Have to add this, since I have been saying how wonderful my experience with Montessori has been.

DD4 now says she doesn't want to go to school. We pushed and it was because she wants new work not old work.

Anyway, we talked to the teacher and she also talked to the teachers and I am hoping it is resolved. The head teacher told me about a month ago she was using a new "work" some bank game and adding, subtracting and multiplying and had to use 1000s. So they are doing stuff that interests her. But DD doesn't like to go back, she wants new stuff all the time.

A while ago, SPG wrote about a first grade class that was "revisiting their friend the letter "I"" and it sounded so simple for a first grade class. And I thought what would I do if that was my only option?

The good news is the teachers are responding but even in a good program you have to always be on top of things.

Ren

Yep. I have to remind one of my boys to ask for presentations on new works - he was afraid for some reason, then says he's bored - but I think he's over that now. He is the one that happens to like the bank game (he's in K), I think because he gets to play it with a friend. I'm just glad he's doing a math work because he has been reluctant to try many of the math works - he had an underachieving streak last year, according to his teacher. His teacher has assured me time and again that if she needs to, she'd be happy to bring in works from the upper grades. I don't think that's happened yet, because the works they have seem to stretch forward quite a bit anyway.

That ds hasn't even done the stamp game yet. But I think his twin brother, math boy, first did the stamp game about this time last year though, when they were 4. If your dd hasn't done that yet, she might like it - I don't even know what it is LOL but the teacher told me it is more complicated in that it involves bringing together various different pieces of math knowledge. This week he brought home four-digit subtraction, but he won't tell me how he did it or what the work was called LOL.

or how about doing multiplication on bead frame - I don't think even my math boy has done bead frame yet (it looks like an abacus but I don't know how they do that either lol), but I know they have one in his pre-3-to-K classroom. DD7 loves bead frame.

Keep on the teacher's case if you can, though that's so tricky (I have no idea how to approach them on these things - I guess I'm usually not confident that I know where my kids stand when it comes to the works in the classroom and what they're capable of). It might be that there are more advanced things to learn even with certain works she's already done, but the teacher needs to show her since she wouldn't know that herself. Hopefully the teacher will keep good track of what she's been doing.

I am concerned that my kids' montessori school will end up falling short in the elementary grades, merely due to the teachers. I'm not thrilled with dd's teacher, who tends to have more of a put-the-book-back thing going on from what dd says, though when I talk to her she doesn't seem that way at all. And I have yet to hear great things about the other teachers in grades 1-3 - I guess we'll be finding out pretty quickly - we need to submit a form about what kind of teachers we'd like the boys to have when they transition to lower elementary next year. We've been so fortunate with the preschool-k teachers they have - they are really gung-ho on a lot of the basic montessori principles that are critical to me. It is a public charter school, and just this week there is news of major budget cuts in the district - the local traditional school is going back to 4-track, they are talking about things like 4 day weeks, etc. (that school only has pull-out anyway) and I have no idea what the fate of the district's full-time gifted program will be, so I anticipate that montessori is where they'll have to stay.