
Free parent guide
The name on the door isn't protected — anyone can print it. This short guide shows you how to tell a real prepared environment from a themed daycare, in one ten-minute observation.
Outcomes, without the hype
No percentiles, no promises of genius. Just what independence looks like after four years of daily practice.
Pour from a glass pitcher without spilling — and mop it calmly when they do
Prepare and serve a snack, then wash the dishes it made
Dress themselves, buttons and zippers included, with time to spare
Write their own stories in cursive, and read their friends' back
Count into the thousands with golden beads they can hold and weigh
Keep a plant, a pet, and a promise alive for a full school year
Work alone, uninterrupted, for an hour — by choice
Set a table, seat a guest, and carry a conversation with an adult
None of this is a race, and none of it is guaranteed on a schedule. It's what we practice, every day, until it's simply theirs.
Admissions
We're choosing a fit, not ranking children. There is no test — there is a morning, and a conversation.
Watch a real work cycle, children mid-task. Bring your questions.
A short application about your child and your hopes — not a screening.
Your child spends part of a morning in the room, at their own pace.
A phased first two weeks — shorter days first, a parent nearby, no rush.
Admissions are rolling; toddler places for fall are usually spoken for by spring.
Parent questions
It's the opposite — the structure is just built into the room instead of the schedule. Every material has one place, one purpose, and a right way to use it. Children choose freely within that order, which is why the freedom works.
The kindergarten year is the point of the three-year cycle, not a departure from it. Cassia children typically leave reading, writing, and working independently — and the habit of finishing what they start transfers to any classroom.
Constantly — in the garden, at lunch, in every social moment of the day. What we don't do is treat their work as lesser than play. A four-year-old scrubbing a table is as absorbed as any child on a slide, and prouder after.
Calmer than you'd guess. The younger children watch and reach toward what's next; the older ones teach, and teaching consolidates everything they know. It's a small society, not thirty strangers born the same year.
As ordinary work, without pressure or sticker charts. Cotton underwear, a child-height toilet, and unhurried routines — most children learn within a few months of joining, on their own timeline.
Toddler mornings are $1,150/month; Primary is $1,375/month, with the extended day $340 more. A limited number of adjusted-tuition places exist in each room — ask on your tour, we'd rather talk about it than lose you to the sticker.
Book a tour
Three steps and a stamped card. Tours are small — four families, one guide, children mid-work.
CASSIA HOUSE MONTESSORI
ADMISSION FOR ONE MORNING
TOUR NO. 0117
Tours are observation-first: twenty quiet minutes at the edge of the room, then all your questions answered in the garden.
