Hi - haven't been on this site in ages, but DD just finished her first year of Children's House (Monti preschool). We chose this school because at 2 she was outpacing her peers and the structure (and age cutoff for K in MA) wasn't going to be kind to us. So, we thought the mixed age environment would be more beneficial to her. She is actually in a Montessori just across the state line in NH, so we will have an interesting situation when we decide whether to keep her there, enroll in K, or enroll in 1st when she finishes the 3 years. The Montessori goes to grade 9 so she could continue there if thriving.
The school is an AMI style, new Montessori and at first she did not like that she was constrained in her choices of works - but this eased as the year went on and she got many new activities to choose from. A lot of what she resisted at first was that she was nudged to be well rounded and not only do things she preferred.
As far as skills, she has been practicing cursive letters for some time, prints multiple words easily (all of her own interest) and frankly, is what I'd call an emergent reader (just a few days ago she told us something was about Santa which it was, and there was NO picture or holiday imagery to suggest this, just the word Santa). I could digress about other things she is doing, but the point here is this school is working out really well for her and she loved the age range this year. She would have enjoyed some of the regular preschools I toured, but would have been very bored at others... and none of them were bad - just different approaches.
It will be interesting to see how it goes as she moves up to have further responsibility.
I was not raised with Montessori, and when I toured the school I was pretty much blown away with how child directed it was in fact (both CH and lower EL classes). I have learned a lot more this year as an M-parent but I am hardly a super Montessori person (wI freely admit to a fair amount of character TV and iPad'ing, which is not really in line with Montessori living).
I knew she would thrive after she got the "system" rules. That said, it's easy to be at the beginning and only time will tell how it all plays out as she advances.
As others have said, mileage varies greatly by M-school. Find a great one where they really ARE letting the kids move at their own pace once the basics are there.
Over the summer, she is doing a broad set of activities and hopefully the transition back to school in the fall won't be too rough.
I have had countless people from strangers to her teachers mention a specific talent that she has, and it's left me wondering how to nurture that down the road too, but there's a lot of time to figure that out yet...
