It's 8.30am and your five-year-old has already asked why the tide goes out, how ants find their way home and whether numbers ever end. That curiosity is a gift. The trick is finding a place that helps it keep growing.

Barrenjoey Montessori School: Room to Grow in Avalon

Curiosity Counts

Every child learns in their own way and at their own speed. Some leap ahead. Others like to hold an idea in their hands before it clicks. When learning follows the child, confidence follows too. The early years are when a lifelong love of learning takes root, and they're worth making the most of.

Hands On, Heads Up

In 1985, a group of local parents had a vision for their children's education. They opened a single Montessori preschool class in Newport. In 1990 it moved to 2 Tasman Road, Avalon Beach, tucked behind the dunes at Des Creagh Reserve. Barrenjoey Montessori School has been there ever since.

Today the school teaches children from birth to 12, with a playgroup, preschool, and lower and upper primary. Classes mix ages across three-year spans, so younger children learn from older ones, and older ones grow by teaching. Hands-on materials bring ideas to life. Each child works at their own pace, with freedom inside clear boundaries, and every part of them gets room to grow: physical, academic, social and emotional.

Mapping a Full Circle

Principal Melissa Chandler still remembers reaching for a puzzle map at her own Montessori preschool. The map cabinet sat under a big classroom window, and an older child stepped in to help. "That small moment left a lasting imprint," she says, "a feeling of belonging, purpose, and excitement about learning." Her mother was one of that school's founding parents. Joining BMS felt like coming full circle.

More than 40 years on, the school is still independent and not-for-profit. It's run by the Avalon Montessori Association and an elected board of parent volunteers. BMS is NESA-registered and ACECQA-accredited, and in 2017 it opened an upper primary classroom in a new sustainable building. Melissa describes the school as "a place where each child is seen, heard, and valued as an individual."

See It for Yourself‍

Take a principal-led tour of the Tasman Road campus with Melissa Chandler. Each visit is shaped around your family's questions, from playgroup through to upper primary.