sorry if i misspelled that wrong but was wondering what the average tuition for pre-school in a motesorri school?
Here is a page with the tuition for this particular school.
http://www.beemanpark.com/informat.htm
Others would be close I would think.
Nope, you misspelled it correctly. 
Montessori
At least some Montessori schools are public: I went to one myself. I don’t know how common that is, though.
There are only about 150 actual certified Montessori programs in the US (give or take a few). Delaware has eight of them. 
There are perhaps thousands of other programs out there that use greater or lesser amounts of the Montessori Method, and a few that even use the name cynically. Investigate your chosen program carefully.
The program my daughter is in runs about US$5500/school year, plus daycare, for her age group. Prices go up as the grades advance.
The Montessori Method is awesome for many kids, not so great for others. Investigate local programs carefully, with an eye to whether or not your child will fit the program.
I’d look closely into Montessori before enrolling a child. Montessori is very structured and very goal oriented. It focuses a lot on getting a child to learn how to take steps and see a task through to the end.
Keep in mind that many children under a certain age have troubles with tasks of this nature. In some circumstances it can cause children to feel inadequate or stressed when they don’t have the same “attention to detail” as other students.
For some children it fits perfectly with their natural proclivity to stucture.
What do you mean by structure, in this context? I’d say Montessori schools are more unstructured than your average school.
I remember being 4 and in Montessori school. Well, I went longer than that, but I went first when I was four. Maria Montessori came and visited our school a few times (yes, it was long ago grasshopper)
I really really really wanted to go, my older sister was already attending. I remember not being allowed to play with certain toys, or letter and number groups, until I knew what they were and how to use them. It frustrated me mightily at first, but also gave me lots of incentive to learn quickly.
So in retrospect, not good for all kids, but really good for some.
While the learning paths are highly organized and structured, in a really effective Montessori program, no child is required to go faster than they themselves are comfortable. In a proper Montessori Method program, the teacher stays just one step ahead of the sutudent, and each student is tracked individually, so as to not pressure the child. Further, the various learning areas do not progress “lock-step”, but the child advances in each learning area according to their own capability.
I’ll use my daughter here as an example…
- In launguage (reading, writing, expressing herself), she’s amazing, racing far ahead of her classmates (a three-year age group), so additional material is being brought to the classroom to support her.
- In math, she does well, but is only even-reaching with the oldest students in her group (~1-1/2 to 2 years older).
- In practial life, she’s again moving along with the oldest students in the group.
- Geography / culturally, she’s again racing ahead.
- She has, by the progam director’s estimate, the capability to be three to four years ahead of every student in the class in every subject, if she had the desire to do so. She doesn’t, and while her teacher (who is also the curriculum developer and program director for her age group) is frustrated in her desire to direct and mold, she allows Lin to move ahead at the pace that Lin sets, not the pace the teachers feel she’s capable of. Why? Because to do so would be trying to force a four year old to learn habits that normally don’t develop until a child is six or seven. A Montessori teacher is there to be a guide to the child, not a mold or cookie-cutter, and Shamima (the teacher) knows this very well.
Now, this isn’t a typical Montessori school, it’s a dmn* good school. This is why it’s necssary to find out if the school you’re looking at:
- Is actually a Montessori school, and not one the only uses portions of the Method
- Follows a recognzed Montessori Method program
- Is certified
- Follows the American or European style (there is a difference, a major one!)
- Has teachers that warmly engage with the children, that are willing to allow a struggling child time and room
- Is a good fit for your child
Look for artwork by the children… If you see a lot of it, you’ve probably found a good school.
Not every child will benefit from the Montessori Method, but most will. The Montessri Method is not easy for a teacher to follow, and requires very high dedication. Montessori schools tend to be more expensive due to the higher educationand training requirements, as well as generally requiring greater numbers of staff to support the individualized attention. Some shildren will absolutely fail in a Montessori program, so you need to investigate and pay attention.
I’m a proud papa of a Montessori student, and she’s excelling in that enviroment, but I’ll be the last one to insist that every child should attend one of these schools.
Note: In researching links for this post, I find that the AMS has ~850 affiliated schools in the US, while the AMI (with which I am more familliar) has 160 (as I posted previously). As the name “Montessori” isn’t copyrighted, anyone can open a “Montessori School”, and of the ~5000 “Montessori” programs, only roughly 1000 are affiliated with a major sanctioning body.
Related links:
Association Montessori Internationale (Amsterdam)
American Montessori Society (NYC)
Education Week’s excellent article on the Montessori Method
Montessori Connections (US Montessori comunity website)
By this i mean using the Montessori methods, the child’s learning is goal oriented. In that a child must finish a goal prior to moving to something else.
If they are learning to tie their shoes they must finish learning to tie their shoes before moving on.
Children who do not deal well with this kind of a structure and who would rather move freely from one thing to aother without completing a “goal” may not work well in a montessori school.
That said, it is correct that montessori schools do not have pre-defined “class goals” that all children must do at the same time (like making them all do letter sheets at the same time) and in this method are not structured like typical schools.
Another thing I would consider important is:
Is the artwork the child’s creative artwork
or
Is the artwork a “parent pleaser”
By this i mean are the children free to paint and draw how they wish or does the teacher show them “this is how you paint a flower, everyone make a green stem, make a green leaf”
I am a big proponent of letting children (especially pre-school aged children) experiment with things and develop their own methods and creations rather than being told the “right way” to make a bird or a bunny.
Now I must say I do not know the Montessori stance on this and this may or may not be how they do it there.
I was just making a point on early childhood education is all.
My daughter attended a bona fide Montessori school for a year and a half. It was a pivotal experience.
She’s terribly bright ( I know, I’m brimming with objectivity. Someone pinch me !), she’s eager to learn and like most bright kids, bored by traditional pre-school. BORED. Bored. Ok? Bored.
She was able to learn in a whole new way, at her own pace. While it has virtually NOTHING in common with “traditional” schooling or teaching methodology, I found it to be a great way to start formal schooling.
Having said that, we were warned. Take a kid to Montessori for pre-school, and Kindergarten will be absolute hell. This was indeed the case with my dear daughter, FemBot.
However, she eventually realized that the structure exists for a reason, and that she won’t be held back from advancing, even if she is afraid she will be. She’s now a bright, funny, clever, pain in the tushy 10 year old.
For more kids than you might realize, it is an astonishing way to bring them into focus and prep them for schooling and life. I recommend it for ALL kids at the pre-school age, not just bright kids.
Cartooniverse
While “bright” kids often make stunning advancements in Montessori, it’s the challenged kids that often make the largest relative leap forward. Maria Montessori learned how children learn by watching and helping challenged children, and her methods, while applicable across a broad range of capability, seem to have the most dramatic impact on those whom are normally left behind. When I see my daughter blossoming, it’s amazing, but when I see the impact this school has on kids with half (or less) of her raw capablity, I’m simply floored.
I personally think every slum child, every orphan, every abandoned child, should have have at least a chance to be exposed to Montessori. Most, I suspect, would have their opportunities to learn to love education radically increased.
BurnMeUp, I’m heavily biased towards Montessori for the reason that I found (or, actually, my wife found) a superior school, where the urge to “take over” a child’s develpoment is kept in sharp check; where the art my daughter brings home half time resembles nothing I know, but has meaning to her; where the art is placed on the walls where teachers and kids will see it but the parents rarely will. It’s a school where the child’s emotional development is as important towards advancing as their intellectual development.
My girl, brilliant as she is, will likely not advance to the kindegarten level next year, despite being in the Preschool II program for two years. She’s not ready, discipline-wise. She will continue to learn, and will never be held back from expanding her knowledge, but she will not be doing those things that seperate the kindegarteners from the P-II kids (which are task-based mostly, and invariably require greater self-discipline). This is hardly a tradgedy, as she’s all of four years old (and would’ve been starting Kindergarten still at age four).
The fact that this school (which, when all is said and done, gets in excess of US$10,000 from me each year) is willing to take the chance of offending me, in order to do what is right by my girl, tells me that I’ve found a program and method worth actually paying that kind of money.
Sadly, not all Montessori programs can live-up to this standard.
Damn. I thought this was gonna be about Italian motorcycles.
No. That would be Moto Guzzi.