Submitted by 2forthepriceof2 on October 10, 2008 - 1:39pm.
My wife is a seasoned preschool teacher and we are both long-time advocates of the Reggio Amelia philosophy of early childhood education. Recently my wife had the opportunity to take a position at a new Montessouri school opening in our neighborhood, so we looked into it.
What we found was that Montessori is probably a great program for many, but it just wasn't for us. From what I could gather personally, there was an emphasis on "everything in it's right place." While my wife and I agree that it's good and healthy to teach young children what is designed to be used for what, where certain things are designed to fit and most importantly, the safest way to go about routines and the use of tools, toys and other objects, we did find the fundamentals of Montessori to be too restrictive. I should note though, this is coming from parents who let there kids wear two different shoes when they choose to, wear colanders as hats and have play conversations that include mooing cats and meowing ducks (in reality they understand perfectly which animals make what sounds).
Again, we as parents and my wife as a teacher feel that the understanding of order and proper function is important, but we personally value exploration, experimentation and the flexibility associated with these more that we felt would be acceptible in the Montessori environment.
Re: Montessori Schools
My wife is a seasoned preschool teacher and we are both long-time advocates of the Reggio Amelia philosophy of early childhood education. Recently my wife had the opportunity to take a position at a new Montessouri school opening in our neighborhood, so we looked into it.
What we found was that Montessori is probably a great program for many, but it just wasn't for us. From what I could gather personally, there was an emphasis on "everything in it's right place." While my wife and I agree that it's good and healthy to teach young children what is designed to be used for what, where certain things are designed to fit and most importantly, the safest way to go about routines and the use of tools, toys and other objects, we did find the fundamentals of Montessori to be too restrictive. I should note though, this is coming from parents who let there kids wear two different shoes when they choose to, wear colanders as hats and have play conversations that include mooing cats and meowing ducks (in reality they understand perfectly which animals make what sounds).
Again, we as parents and my wife as a teacher feel that the understanding of order and proper function is important, but we personally value exploration, experimentation and the flexibility associated with these more that we felt would be acceptible in the Montessori environment.