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We're meeting with DS4's Montessori teacher later today. I think we're going to ask for access to some of the Elementary math works (ages 6-9). I've skimmed through many of the advocacy articles on the Davidson database, but I thought someone here might have Montessori specific advice.

Any last minute guidance? Thanks!!

We had some trouble getting acceleration from the Montessori school my DD was in.

First it was a little awkward asking for acceleration, because the school is supposed to follow the student. They should have automatically accelerated her without needing to be asked, but that didn't happen to the degree it should have. The teacher had her working with the kindergarten students when she was 4, but she was ready for more. The teacher was initially dismissive of my requests: "She's already working with the kindergarten students. What more do you want!?" The teacher had a very high opinion of her teaching abilities, and took it personally when I asked her to adjust.

We met additional resistance because they have a certain order to follow when teaching. For instance, they don't teach subtraction (not even single digit subtraction) until the kids are doing addition in the teens, or multiple digits. If you expect reinforcement of a topic you covered "out of order" it will be difficult to find, in my experience. My DDs teacher let me know that she was a certified Montessori teacher, and that she intended to follow the Montessori way. Personally, I appreciate many aspects of the Montessori Method, but it has its problems, too. Some teachers may be fully committed to it, or they might be following school policy that is fully committed to it, which is a shame because there are better ways sometimes.

It was a strange contradiction that they offer a child-led learning environment, but (initially) refused to follow my child's lead even when she advocated for herself. It seems they failed to appreciate that a student can gain the required understanding for a certain task without doing the prerequisite work at school.

Ultimately we worked everything out fairly well, though there were areas where they failed to challenge her despite our advocacy. I am thankful for the accommodations we received, and my daughter benefited greatly from her preschool Montessori experience.

Do you already know where she is at on completing/mastering the primary materials? If she's done with them, then that would help your discussion, I'd think.

DADD22 – Thanks for sharing. It’s good to have an idea about what challenges we might potentially face.

ConnectingDots – Because I don’t know all the works in the Primary classroom, I couldn’t say for sure where he is… but I feel fairly confident he’s outgrown the math works in his classroom. He’s doing addition, multiplication, and subtraction (with negative numbers). In fact, he can do all of these operations with missing variables (e.g., 3x?=21). He can also count money well. I’ve seen him count change over $2.

DS is a good reader (~1st or 2nd grade level?) and a decent speller, but I’m not as concerned about language arts as I am math. Truthfully I wouldn’t be concerned about anything if he weren’t having some behavioral issues. I’d be happy for him to work on geography, sensorial, and practical life works all day… but math is practically all he wants to do. If we’re going to adhere to the “follow the child” principle, then I think we’ve got to find a way to introduce him to some more math works.

I will keep my fingers crossed for your discussion! We had really good luck when DS was in a Montessori program at that age. They did bring in a lot of more advanced materials for him and a few other kids who were interested in more detailed work than the normal materials.