Reply to Lee Montessori open slots for 1st and 2nd

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My eldest is in K at Lee and is working on precursory skills for multiplication after having already done addition and subtraction. The parents who complain about "lack" of academics likely don't understand how the Montessori method works, and probably would feel more comfortable at a school that drills their kids to do well on standardized tests. I just don't see that as a priority. [/quote]

That's unusual for any kindergartener, it's possible your kid is simply naturally gifted at math and this has nothing to do with his school. Most kids do not start doing multiplication in K, whether Montessori or no.

It's not that people want their kids doing drills for standardized tests. Most parents hate that stuff. But pretty much all parents want their kids to learn to read, write, and do math at a competent level. Montessori often relies on the idea that children will naturally gravitate towards those things if they are offered in the right way, and for some kids that's true. And for some kids it's not true. It's easy to believe that your 3 yo will do well in Montessori, but once they've gotten past the pre-academic stuff, lots and lots of kids gravitate not towards academics but other things, and need more structure and focus in order to learn these basic skills.

I guarantee there are kids in your son's K class who can barely do any addition. And the question for them is whether they will get enough math this year to keep them at grade level. And the issue compounds after K because you are no longer doing foundational work but building on foundations. So if you lack sufficient phonemic awareness or have not mastered the concrete mathematical concepts, it is basically impossible for you to work on your reading comprehension or abstract math skills at grade levels.

Which is why parents often leave Lee and other Montessori programs in 1st or 2nd. It's not that they desperately crave rote memorization of standardized testing subjects. It's that their child is not performing at grade level on basic subjects and they worry that if they wait too long, the problem will compound and become harder to address. Parents with kids who LOVE math and reading and push themselves to go further in these subjects on their own don't get it and like to feel superior. But criticizing parents because they want their children to learn to read and do math is ridiculous.

Montessori is not for everyone, and it is especially not for everyone past ECE.[/quote]

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