Your toddler’s world, made bigger.
Montessori + EYFS for ages 1 to 3 — Aylesbury’s only Ofsted-rated Good Montessori nursery, where toddlers are never rushed, and learning is never accidental.
What makes our Toddler programme different
Between one and three, children are not waiting to learn. They are learning faster than they ever will again — absorbing language, building physical confidence, and forming the emotional habits that will shape how they relate to the world for the rest of their lives.
Our Toddler programme is built around the uninterrupted work cycle — long, unhurried stretches of time in which children choose their own activity from a prepared Montessori environment scaled precisely for small hands and short reach. There are no imposed transitions. A child who is absorbed stays absorbed.
The EYFS Three Prime Areas — Communication and Language, Physical Development, and Personal, Social and Emotional Development — are not an add-on here. They are the frame through which everything is planned, observed, and documented.
A glimpse inside the Toddler room at ME Montessori, Aylesbury.
Practical Life & Independence
Pouring, spooning, folding, dressing, washing hands. These are not chores — they are the first acts of self-mastery a toddler can experience. Our Practical Life shelf gives children real tools, real materials, and real outcomes.
The satisfaction of completing a task independently builds concentration that carries into everything else. When a toddler rolls pastry in our Little Chefs session, they are not just cooking. They are developing hand strength, bilateral coordination, patience, and pride.
EYFS: Personal, Social & Emotional Development · Physical Development · Understanding the World
Sensorial Exploration
Toddlers learn through their hands and their bodies before they learn through words. Our Montessori sensorial materials — carefully graded by size, weight, texture, colour, and sound — give children a way to organise the world they are experiencing.
Each material isolates one quality so the child can attend to it fully: the pink tower teaches size, the colour tablets teach hue, the sound boxes teach listening. There is no guessing. There is only the clean, satisfying experience of a material that makes sense.
This systematic engagement with the senses is what makes Montessori foundational, not merely creative. It builds the perceptual precision that underlies reading, mathematics, and every other area of learning.
EYFS: Physical Development · Understanding the World · Expressive Arts & Design
Language & Early Numeracy
Rich vocabulary is introduced through real objects, picture books, songs, and conversation — never flashcards. We name what children touch, see, smell, and hear. Language is embedded in experience, not drilled in isolation.
Our weekly music sessions are a language environment as much as a musical one: rhythm builds phonological awareness, call-and-response builds listening and turn-taking, and the sheer joy of sound builds confidence.
Numeracy begins with quantity — one stone, two shells, three buttons. The Montessori number rods and sandpaper letters follow the child’s readiness, not the calendar. When a toddler is ready, the material is waiting.
EYFS: Communication & Language · Literacy · Mathematics
Outdoors every day, in every season.
Rain, frost, mud. Toddlers go outside every day because the outdoor environment offers what no indoor room can: scale, weather, texture, and the particular freedom that comes from having genuine space.
Our outdoor programme is planned and purposeful — seasonal materials, natural loose parts, sensory trays, and the managed challenge of uneven ground. Children who spend time outdoors in these early years develop stronger proprioception, broader vocabulary, and more resilient nervous systems.
Risk is part of how children learn to trust themselves. We manage it thoughtfully — but we do not eliminate it.
EYFS: Physical Development · Understanding the World · Communication & Language · PSED
Community & belonging
Once a day, the whole toddler group gathers. Snack is not just eating — it is the first structured social experience many of these children will have outside their family. Children sit together, share food, take turns, listen when someone else speaks.
The snack circle is where belonging is practised, not assumed. A toddler who feels part of something — genuinely part of it — is a toddler who can take risks, try again, and ask for help.
Our art and creative sessions extend this: children work side by side, see each other’s work, and learn that their ideas have value. Creative expression at ME Montessori is not about the product. It is about building a relationship with making.
EYFS: PSED · Expressive Arts & Design · Communication & Language
What a toddler who stays with us looks like at 3.
Children who move through our Toddler programme and into Preschool arrive with independence, vocabulary, attention, and confidence that their peers are still building. That is not coincidence. It is what three years in a properly structured Montessori environment produces.
At ME Montessori, the Toddler year is not the waiting room for Preschool. It is where the foundation is laid.
Book a Visit
Come and see the Toddler room.
The best way to understand what we do is to walk through the door. Book a visit and see the environment, meet the team, and ask everything you need to ask.
Book a Visit Get in Touch 07873 403672