Recommend your academic-focused preschool please

[Anonymous]

"Is that approach more academic than "reggio"? A lot of the ones we've seen so far claim to be reggio-inspired."

As I understand it, Reggio is child-directed and Montessori is a blend -- the teacher (directress) prepares an environment where a child can chose and decide which activities and projects to work on. Montessori has flexibility inside a structure -- so some parts of the day are child-directed and some are teacher-directed (group time and the like)

[Anonymous]

OP here back with an update: we finally visited a montessori school and that is clearly a much better fit for our daughter so thank you to the PP who suggested it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here back with an update: we finally visited a montessori school and that is clearly a much better fit for our daughter so thank you to the PP who suggested it.

Can you share which one?

[Anonymous]

Perhaps NCRC in NW DC would be a good fit as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here back with an update: we finally visited a montessori school and that is clearly a much better fit for our daughter so thank you to the PP who suggested it.

Can you share which one?

We visited Del Rey Montessori but I imagine any Montessori adhering to the original model would probably offer what we were looking for - we just wanted educational materials made available to our daughter that she could progress through as she's interested and capable. A lot of the other places we visited had a more strict notion of what a child can and, more importantly, can not do at a certain age so we were finding a lot of places that felt there's no point in working with our kid on the material she's interested in and begging us to teach her at home. Montessori seems to have a more fluid understanding of when and how a child might progress from the basic building blocks of letter recognition through to the beginning stages of reading. I think that flexibility will suit her well and I think she'll appreciate having the next level of understanding just a step away rather than being told you have to wait two years for that.

[Anonymous]

<< OP here back with an update: we finally visited a montessori school and that is clearly a much better fit for our daughter so thank you to the PP who suggested it. >>

Great! So glad you liked it. Hope it works out!

[Anonymous]

We went with montessori for our daughter for the same reason. She was a very early reader who also liked math (and I swear I didn't push her or do any dumb baby can read programs). Just make sure you find a program that is fun. The program we picked was a little dour, and I regretted it--she would have liked a little more painting rainbows and pasting butterflies time along with the math and reading. I think there are some montessori programs that have that, but not all.

[Anonymous]

Maybe River School in DC. They push literacy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We went with montessori for our daughter for the same reason. She was a very early reader who also liked math (and I swear I didn't push her or do any dumb baby can read programs). Just make sure you find a program that is fun. The program we picked was a little dour, and I regretted it--she would have liked a little more painting rainbows and pasting butterflies time along with the math and reading. I think there are some montessori programs that have that, but not all.

Thanks! The one we visited had a well stocked arts corner for the kids and at this age, I'm not sure my daughter thinks of coloring artwork and practicing writing as separate activities. When we have coloring time at home, half the time she asks me to draw elephants, half the time she asks me to write out whatever letter she's working on - over and over and over again. So it's all kind of one mash-up at this point.