The Piper Cub is at a good day care. However, lots of our fellow parents of toddlers are talking about putting their kids into montessori as well as day care.
I’m not sure what the point of a montessori pre-school be, since he’s already getting a lot of personal attention and interaction with some other kids at the day care. As well, montessori pre-k is just a couple of hours of weeks, so it would be pretty disruptive to our schedules to put him in montessori, plus keep him in daycare the rest of the week.
So, is there any benefit to montessori pre-k that isn’t met by a good daycare?
Are you sure the Montessori isn’t a full day type thing? We have our oldest daughter in a Montessori school, but it’s a true school that can go to 8th grade. The positives that I know about are that they show her how numbers and such work, but without really going into numbers abstractly. She can now add and from what I’ve heard is starting to subtract.
They also teach her to read and write at the same time by having her write out the letters as she’s learning what they are.
I would say that if it’s more of a full time Montessori school your child will get a lot out of it, but if it’s just part time it probably isn’t worth it, especially if you have to make a lot of changes to your schedule. Also know that any school can slap on the name Montessori and have it not mean a thing.
I would think he would learn a lot more in a school with a curriculum vs. a day care that does not actively structure learning activities. (Of course lots of learning still goes on in a day care, especially social learning.) I’m not an expert in Montessori but my impression is that there are specific materials that the child is taught to use in specific ways with less emphasis on free exploration and imaginative play. Montessori is probably perfect for some kids, but there are lots of other kinds of preschools out there with different philosophies which you might want to compare.
I am struggling with some of these same issues. My thread is here. The consensus seemed to be that it didn’t matter unless you thought it did (e.g., if you went to visit the Montessori school and you saw they were doing amazing things that the daycare wasn’t doing).
I was strongly considering putting our daughter in the Montessori preschool-daycare but after reading what Dopers had to say and reading some Montessori books on my own I think I am leaning towards putting her in another daycare that I think does a really good job but lets her play outside more (I don’t have the mindset or tolerance for dirt to do good outside activities myself), and do some of the learning activities ourselves at home.
For the Celtling, I decided in the end to keep her in the same place all day. I think the emotional stability of being in the same place all day is really important to very young kids. The disruptuon of routine, especially for something that happens only a few days a week keeps little kids always guessing. Of course you can counter that by getting a calendar, and talking through each morning what the dialy schedule will be, but I preferred to spend the extra money to put her in a better all-day school, rather than splitting the day between leanring and babysitting environments.
As for Montessori, it’s wonderful, but it’s not a brand name. Anyone can add the Montessori name onto their school and there’s no committee coming in to check on them. When she’s old enough, I intend to put her in a full-time Montessori kindergarten which has after-care in the same building, but I wouldn’t go switching her days around at this point. (almost four.)
That’s cool. I was going to address Montessori in your thread, but I realized I really don’t know much about the preschool side. I went to a Montessori school through fourth grade, and it was perfect for me. I would up being almost a grade ahead of everyone when I left, and it stayed that way because I knew how to learn on my own.
I think some sort of structured preschool is valuable, if only to ease the transition to kindergarten, but if you’re happy with where you are and you feel your child isn’t bored, why change it? And I agree that the inconvenience to you and your child of moving them in the middle of the day to a different place probably outweighs the value.
My son is in a full-day Montessori preschool and we really like it. His sister will probably go to the same place. He can write his letters and numbers and all that good stuff, and he’s starting to recognize words when we read. I’m very happy about that and think it’s great, but the primary benefit for us was that he’s comfortable there. He knows all the teachers and has a very predictable schedule, so he knows what to expect every day. He gets really disrupted when he doesn’t have a predictable schedule, so that was important to us.
The little Torqueling is in a Montessori preschool, and while I don’t think she’s quite ready for Harvard, I think it’s a good thing for her.
At our particular school, I like the involvement. Several times a year, we sign up for parent-teacher conferences, which take about half an hour. We meet with the owner/head teacher, and she updates us on how the kiddo is doing and what specific lessons they’ve been working on. It’s kinda fascinating to see how she makes progress, like playing a game with three fingers that actually trains her to hold a pencil, or tracing sandpaper numbers, or learning the parts of a fish, or whatever they happen to be doing. I love how it’s made her interested in things like leaves, and planets, and bugs, and music.
But, whether it’s worth it is really up to you. We primarily wanted her to get some social interaction with kids around her own age, and the Montessori school cost about the same as other daycares, so that’s what we went with. I don’t think Montessori will give a kid a big leg-up on other kids when they reach Kindergarten, but at least it won’t be as much of a shock to her.
I went to a Montessori school for a couple of years. I don’t really recall much about it, what with me being a tiny little kid and all, but in hindsight, my parents felt that it was a waste of time and money. Based on my age, I should have gone into second grade after I got out of the Montessori school, but my parents felt that the school hadn’t given me enough of a knowledge base for that, and put me in first grade, instead.
Caveats: not all Montessori schools are equal. I actually went to two, but was pulled out of the first one because the woman running it was (paraphrasing my parents) some kind of raging idiot douchebag. The second school was better, but it turned out I wasn’t a good fit for their program: I needed a much more structured environment to learn.
Those are most of the reasons mom gave me as to why she put me in Montessori starting at 1 yr old. I’ve been in daycare since 4 months, and mom decided that, since I was going to be in some sort of daycare, might as well it have something educational.
I loved my experience, from 1 yr until I started kindergarten in another, “normal” school. My parents saved many worksheets from those years. Darn, I got the hang of counting really fast, it seems.
But what I remember are not only those things… those were… I was doing what I like, most of the time. But I learned other things. I learned to eat in groups and clean up, I learned and practiced washing and cleaning after myself, I learned that naps were awesome, I learned to clean up and some simple chores. I loved the storytelling times, I loved the playing around, I loved the arts and crafts although I sucked.
Also, I repeat the comment on checking for certification (by the school and from the teachers). My school (and teachers) had both, and I have a very dear friend who spent a year getting her certification and now is a teacher at an (accredited) Montessori.
When our daughter was about three, her daycare provider decided that she wanted to rejoin the more conventional workforce, and we had to find other accommodations. Those accommodations turned out to be a Montessori-based daycare/preschool. We give that place a significant amount of the credit for the fact that she’s been an honor student for her entire academic career (she’s halfway through ninth grade now).
To be sure we reserve most of it for her own hard work and our support and involvement. But the Montessori experience was instrumental in laying the foundations.
My advice is to not obsess over what school your kid is going to, and take charge of the situation by being a good parent. A child can do well in almost any school if they have a parent that is involved in their learning. For example, I would not trust any school to teach my kid to read. I would teach them myself.
/had parent who taught me to read
//taught my goddaughter to read
///she is doing well in public school
And holy crap. Now that I have googled “Montessori Method” I am in shock.
Look, I taught my goddaughter to read at age five, using phonics and flashcards. After that, she could read above her age level with no problem, and now at age nine continues to excel. I didn’t do this by “Observing Her Inner Directives” or “Letting Her Choose Her Own Activities”.
I did it by, on a daily basis saying “Are you ready for the flash cards?”
I would then drill her with flash cards, sorting the pack with the simpler ones, and on each day adding one or two new cards of slightly more diffuculty out of the pack.
In this manner, I brought her from not knowing any letters at all, to full reading, in less than two months, with less than one half hour of drill per day. I got the pack of cards at the 99 Cents Only store.
Drill was always ended at the first sign of ennui, with a smile, and the comment “We’ll try again tommorow!”
Looks to me like Montessori is one of the reasons that the new generation is having a big ol’ heap of fail when they are introduced to real life.
Shrug Actually, by them reading to me, and having books within my reach, and all the other things they did, I managed to do pretty well, studying and paying attention exactly to what I wanted. They did put directives, though. Botany lessons bore me, for example.
The drilling that you describe is not that unlike what happens at a Montessori school (from what I remember). We were not “all play, all the time”, we had blocks where the focus was on different things. But, for example, while some may be happy connecting the dots for hours, I’d be interested in learning how to count. While others showed more proficiency in knowing the parts of the plants, I preferred… well, not that.
Grated, my native language is one that does not depend on phonics as a “learning to read” method.
IIRC, the Montessori method was originally targeted to students with real learning disabilities, who obviously did not do well in the more structured, more “mainstream” educational system. Not a slam at that, I did well in both, and I’m sure many if not most of the kids do well in good programs, regardless of teaching methods.
Second, the pre-school I went was big on parent involvement and the teachers got to talk with the parents every day. Like I said, my teachers recognize me even decades later… and they also recognize and greet my parents when they see them. Parents would come by and do story telling (one of my best friend’s mom was a known local children’s TV character), or participate in school parties or arts showcases or in “plant a tree” day or in “let’s beautify a segment of the street” activity. Last time I went, one of my (old) teachers was talking with one of the parents about doing a vaccination clinic or a talk to the other parents about vaccines and their kids.
:rolleyes: There’s one in every thread about children and schools. Look, no one is obsessing here. A decision needs to be made and the parent is making it carefully, and asking for input.
Are you seriously advocating that any parent who doesn’t just toss their kid through the doors of the nearest daycare is obsessive and neglecting their personal responsibiity for their child’s education?
As for Montessori, the goal is to let the child maintain a love for learning. I know very few children who don’t hate school. The few I know who enjoy it are (or started out) in good Montessori programs.
Different children have different needs, and responsible parents research these things, and spend a lot of time thinking about what is best for their children, while balancing the cost in time and money for the whole family. It’s a constant process.
Stan, I get what you mean. My mom taught me how to read by the ol’ flashcard method herself, and I spent a lot of time reading from then on.
I don’t know what Montessori materials you’ve been looking at, but I went to the library and got out all their Montessori books and have been reading them since I posted the OP. I was a little surprised to learn that what they advocate doing for reading is pretty much the same thing I’ve already been doing with my daughter (no flash cards yet – she’s not quite 14 months old after all) – a lot of reading together, sounding out letters and sounds (especially when we read “alphabet” books), putting together phonemes and sounding out the resulting words (we have some letter wooden blocks I do this with – not very often right now because she doesn’t seem to be interested yet). So for the most part nothing incredibly game-changing there, but I don’t think it’s the waste of time your searches seem to have pulled up.
The one thing Montessori does differently (as far as teaching reading) that I think is valuable is that they don’t focus on learning the alphabet but rather on the phonemes themselves. The only letter my daughter knows right now is “H,” because she likes the picture of the “Hungry Horse” on that page in the alphabet book, but as far as I can tell she doesn’t at all associate it with the “h” sound (and why should she – the letter name and the letter sound aren’t anything alike for “H”). They also think it is useful to do tactile representations of letters (they have these sandpaper letters) which I, not being a tactile person, think is kind of useless, but whatever, I suppose there are other kids who learn really well that way.
I also rather like their approach to encouraging the kid to do as much for him/herself as possible, and I’m going to try to incorporate that a little more in our household – now that the Little One understands the word “inside,” we can start to teach her to put her toys away.
