I really think it depends on the individual Montessori school and the teachers' ability to adapt to the challenges of a gifted or advanced student. Our son (now 8) was in a private Montessori program on the recomendation of his Psychiatrist for 1st and 2nd grades. It was an absolute disaster. They had an attitude of 100% accuracy and "perfect" penmanship before being able to advance in material. When I showed them that DS had the accuracy and legible penmanship for the first 2 weeks of a concept but it declined after that (often dramatically) the teacher (and head of the school) refused to allow him to advance to new concepts. In fact, they made him repeat the subject matter until he met there standards (2 years doing simple addition up to 20. Our son started at the school with a love of learning and an excitement for Math. It has taken us 6 months of intense counceling an a change to the public schools to begin to reverse DS's neagative attitude toward school. That doesn't even begin to mention the 2 years of lost learning opportunities.
The complaints I heard practically daily the second year were that he required to much supervision to complete his work, was loud, overly active and uncooperative. She even at times told me that he really wasn't gifted since he couldn't/wouldn't follow her rules. Although the public school is not perfect, they are doing the bare minimum on the gifted side. His teacher has been extremely positive experience this year.
I'm sure that our experience with Montessori is on the extreme side. However, I would caution anyone to make sure and monitor the coursework especially as the child gets into the elementary age range. If the teacher and school can work with the gifted I think the individualized education plan is great. However, many schools take the approach that a child has to do all the work before advancing even if the can show mastery of the concept much sooner. The individualized aspect refers to how many pages the child wants to complete each day to get done with the book sooner.
lol
The manipulative drove DS crazy! He could get the answers in his head faster than he could do the manipulatives. He also sees no reason to estimate since it is easier to get the right answer than it is to do more steps to estimate something.
