Zimtor Elementary School

Zimtor Elementary School is a new, progressive, private school in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Zimtor serves children ages two through eleven. We currently offer only preschool through our licensed family child care program. For more information on our preschool program, see www.zimtorfcc.org

Zimtor offers:

-Free Tuition for All Regular Session Students
-Non-Competitive Admissions
-Project-Based Curriculum
-Continuous Progress
-Narrative-Based Evaluation
-Consensus-Based Decision Making
-An Absolute Commitment to Free Speech and Diversity of Ideas
-An Electronics-Free Environment
-A Maximum of Twenty Students per Classroom
-No More than Forty Students for the Entire School
-A Twelve-Month School Year
-Free Transportation

This saying captures perfectly the guiding principle at Zimtor: Every child has something important to contribute.

This yeast demonstration is part of a unit on pizza and pizza making. Students add yeast, sugar, and warm water to the bottle and attach the balloon. As the yeast generates carbon dioxide, the balloon inflates.

At Zimtor, students write not for the teacher but for each other. One way they do so is to write for 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘴, the school magazine. All content in 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘴, including photos, drawings, and text, is created by students. Students improve their writing through an editing process in which the teacher and the student work together prior to publication.

One of the ways multiplication is taught at Zimtor is with the Montessori Multiplication Board. To use the board, a student chooses a problem from a card such as 6 x 2 = and then finds the answer by placing beads on the board. Once the student has found the answer, he or she writes it on the card. In this way, the student develops a conceptual understanding of multiplication and also begins to remember the multiplication tables without resort to rote memorization.

Word Bank

Word Banks are an important part of the Language Experience Approach used at Zimtor. Each student has his or her own word bank with a collection of words he or she would like to learn. Because the words are ones the student has chosen, most students enjoy looking through their word bank to learn the words on the cards. Some words carry such important meaning for the student that he or she learns them in one or two tries. For this student, the two words "peanut butter" were just such words.

Newton Car

The Newton Car, part of a unit on rockets, is typical of how science is taught at Zimtor. The string is burned away with a match, and as the film canister is thrown backward, the car moves forward. Older students can perform this demonstration on their own, while for younger students the teacher carries it out. The Newton Car demonstrates Newton’s Third Law of Motion that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This, of course, is the principle on which rockets work.

Language Experience Booklet

Much of the language instruction at Zimtor uses the Language Experience Approach. In one part of this method, students just beginning to read dictate stories to work with. This booklet was dictated by a class of five-year-olds after watching a film about the Apollo missions. They then used the booklet to find every instance of the word "they" and circle it. Because the words are their own, students are usually much more interested in Language Experience booklets than in other types of reading material.

Hot and Cold Cubes

The Hot and Cold Cubes are used to teach operations with negative numbers at Zimtor. The red cubes are thought of as hot and represent positive numbers, while the blue cubes are thought of as cold and represent negative numbers. To solve the problem 4-(-2), a student would first place 4 red cubes in the pan to represent +4. The student would then add two pairs of red and blue cubes. Since a pair of red and blue cubes makes no net contribution to the “heat” of the pan, this is still the same as +4. The child would then remove the 2 blue cubes to get the answer of +6.

Dienes Blocks and Montessori Decimal Cards

The Dienes Blocks are used to teach a number of different mathematical concepts at Zimtor. One is the basic idea of the decimal number system. Using the Dienes Blocks, a student can easily see that ten ones is the same as one ten, ten tens is the same as one hundred, and so on. It then becomes a relatively easy task to represent a number like 1,356 with the blocks. Using this knowledge, the student can then represent the same number symbolically with the Montessori Decimal Cards.

Because of the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning with unvented gas appliances, we've replaced our gas range with an electric range. As always, safety is our top priority.

We've installed the anti-tilt bracket for our new range. As always, safety in our top priority.