I also agree with some of the others comments about the small private school over the Montessori...we wish that we had that option....DS7 was in a Montessori program from age 2-5 and we really, really had hoped that Montessori would be right for him since it just seemed so perfect for him...when he was 2-3 years old he was with the same teacher who was really, really good with him and didn't stick with the "by the books" Montessori approach and it worked out very well..when he moved into the next grouped classroom it went downhill. The teacher was a stickler for the by the books routine and she wouldn't budge one bit. He had to do everything in order - even if he already knew a concept. If he didn't do it exactly the Montessori way she made him keep doing it until he completed the Montessori way. I have heard this several times from other people who have tried Montessori as well. If they are sticklers for their exact routine, I would be a little concerned if you have an out of the box thinker. We ended up pulling our our son because it just turned into a disaster...we now homeschool because we have yet to find that out of the box school...so I would keep an eye out to see how flexible they are because many Montessori based schools are not very flexible when it comes to swaying from exact steps.
