Reply to Help me understand the difference between Montessori and play-based preschool

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[quote=Anonymous]First, it depends on whether the Montessori you are considering is AMS or AMI. AMS is more open about the kinds of materials, AMI requires the original materials and more rigorously trained guides.

In general, the idea of Montessori is that children learn best when given independence, choice, and "real life" things to do. There is a strong emphasis on practical life skills and sensorial experiences. For example, my 3 year old was sewing with a real needle and thread. I didn't know he could do that until we went somewhere which had that as a craft and I tried to give him burlap and a plastic needle. He told me he knew how to use the real one, and threaded it himself and started to sew in a straight line. He also really liked things like a texture box, which you use by putting a blindfold on and matching different cloths by touch alone.

They also have art tables, crafts, puzzles, dollhouses, and musical toys -- children are free to use those as much as they want. The only rule is that if someone else is working with it you have to respect that. There is some kind of developmental theory behind why they do this, it builds concentration and lessens insecurity. One of my friends' kids was at a playbased classroom and he literally would not go to the bathroom there because he was worried that people would play with his toys while he was gone. (Extreme, I know . . . but anyway, I think there's something to the idea that it's very hard for kids to feel like someone else can swoop in and take their stuff.)

The "academic" stuff doesn't start until they are in the mixed-age classroom. It's all very sensory based. Like tracing sandpaper letters, counting with beads, geography with large map puzzles. But it's pretty cool what they build up to. My 4 year old reads well and can do addition/subtraction into the thousands. This is all self-guided, based on the interest of your child. Others his age or older are not interested in reading/writing and hence do not do it at all.

A final thing about Montessori vs play-based is that most Montessoris adhere to the philosophy that a child cannot fully distinguish between reality and fantasy before age 6, so it's important to keep things as reality based as possible so they don't develop confusion as they are forming concepts about how things work. So you won't see fantasy play encouraged (although it certainly happens) and there will be an emphasis on things like watching plants grow, puzzles that show the different parts of animals vs. cartoons, that kind of thing.[/quote]

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