Montessori or Public K?

[Anonymous]

I would keep her in a good Montessori if you could. We moved DD from Montessori to FCPS in first grade. She did great in school, but would come home distraught that she was not learning anything. To show her teacher that she could do more than add two and two and come up with four, she would show that she could do 2 x 2 and get four, or 8/2 to get 4 or 16 different ways to do it, but her teacher did not acknowledge what she was trying to do (not that I blame the teacher; there were kids in class that did not recognize numbers or letters or knew the names of shapes or colors).

She successfully lobbied to go back to Montessori ("My brain is rusting when I am in school. Why am I going there?") half way through the school year, and she stayed there until she got into AAP in 3rd grade. Her first assignment when she got back to Montessori was to write a research paper on a dinosaur, to go with a diorama.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WWYD: we are not in our forever home and want our next house to be our long term home. Our problem is we don’t think we can get our house ready to sell this spring/summer and our eldest starts K this fall. The eldest is currently in a Montessori daycare (that we no longer like) with their youngest sibling. Would you a) find a new Montessori daycare and have eldest complete K there, or b) send eldest to public K and change schools when we move next year?

If I could do it again my kids would go to private schools. FCPS seems to get messier every year and most parents I know have tutors. My kids are older and don't want to leave friends/sports but if they were younger we would pull them out.

FWIW we did private for K-2 and were equally displeased. I think we threw away nearly $100k and didn't get anything we couldn't have gotten in public, except less screen time. We moved back to FCPS for 3rd.

I do think benchmark has kind of ruined upper elementary language arts, as there are no more book clubs/novel groups, it's all just paragraphs from a textbook which has killed my child's love of reading...but I'm not sure it would be different in private school, we didn't make it that far.

can you explain more about benchmark and how it’s ruined language arts and your child’s love of reading?

Benchmark is like an old school textbook with tons of excerpts but no full stories. They read 3 paragraphs about person A and a poem about person B and then have to write a comparison essay. Or they read an excerpt from book A and an excerpt from book B and have to explain how the characters show xyz trait. The teacher has been trying to give them summaries of the books to give them more background info, but DS is just frustrated that they don't get to read a whole book and are writing full 5 paragraph essays based on a grand total of 5 paragraphs of source text.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would keep her in a good Montessori if you could. We moved DD from Montessori to FCPS in first grade. She did great in school, but would come home distraught that she was not learning anything. To show her teacher that she could do more than add two and two and come up with four, she would show that she could do 2 x 2 and get four, or 8/2 to get 4 or 16 different ways to do it, but her teacher did not acknowledge what she was trying to do (not that I blame the teacher; there were kids in class that did not recognize numbers or letters or knew the names of shapes or colors).

She successfully lobbied to go back to Montessori ("My brain is rusting when I am in school. Why am I going there?") half way through the school year, and she stayed there until she got into AAP in 3rd grade. Her first assignment when she got back to Montessori was to write a research paper on a dinosaur, to go with a diorama.

that’s very impressive! I thought FCPS had AAP to offer more challenges in-class for those who qualify from k-2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WWYD: we are not in our forever home and want our next house to be our long term home. Our problem is we don’t think we can get our house ready to sell this spring/summer and our eldest starts K this fall. The eldest is currently in a Montessori daycare (that we no longer like) with their youngest sibling. Would you a) find a new Montessori daycare and have eldest complete K there, or b) send eldest to public K and change schools when we move next year?

If I could do it again my kids would go to private schools. FCPS seems to get messier every year and most parents I know have tutors. My kids are older and don't want to leave friends/sports but if they were younger we would pull them out.

FWIW we did private for K-2 and were equally displeased. I think we threw away nearly $100k and didn't get anything we couldn't have gotten in public, except less screen time. We moved back to FCPS for 3rd.

I do think benchmark has kind of ruined upper elementary language arts, as there are no more book clubs/novel groups, it's all just paragraphs from a textbook which has killed my child's love of reading...but I'm not sure it would be different in private school, we didn't make it that far.

can you explain more about benchmark and how it’s ruined language arts and your child’s love of reading?

Benchmark is like an old school textbook with tons of excerpts but no full stories. They read 3 paragraphs about person A and a poem about person B and then have to write a comparison essay. Or they read an excerpt from book A and an excerpt from book B and have to explain how the characters show xyz trait. The teacher has been trying to give them summaries of the books to give them more background info, but DS is just frustrated that they don't get to read a whole book and are writing full 5 paragraph essays based on a grand total of 5 paragraphs of source text.

ok, that sounds absurd! What a broken system public education is

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WWYD: we are not in our forever home and want our next house to be our long term home. Our problem is we don’t think we can get our house ready to sell this spring/summer and our eldest starts K this fall. The eldest is currently in a Montessori daycare (that we no longer like) with their youngest sibling. Would you a) find a new Montessori daycare and have eldest complete K there, or b) send eldest to public K and change schools when we move next year?

If I could do it again my kids would go to private schools. FCPS seems to get messier every year and most parents I know have tutors. My kids are older and don't want to leave friends/sports but if they were younger we would pull them out.

FWIW we did private for K-2 and were equally displeased. I think we threw away nearly $100k and didn't get anything we couldn't have gotten in public, except less screen time. We moved back to FCPS for 3rd.

I do think benchmark has kind of ruined upper elementary language arts, as there are no more book clubs/novel groups, it's all just paragraphs from a textbook which has killed my child's love of reading...but I'm not sure it would be different in private school, we didn't make it that far.

In private, your kid would be reading whole books since first grade

He didn't in 1st or 2nd, that's part of why we pulled him back to public. In 3rd-5th there were lots of novels and book clubs, but in 6th this year it's been only benchmark.

I guess it depends on the private. Ours does novels starting in first and then it just keeps going. They start doing some historical fiction starting in 3rd and up so there can be some history/language arts integration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If it's a true Montessori model at the daycare they would benefit from completing the third year of the cycle in kindergarten. If not, switch to public.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Montessori K was the best possible thing I could have done for my son. That year gained him so much confidence and independence. I love montessori as a whole, but the third year in the cycle was wonderful. Mornings were whole group, but afternoon was just K, so it was a very small group with the teacher and he was able to just fly.

The downside was that 1st and 2nd were all review. I wish we'd had the money to continue Montessori through elementary school, or at least until AAP started.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would keep her in a good Montessori if you could. We moved DD from Montessori to FCPS in first grade. She did great in school, but would come home distraught that she was not learning anything. To show her teacher that she could do more than add two and two and come up with four, she would show that she could do 2 x 2 and get four, or 8/2 to get 4 or 16 different ways to do it, but her teacher did not acknowledge what she was trying to do (not that I blame the teacher; there were kids in class that did not recognize numbers or letters or knew the names of shapes or colors).

She successfully lobbied to go back to Montessori ("My brain is rusting when I am in school. Why am I going there?") half way through the school year, and she stayed there until she got into AAP in 3rd grade. Her first assignment when she got back to Montessori was to write a research paper on a dinosaur, to go with a diorama.

that’s very impressive! I thought FCPS had AAP to offer more challenges in-class for those who qualify from k-2.

DP. Not really. Both my kids qualified for AAP work in K-2 but only one teacher actually challenged my kids. The other teachers didn’t provide any challenging work. I assume they didn’t have time to differentiate for the higher level learners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would keep her in a good Montessori if you could. We moved DD from Montessori to FCPS in first grade. She did great in school, but would come home distraught that she was not learning anything. To show her teacher that she could do more than add two and two and come up with four, she would show that she could do 2 x 2 and get four, or 8/2 to get 4 or 16 different ways to do it, but her teacher did not acknowledge what she was trying to do (not that I blame the teacher; there were kids in class that did not recognize numbers or letters or knew the names of shapes or colors).

She successfully lobbied to go back to Montessori ("My brain is rusting when I am in school. Why am I going there?") half way through the school year, and she stayed there until she got into AAP in 3rd grade. Her first assignment when she got back to Montessori was to write a research paper on a dinosaur, to go with a diorama.

I wish we did this. My kids were appropriately challenged in Montessori and were ahead in public school. They didn’t have their academic needs met until 3rd grade AAP.

[Anonymous]

I had 2 kids both started Montessori at 3. DC1 did Montessori kindergarten then transferred to public ES for 1st grade, and 1st grade teacher told me DC1 was strong in math, but behind in reading and it surprised me, as I knew our Montessori was good and didn’t actually read much with DC1 at home. I started to teach DC1 reading daily at home, and DC1 was able to reach top reading level by end of 1st grade. DC2 only had 1.5 years at Montessori, then due to lockdown I taught DC2 at home for the rest of prek2 school year at home, before transferring DC2 to online public kindergarten. DC2 was an early reader at 2 and also strong in math as Montessori built foundation. If you don’t like current Montessori school, transfer your older child to public K or a new Montessori you like, your younger one would definitely benefit from a good Montessori school.

[Anonymous]

As another parent who couldn't afford private, we entered the language immersion lottery to get our bright child more stimulation in early ES, before AAP began. Thankfully we got a spot and both our kids benefited from that program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would keep her in a good Montessori if you could. We moved DD from Montessori to FCPS in first grade. She did great in school, but would come home distraught that she was not learning anything. To show her teacher that she could do more than add two and two and come up with four, she would show that she could do 2 x 2 and get four, or 8/2 to get 4 or 16 different ways to do it, but her teacher did not acknowledge what she was trying to do (not that I blame the teacher; there were kids in class that did not recognize numbers or letters or knew the names of shapes or colors).

She successfully lobbied to go back to Montessori ("My brain is rusting when I am in school. Why am I going there?") half way through the school year, and she stayed there until she got into AAP in 3rd grade. Her first assignment when she got back to Montessori was to write a research paper on a dinosaur, to go with a diorama.

that’s very impressive! I thought FCPS had AAP to offer more challenges in-class for those who qualify from k-2.

DP. Not really. Both my kids qualified for AAP work in K-2 but only one teacher actually challenged my kids. The other teachers didn’t provide any challenging work. I assume they didn’t have time to differentiate for the higher level learners.

oh my. I was under the impression that schools utilized a resource teacher (acronym ART I think?) to administer more advanced work in a part time setting to students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would keep her in a good Montessori if you could. We moved DD from Montessori to FCPS in first grade. She did great in school, but would come home distraught that she was not learning anything. To show her teacher that she could do more than add two and two and come up with four, she would show that she could do 2 x 2 and get four, or 8/2 to get 4 or 16 different ways to do it, but her teacher did not acknowledge what she was trying to do (not that I blame the teacher; there were kids in class that did not recognize numbers or letters or knew the names of shapes or colors).

She successfully lobbied to go back to Montessori ("My brain is rusting when I am in school. Why am I going there?") half way through the school year, and she stayed there until she got into AAP in 3rd grade. Her first assignment when she got back to Montessori was to write a research paper on a dinosaur, to go with a diorama.

that’s very impressive! I thought FCPS had AAP to offer more challenges in-class for those who qualify from k-2.

DP. Not really. Both my kids qualified for AAP work in K-2 but only one teacher actually challenged my kids. The other teachers didn’t provide any challenging work. I assume they didn’t have time to differentiate for the higher level learners.

oh my. I was under the impression that schools utilized a resource teacher (acronym ART I think?) to administer more advanced work in a part time setting to students.

It’s very hit or miss whether those level 2/3 services happen before 3rd grade even if your kid gets referred.

[Anonymous]

Montessori through 1st grade. We switched her to public school in 2nd grade. Then our kid was given a teacher referral for AAP in 2nd grade. And she made it in. Her teacher submitted work samples that she completed in cursive writing that she learned in Montessori school.

That was our experience and that was the experience of many families that we know who were at our Montessori school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As another parent who couldn't afford private, we entered the language immersion lottery to get our bright child more stimulation in early ES, before AAP began. Thankfully we got a spot and both our kids benefited from that program.

Interesting. Can they do language immersion and AAP, or do you have to choose? Are they learning a second language? If so, seems like a little -, understood option.