Anonymous wrote:Does "Montessori" have any minimal standard whatsoever? I don't think so. Anyone can claim to be Montessori.

There is accreditation. You can't stop someone from saying they are Montessori, but only accredited schools that follow the model and have trained teachers can claim to be accredited, which is a differentiator.

One of my kids went to play-based preschool and one did Montessori. They are both very bright and learned to read early, but no question the one in Montessori learned more, across many dimensions (math, geography, practical life, science).

I'm 10:04, the Montessori lover
PP is perfectly right - you need to look for AMI-certified schools because the name itself is unfortunately unprotected.

Does "Montessori" have any minimal standard whatsoever? I don't think so. Anyone can claim to be Montessori.

Also, they paid a lot for it.

+2 Its true. As a parent in MCPS, the kids in play based preschools are also far ahead of the Curriculum. K in MCPS 2.0 is free child care and social development. I think play-based preschool is perfectly fine but we really liked the academic methodology. A good play based program that lets kids go as far as they want and give them as much time to practice as they need also puts them far ahead of the current public school mentality.

Where Montessori is unique is that it doesn't assume kids can only learn something at a certain age. It provides flexibility that kids develop at different paces which the general public school system ignores. There is no everyone has to wait until the last person figures it out. There is no issue if a child needs to practice a particular skill more to get it. It also gives kids more independence.

The 3 year olds start doing phonetic sounds and building words. Some really take to this and move on to reading and others need more practice and start reading later. They also start introducing estimating and place value to 3 and 4 year olds.

Math uses the same concepts. They teach math in a way that makes far more sense. They actually build on the concepts. Multiplication is just adding a number to itself multiple times. They don't make a big deal of calling it multiplication and they never expect kids to memorize the tables. They simply take K kids who are comfortably skip counting and show them pattern boards that introduce multiplication. They introduce the symbol after the child has mastered the concept. When they teach the kids addition they don't arbitrarily stop at single digits because gasp they are Kindergartners. They let them do problems up to 4 or 5 place values. It teaches them that there are connections between the different types of equations. They get a much better foundation than the random way MCPS bounces around and the arbitrary ceilings it creates.

My sister didn't go to Montessori because my parents couldn't afford it when she was small. I did go. My mother loved to talk about how smart I was, how much faster I read than her, how I thrived in Montessori, etc., etc.

My sister ended up going to Harvard.

They're little kids. Even if Montessori is a bit better (and who knows...I don't personally care), it's not going to matter in the end if the kid comes from a well-educated, well-resourced family.

Montessori is hyped up bs. Mainly an alternative to religious based pre-school.

Maybe because it's true.

Ugh, don't worry about it. I really don't think this is exclusive to montessori parents. Any time a family makes a different choice than the one your family has made, there will be someone who is uncertain or even insecure about their own choice. This can lead to bragging and boasting in an effort to reassure themselves that the choice they made for their family was the best, and it can also lead to over sensitivity and self doubt as people continue to wonder if they made the right decision after all. Just chill.

And try to take a step back from it. I mean really - we are talking about 5 year olds here. 5 year olds.

Just because we have children doesn't mean we have to act like them.

Because it's often true -
all other things being equal (teacher quality, student motivation, blah blah blah).

All of the K class in our Montessori school were emerging readers (could read books with one or more sentences on each page) and could count up to a thousand with the thousand chain (which gives a concrete introduction to cubing numbers). They knew how to attend to their own work yet loved to jump in and help a younger student in need of guidance.

Montessori for my children provided just the right balance of free play, calm group socialization, with rigorous yet effortless learning. My children's creativity was not stifled, they did not become little robots, but they did acquire an excellent grounding for the "real" school.

That being said, the most important thing is that THE METHOD IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE TEACHER.

Before I moved to DC, I lived in a college town in the Midwest where full day preschool was not a thing that was available. If there was full day care, it was at a daycare (whether that be a center or someone's home). The only exception to this rule was Montessori. The practical result of that was that when children who went to Montessori school from ages 3-5 and then into K in a non-Montessori school, they WERE "better educated" than kids who had been in a daycare center or had been at home with a parent. They had more experience with formal schooling than those kids did and their parents already had expectations about what a classroom would provide their child. Those parents were often not particularly patient with a classroom that was non-Montessori or with a classroom that had many students who were entering a formal school setting for the first time at age 5.

Speaking as the parent of a 4 year old Montessori student, I understand the frustration with your child being forced to go backward a step to accommodate the needs of other children. I also understand that one of the many things my child needs to learn in school is how to accommodate the needs of others and that one of my jobs as a parent is to recognize that the world doesn't revolve around my child.

Maybe they are, but it all evens out pretty quickly, so I wouldn't let this get under your skin.

-Not a Montessori parent

Anonymous wrote:If I hear one more time that a parent thinks kindergarten is not providing as much of an advanced curriculum as the kid's prior preschool did, I may get ill.

If you come to the Maryland schools forum, you will hear this a lot from MCPS parents who insist that their child did not learn one single solitary tiny bitty crumb of a thing the whole entire 180-day year of kindergarten. But this is for the purpose of bashing MCPS, not cheering Montessori.

Because people need reassurance that they are the best and made the best choices. Montessori is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only certain parents choose it and are drawn to it.

If I hear one more time that a parent thinks kindergarten is not providing as much of an advanced curriculum as the kid's prior preschool did, I may get ill.