Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Montessory Schools and the GT

I am curious if anybody had success with a Montessory School and his/her GT kid.

I thought it would be a good match for DD but for the time being it is not as wonderful as I expected. Other schools would even worse, I am certain of that because here they are even less accademic: they do not start teaching the letters and numbers until they are 6 yr old, so DD would even more bored.

I think it could work but the activities have to be modified for DD and I was wondering if someone here had been succesful with a Montessory School and would like to share her/his story.

My son started in a Montessori program in Oct after being in a regular daycare/preschool since he was 6 months old. He turns 5 tomorrow so did not make the K cutoff for this year so he is in the Pre-K program. His school is age 3-6 so right now my son has children older than him in the school. It helps a little. My son is beyond all the children in math and about the same in reading as the oldest child (who turned 6 last month). So far Montessori is better than regular preschool but not perfect. My son is having lots of social issues and he is having a hard time using the manipulative's for math. He can do multiplication in his head up to 6's but the teachers force him to count out every problem. They tell me he needs the "fundamentals". When I went and observed a few weeks ago he was doing some multiplication work. He called out the answer before pulling out the right number of beads and laying them on the board. I thought it was a little funny.

At our school I should be thankful that there is plenty of work available. My son has plenty of opportunity for reading lessons and learning numbers in the thousands. I was assured that they could accommodate curriculum up to at least a 3rd grade level (even though most years this material never makes it out of the closet and I have not personally seen the harder stuff yet).

HA! Yes, I think estimation might be hard on my son as well. He prefers to be exact--right down to the minute and second on the analog clock.

Thanks for the birthday wishes! My son is so happy with his brand new I-Pod Video Nano. According to him, "All my dreams have come true!".

Ah, if only it were always so easy!

My words exactly. How old is your DD? I have two gifted sons in Montessori. My older is K and it's his first year there. He was in play based preschool before and it was great. No academics is sometimes better than too easy academics.

Montessori for sure works better than public school, I saw what they do in the 1st grade in PS and it's so easy. I couldn't imagine my son sitting through that and he is only in K. In the Montessori he does what I think is 2nd-4th grade math, depending on the type of the lecture he gets. The math is pretty ok even though I could count things he learned there on fingers of one hand. If you asked them they would probably think that they taught him most of it though. That said it's a good practice for him. As much as he is fast to understand new concepts he does need to practice them and school works great. They ask him to use manipulatives little too often though, he is quite capable of mental/on the paper calculations but I don't think they are aware of that.

His English was more about "he needs to improve his handwriting". It took me a while to get the asynchrony message across. They gave him 2nd grade workbooks but I don't think they are a good match.

I admit that I've become a pushy parent to get them where they are right now and it's pretty good even though it's still not enough. I need to give them lots of credit though they are trying, they just like pretty much like anybody else don't get gifted kids.

I already gave up on the idea of putting my kid to school and not having to advocate for him.

My 3 year old can read and such but they pay too much attention to handwriting. If it was up to me he wouldn't even be asked to do any at this age. They give him extremely simple math. I am not sure how far his reading goes, he does have a workbook there though. To be honest play based preschool might have been better choice for him.

Bingo!

Lmom,

I see what you are saying about handwriting for a three year old. At that age it wouldn't be surprising that the fine motor/dexterity wouldn't be where it needs to be for proper handwriting.
Some kids would be extremely frustrated by this, but some might respond positively.
Are they teaching him how to write, or is he already writing and they just don't like the way it looks?
Is he enjoying handwriting or are these torture sessions to him?
I've been advocating for my kids too. There have been an occasion or two where I just didn't see where the school was coming from, but I gave them half a chance anyway and was surprised how well it worked out for my child.
Unfortunately, though, I feel I always have to be paying attention to ward of disasterous situations when their ideas aren't working out so well.

They didn't like the handwriting of my 5 year old but he got much better and even the teacher mentioned that his writing is getting good. That said it's hard for him to put everything he wants to on the paper. It just takes too long. At home he used to type on the computer and it was much easier and faster for him.

My 3 year old is taught how to write. I don't think it bothers him too much but he cannot really do it. He can write some of the easy letters and numbers but some are really hard for him like 5 or 8. If you ask me if they waited till he is 4 the result would be the same. They mentioned that they don't want to move him in math till he learns to write the numbers but that none of the 3 year olds can write. Doh. Give him wooden numbers or let him circle the correct answer but let him do the more interesting math or let him play instead. He must be sick and tired of the counting.

I must admit that I mostly advocate for my older one and my younger one is getting a short stick on this. It's kind of one thing at a time, you know.

LMom,

DD is 4 yr old.

She will start learning to write (I mean with pen/cil) when she is 6. They say in the school that before children do not have the neccessary fine motor skill to properly write.

She likes to try it anyway and we kind of practice at home though.

The academics are not too deep here. There are numbers up to 100 but it is enough that she learns to count until 10. She still gets stuck between 6 and 9 but I do not think to will need two years to learn this...

And for reading, she should be able to know the letters/phonemas and maybe read words, but the real reading is done when she will be 6 at the next group (6 to 9 yr old).

Right now, she says she is bored, she only likes to cut with the scissors and to color, the gym class and the music lesson. She says she does not like the actual Montessori activities.

Appartenly she tried to get 5 of them at the same time and was told no way, first do one, finish it, then do the next and so on.

When she comes out she looks like the 'brightness' that used to show in her eyes is switch off.

The teacher says that she looks happy and well adapted and does not seem to find any problem. Only that she does not like to work alone, so 'please I should get her used to play a little on her own at home'.

I heard plenty of that kind of comment! Ugh! Could someone explain how one is supposed to do that? I though leaving him 'alone' at daycare 25 hours a week from 7 weeks of age is plenty of 'alone' time.

I also always heard:
You son is immature. We have "4 or 10" children in this room, and I'm supposed to divide my time equally amoung each child, but your son doesn't let me do this. What's wrong with him?

I had no idea that the teacher was the only person in the room he could have a reasonable conversation with! Or it could have been that he did read the teacher traing books, and that if he had, he wouldn't have agreed. In retrospect, I certianly would have suggested he be placed with older kids to see if that did help. Now we will never know.

((shrug))
Grinity