Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school New & Montessori Preschool? Grade skipping early?

Amy,
I wholeheartedly second what GinaW said. She has laid out the strengths--when it works well, Montessori is wonderful in "following the child." Also, incidentally, when well executed, Montessori does not follow the child into "I don't feel like learning to read/write/whatever." But the system is creative about finding ways to interest kids in the less appealing activities. Also, I think the children get a lot out of learning to be responsible for their own learning (I am talking about older ages now, though it starts in preschool). My DS8 makes his own daily schedule and outlines his own goals--all under the guidance of his teachers. This is actually one of his main challenges (as opposed to the academics per se) and I am really glad he is learning how to do it in lower elementary school rather than waiting until college and finding out that he has no idea how to organize his time, set and reach a goal, etc. My niece floated through high school and then didn't do so well in college because "the chemistry professor was boring." I suspect Montessori-educated kids would be better able to find something interesting in a boring class if they had decided that chemistry was something they were interested in.

About execution though--my son was in a Montessori preschool that we really loved for a while. But when he was about to hit kindergarten, we realized that they had no plan for his reluctance to do pencil-related tasks. "He is not yet ready" was the phrase (and it is indeed often a justifiable one in the Montessori system)--but this was not acceptable to us. Here we had this incredibly bright kid who didn't want to write. We thought he might wait forever until he was "ready!"

So we switched him to another (much bigger, much older, much more experienced) Montessori school and within two weeks, he told us that he LOVED cursive. He actually still has difficulties with writing, but the school has continued to be creative about how to help with his issues.

I love that Montessori really does walk the walk of respecting and honoring individual strengths while strengthening weaknesses in a non-punitive way. Also, as Gina says, no one makes a fuss about the off-the-charts strengths. My son just finished 2nd grade and the school had no trouble teaching him 5th/6th grade math in the classroom. Other kids know he is super good at math, but they also know that another kid is an amazing singer, a third kid got her poems published in a national magazine, etc. This was important for us because we didn't want him to get even more kudos about his general intelligence (and math strengths in particular) because we suspect that exactly that kind of feedback from the world makes it harder for him to attack the things that are difficult for him (like writing and organizing himself).

Anyway, that is maybe more about my DS than you wanted to know and I'm not sure how much of it is relevant to your situation--but take it as a Montessori case-study snippet.