Repeat Kindergarten after Montessori Kindergarten Year?

[Anonymous]

DC is in a unique situation, and I’m hoping to get some advice. DC has a late birthday (October 2019) and currently in a Montessori school which we love. We are considering whether to send him to kindergarten year in Montessori and then have him repeat kindergarten in Bethesda public Kindergarten with peers his age, or transition DC to a traditional play-based preK before starting public kindergarten. His current school will only have 2-3 kids his age for the Montessori kindergarten year.

For a variety of reasons, even if DC did his kindergarten year in Montessori school, we would not advance him to 1st grade.

Anyone been in this situation? Any advice?

[Anonymous]

Why repeat kindergarten? Won’t your child be bored?

[Anonymous]

I think doing all three years in Montessori and then starting at your local public in K sounds like a fantastic plan.
He'll get the benefit of being the oldest in his Primary room for a year and all the "big kid" things he'll get in that montessori classroom, and then still get the regular intro to public school as a Kindergarten kid.

[Anonymous]

If your kid is happy and thriving where they are, I would leave them. If you think they are aren’t

But the last year of Montessori primary isn’t kindergarten. Montessori schools don’t have grades. Public school kindergarten is very different from Montessori so it won’t feel like repeating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think doing all three years in Montessori and then starting at your local public in K sounds like a fantastic plan.
He'll get the benefit of being the oldest in his Primary room for a year and all the "big kid" things he'll get in that montessori classroom, and then still get the regular intro to public school as a Kindergarten kid.

Would you be concerned about the fact that he will only have 2 peers his age (the other 15 kids will be 3-4 years old)? Or that he will not be exposed to teacher-led learning?

The play-based pre-K we are considering is a big feeder school to the local elementary school too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think doing all three years in Montessori and then starting at your local public in K sounds like a fantastic plan.
He'll get the benefit of being the oldest in his Primary room for a year and all the "big kid" things he'll get in that montessori classroom, and then still get the regular intro to public school as a Kindergarten kid.

I wouldn’t switch schools twice in two years unless you’re unhappy with the Montessori school now.
Would you be concerned about the fact that he will only have 2 peers his age (the other 15 kids will be 3-4 years old)? Or that he will not be exposed to teacher-led learning?

The play-based pre-K we are considering is a big feeder school to the local elementary school too.

[Anonymous]

I was in a similar situation with a late Sept boy who wasn't ready for K. We chose to do 2 years of PreK instead of 2 years of K. I feel like Pre-K is the year that they learn the most in. There's physical activity, arts and crafts and a lot of social work. K is more just academic work and sitting still. You know how they say "everything you needed to know in life you learned in Kindergarten"? Well it's really prek now as Kindergarten is now academic and less focused on sharing, hand skills and such. I really, really think play based is important and 3+ hours outside a day versus the 30 min in elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think doing all three years in Montessori and then starting at your local public in K sounds like a fantastic plan.
He'll get the benefit of being the oldest in his Primary room for a year and all the "big kid" things he'll get in that montessori classroom, and then still get the regular intro to public school as a Kindergarten kid.

Would you be concerned about the fact that he will only have 2 peers his age (the other 15 kids will be 3-4 years old)? Or that he will not be exposed to teacher-led learning?

The play-based pre-K we are considering is a big feeder school to the local elementary school too.

The kid will have his whole life to be exposed to teacher led learning. The opportunity to be at the mastery end of the 3 year Montessori cycle will serve him well for years to come.

[Anonymous]

My kids were October birthdays. We did the third year of Montessori to complete the cycle and then went to public K. So they were in K with age-mates instead of being the youngest. We though about advancing the oldest due to academic ability, but after talking to the school, we learned that the cohort in the K class was actually much stronger academically than the 1st grade cohort, so we picked the stronger, same-age peer group. Worked out great (and the class ahead turned out to be a troublesome class, so we dodged a bullet).

And no, bright as they were, they were not bored. The could both read fluently, but so could enough other kids to make a strong reading group for them. Same with math. And that is just a fraction of the fun times to be had in Kindergarten. Not boring. Notably, our public elementary at the time was known for training teachers to manage in class differentiation, and most were quite impressive at it. That was over a decade ago though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think doing all three years in Montessori and then starting at your local public in K sounds like a fantastic plan.
He'll get the benefit of being the oldest in his Primary room for a year and all the "big kid" things he'll get in that montessori classroom, and then still get the regular intro to public school as a Kindergarten kid.

Would you be concerned about the fact that he will only have 2 peers his age (the other 15 kids will be 3-4 years old)? Or that he will not be exposed to teacher-led learning?

The play-based pre-K we are considering is a big feeder school to the local elementary school too.

No, I wouldn't really be concerned about that. In some ways it just means that he'll have more opportunities to be the leader in the classroom, which is a good thing. And the more advanced classroom materials are there regardless of how many third year students are in the room.
As for teacher-led learning.... eh. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about what actually happens in a montessori classroom. It's not like your kid hasn't taken adult direction a lot in montessori. And a public K will be aaaalllllllll about teaching the kids how to "do school" so there will be plenty of time and support for him to learn whatever processes your particular public school has in place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was in a similar situation with a late Sept boy who wasn't ready for K. We chose to do 2 years of PreK instead of 2 years of K. I feel like Pre-K is the year that they learn the most in. There's physical activity, arts and crafts and a lot of social work. K is more just academic work and sitting still. You know how they say "everything you needed to know in life you learned in Kindergarten"? Well it's really prek now as Kindergarten is now academic and less focused on sharing, hand skills and such. I really, really think play based is important and 3+ hours outside a day versus the 30 min in elementary school.

But she's not really talking about two years of K.
She's talking about completing the montessori primary cycle, and then going to traditional K.