Some years back we went to check out a strict montessori, pretty rigid except for them allowing children 8 weeks and up. Their philosophy, which was taken from Maria Montessori's writings (originally intended to apply to much older ages) included an idea (of which they were quite proud) that children should do only what they could accomplish on their own. To this end they did not prop the babies up or hand them toys but had them lay on the floor for hours (as nature intended?) and just stare up at things dangling above them, or at nothing at all if they were facing the wrong way. When they could roll over and crawl, then they could get to the toys. Some very bored babies in there. Suited best for very mellow babies who just like to stare at adults wandering around. Not a good fit for my kid. We ended up not starting him in any school until 3, as I never found one that seemed like a reasonable fit until then.
My point in the anecdote is that just because Maria Montessori's writings and methods are well respected and just because a school chooses to implement some strategy mentioned by Maria Montessori, that does not mean it must therefore be the right thing to do with your particular child (or with any perhaps).
On the other hand, there are some sorts of things in our daily life that are not much different from some montessori works. If we would teach a 2 year old how to set the table, with a fork and knife and spoon placed just so, and if they enjoy learning that, then many of the montessori works may be enjoyable for them. When one first sees the montessor works many of them seem pretty arbitrary. And in real life some things are arbitrarily off limits, like the Xmas decorations at the doctors office which actually are toys. So just the montessori-ness of these things isn't enough for me to stress out about them. To me the deciding factor is whether my son enjoys learning the works or minds that some are off limits at certain times or used only in certain ways.
For my son at 2 then it is torture to be told to put utensils just so (in mommy's arbitrary pattern) when one instead has a desperate need to make them into a triangle or an A. For my son at 5, he will grudgingly do a work in order to gain access to the set of animals or whatever comprises the work so that he can use them how he would like to. At 5 I'm fine with that, some of the works do actually teach things I'd like him to learn and he's at the age when I'm ready to insist it happen.
One of DS's school's better works (in my opinion) is a cream cheese spreading work. It comes with 2 crackers and a butter knife and a lump of cream cheese. You spread the cheese and then can eat the crackers. Along the same lines there is the cucumber cutting work. These works I understand. I also understand why it would be nice to not use that work for something else, due to the mess it would make for example if you used the cheese as an iceberg. I very much like things that can make immediate sense to a young child based on life experiences they've already had. Those types of works seem appropriate to offer to a 2 year old.
Even having read some of the Montessori literature there are other works that I still don't have a liking for, transferring pebbles with a spoon between two identical containers for example (it would drive me nuts to have to do that). But I see lots of kids at DSs school joyously doing these things, I guess the way lots of kids love the sense of pride of knowing just how to set the table.
With my child, I'm thrilled that he uses a fork at all but even more thrilled to see him today empty the entire utensil drawer without asking for his hungry tribe of imaginary alien metal eating dinosaurs. I feel he's less inhibited with ideas than he would have been had I begun at 2 telling him just exactly how everything had to be done. I think there's a age for it. At 2 our only rules were safety related. But it's going to vary parent to parent.
