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I am not all that familiar with Montessori but my DS went to Goddard for 3 years and its very much structured. You have set times for activities and the kids don't get to pick and choose like I would imagine Montessori allows.

We loved it but we moved once DD was ready for DCP - we are now at Malvern which is very similar to Goddard.

We just took R out of a Goddard School. We only switched cause we wanted something closer to the house. The Goddard closer to us would harder to get to with traffic and was more money then the place we chose.

I think Goddard is a great school. It is education based. Once R moved into the toddler 1 room (12-18 months) it is structured class. Set times foryoga/movement, outside play, snack, circle time, lunch, naps, etc. But they have open play when they can play with whatever they want in the room.

We have our LO in a Goddard school. Like @Smurfette: posted, it is structured. There are set times for all the activities, but they do let the kids nap as long as they need to.

Each Goddard is individually owned (its a franchise) and for our Goddard, the owner works on-site managing the business and there is a separate educational director. I liked that the owner was a person and not a big corporation like some of the other centers we toured.

While Montessori is an educational philosophy, I think many centers probably interpret/implement it slightly differently. The one I toured basically said that they let the children choose what activity fascinated them and they could play with that item and if they were fixated on 1 thing for days, the teachers would gently nudge them towards other activities as well.