With public Montessori schools I would be very careful to do your homework - as the last few posters have put it...the Montessori method ends up getting watered down because they HAVE to meet the requirements set by the state/county education system...so what ends up happening is that the Montessori lessons are kind of an after thought when the "main" public school based lessons are done for the day. Some of the public schools here in Florida in our county are "montessori" and I was really upset to hear that they are calling themselves Montessori but when I went in to tour the room there was the bare bones minimum of Montessori materials on shelves - most didn't have any bead chains/math manipulatives. When I asked how they did the curriculum many stated that they did traditional lessons in the morning and then after lunch the children were allowed to make Montessori lesson choices...one school actually said that they only did Montessori lessons 2 days out of the week while the rest of the week was traditional. Montessori just does NOT fit second with a traditional education...it is completely opposite to what Maria Montessori wanted out of her system. So if you do some research on what a true Montessori program should look like and what you should see in a classic montessori classroom, take your knowledge and then tour the schools to see how they mesh in and then the fun part of also seeing how your gifted child's needs will be met :-)
