Fisch

Shanny

I didn't want to thread jack so decided to bring this to a new topic, hope you don't mind. Can you elaborate on this statement?

"Her previous daycare/school was a montessori, very structured."

I am always curious to know more when people think that Montessori is a very structured environment because when the philosophy is implemented correctly it should not present in that way.

fisch

Sure. Structured is probably the wrong word choice. On top of that, the "school" she attended is actually a large, in-home daycare which follows Montessori as much as they can with infants-4 year olds. They had very specific times during their day for their "work". Without us realizing it, on her last day we were handed two spiral notebooks filled with letter and number tracing. This is not really what i wanted for emerson. I believe strongly that kids need to play, just play at this age. I dont want academics creeping into my 3 year olds world before shes ready. I doubt it is anywhere near what Kate is learning. We chose it because we wanted to get jack into the public Montessori and thought it would be great if Em got a foundation in Montessori prior. There are no other full day montessori daycare options for littles in our area.
I liked that they had a schedule and great materials, but Emerson started to have behavior issues. There wasn't enough space for the amount of kids they have. I'm not really sure what the problem was...provider was not the best communicator, but it was apparent that it was time to move.
The Montessori schools I toured in the past were more what I thought we were getting into. More free flow, "stations", ability to focus on one thing or experience many, life skills and such. It's a little hard to justify my comment actually because I honestly am not 100% sure whar went on there everyday. Sigh. The pangs of having to choose childcare.