We had a brief experience with a Montessori daycare/stage 1 when DD1 was 3.5yrs. It went VERY badly, in two weeks (part time) there damage was done that took 6 months to recover from. I always love the idea of Montessori, and love to think that we just encountered a bad example of Montessori in action, but so far every other Monty school or day care I have visited has set off the alarm bells. I am looking at another one next month, because the idea just seems so right, but am not hopeful.
The rigidity and prescriptiveness, and apparent assumption that the child has no skills or knowledge until it's taught and can only progress in a very linear step by step manner is just not my kids.
I look back at DDs orientation day and realise that I should have known then not to go ahead. Most of the tools that were out were too easy for DD and she wasn't interested. She wanted to look at a tray that had the numbers 0-5 on it but the teacher wouldn't let her because she wasn't ready for that yet (and didn't listen when I said she was definitely ready for that). Half an hour later, while doing another activity, the teacher did realise her mistake and let DD go back to the math activity. She demonstrated once (with very little verbalising) to pick up the correct number of sticks, put a red band around them and put them in the tray. DD then proceeded to try to pick up the correct number of sticks in one go with one hand, put the band around them and put them in the tray. Teacher then made a big fuss about her doing it wrong, grabbed DDs hands and physically directed her to put them back and then made this big dramatic play (still holding DDs hands like a puppet) of picking one stick up in the right hand and saying "ONE", passing it to the left hand and then picking up the next stick with the right hand and saying "TWO", passing it to the left hand and so on until she had 4, then the band then putting them down.
I pointed out to her that if she had wanted it done so precisely and prescriptively and that efficiently picking 4 sticks up to put in the 4 slot was unacceptable then she need to provide more instruction. To which she responded with a lecture than monty children learned to pay attention properly and do as they were taught. Uh. Yeah.
I have been told that Montessori schools should not be so rigid and it was a bad sample, which may well be the case (which is why I keep looking) but on the other hand it was a system developed for teaching delayed children self sufficiency, so being very spoon-fed, process orientated make sense - and is really not suitable for my kids.
But as Geomamma says I can't imagine any one material being used for long if we bought them for home. I wish I could homeschool in a monty preschool, or even my DDs preschool with their materials :-).
