Reply to Montisorri for high energy, extroverted, 3 year olds who love singing

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[quote=Anonymous]It depends on the school and the teachers.  I have two high energy twin boys, now 8.  When they were 2-4, we had them in a Montessori school.  In our school the children had a 2.5 day Montessori class.  During that class, the basic rule was there were six stations.  Each student had to complete one project from each station every day.  The first order was to select a project, take it back to your workspace and learn the lesson.  After you completed the lesson, you could do what you want with the project, including pretend play, as long as you were quiet and not disruptive to the other kids.  Between projects you had freedom as long as you were not distracting to the other kids.  My one son would fly through about 18 projects in 2.5 hours.  He did the lesson and moved on.  But between the projects, he often wandered around the room (think one of Billy's wanderings from the old "Family Circus" cartoons).  He made trips to the window to look out and trips to the snack table, then would walk a circle around another child's work space.  Then head back to pick another project.  And so on.  The other son would take 6-7 projects.  He would do the lesson, then he would sit for another 15 minutes playing with the project, much to his pretend play's delight, trying to figure out every last thing you could do with it.  So in the "H" bin, he would take the horse out and make it gallop around the house, jump over it, jump on top, etc.  If he started to get loud, they would gently remind him to play quietly.  And when he ran out of things to do, he put the project back and got the next one.  In fact, the reason that we picked Montessori was that the teaching was self-guided and the children decided how much or little time to work on projects and also decided which ones to do.  Twin B hated the play-based daycare when he was playing with a toy and was told to put things away for circle time.  Or he was working on a worksheet and decided he wanted to draw something else on the back of the paper and then was interrupted because the group was going out to the playground.  Etc.  He wanted and fought for control of his life (where he could).  He loved Montessori because he did have control over how the 2.5 hours went by and he was more interested in learning while there. Twin A also loved Montessori because he was quick and in regular playbased daycare, he would finish ahead of the other kids and then have to sit around and wait while the teachers covered the lesson for others.  He'd get bored and would be chided for not behaving in circle time as he got bored.  He loved the self-pacing so that he could finish and move on.  That also kept him more motivated to learn.  In both of our twins, the self-guided timing and control of their own learning path was a key to what made it work and what they loved.

Our kids were there from 8:30-6:00 every day due to our work schedules.  They had Montessori class from 8:30-11:00 each day.  Then they had playground time, lunch time, went inside for open daycare time with another break for outdoor time weather permitting.  Outside of the Montessori class, it was much like a play based daycare, as long as they were using inside voices inside and not being disruptive, they had lots of active time, were allowed to yell out on the playground and had freedom of play in the daycare setting.  While some don't like the quiet learning zone in the Montessori classroom, it was good for us.  It taught our children that there is a time and place for things.  They got their energy out and play out during the other 7 hours during the day, but learned that different behavior was expected in the Montessori class.  This was good as it meant that when we went out to eat, we could teach them that dining in a restaurant was like Montessori class, that certain behavior was expected, they had to be quieter and more well behaved and not disruptive.  They learned that there was a time and place for different behaviors and indoor behavior was different from outdoor behavior.   It did not stifle their creativity or imagination.  And it did not squash their energy or dampen their spirits.  They still had an outlet for that, it just wasn't in the first 2.5 hours of the day.  And they were still worn out from active play by the end of the day so that we didn't have them bouncing off the walls at home after preschool.

It was great for us.  We noticed that when our kids went to public elementary that a lot of the learned behavior started going out the window as they learned to adapt to their friends and peers and there was more acting out when taken out of the Montessori environment.  We adapted as a family, but it was easier to teach them disciplined behavior and different behaviors in different settings from our Montessori school.[/quote]

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