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[quote=Anonymous]Montessori Teacher here chiming in on this thread

Some parents see a Montessori classroom and believe that no pretend play takes place but Dr. Montessori observed children and concluded that their pretend play comes from a child's interests in being like their parents. Children want to use materials in the same way they see their parents using them (or how they think their parents use them haha). To meet this interest the Montessori classroom provides children the opportunity to actually engage in these tasks instead of just pretending to do them. Instead of pretending to serve dinner or run a restaurant, in a Montessori classroom a child will prepare real food themselves (such slicing a banana with a child size butter knife), and serve that food to real people, either themselves or their peers (instead of dolls or stuffed animals). Instead of pretending to have a tea party, in the Montessori classroom that child will actually heat tea (to a safe luke warm temperature, far from boiling), pour it themselves into a real ceramic mug/tea cup, add a real tea bag and then actually drink the tea. Instead of pretending to build  something in a plastic workshop, in the Montessori classroom a child will use a real child size screw driver to screw real screws into a real piece of wood (with pre-drilled holes). These activities, banana slicing, tea making, and screwing are the child's "work" and I could on and on with the examples. According to Dr. Montessori, actually doing these tasks is more fulfilling to the children than pretending to do them because the children are excited to be just like the adults in their lives. A good Montessori program should allow the children to have freedom within the classroom and there should still be structured and unstructured time outdoors.

I could speak more on the how social skills are learned in a Montessori classroom and more on structured vs unstructured time during the work cycle but this is already going to be a long post haha

With that being said I have also worked in an amazing play-based program and a less than stellar play based program before teaching in Montessori schools. The good play based program first gave children a lesson on a topic for the day, such as birds, then they took a walk to look for real birds, and then back in the classroom they had to option to pretend play as a bird or engage in other centers. At each center the children played at I would cycle around the room to speak with them. My goal was to ask them questions to extend their thinking and help them to put their ideas into words. In the less than stellar play based program the children genuinely had indoor free play and unstructured outdoor time for the entire day (of course besides lunch and nap time).

To parents looking for a preschool program I would advise to first think of what skills you want to child to obtain by the time they leave preschool and then find a method and a school that highly values those skills. And there is several: Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Frobelian, Piagetian, Creative Curriculum, Nature based, Tools of the Mind, to name a few. If you can, definitely observe the classroom for as long as possible before enrolling your child, but also ask to observe once your child is enrolled. In every preschool I've worked in, we get to conferences and I realize that the parents have no idea what their child really does all day even though we have an open flow of communication. Most of them would be either disappointed or highly impressed if they actually came in and observed.[/quote]

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