Hellobee Boards

I'm a Montessori mom and was a Montessori student, so take my biased claims with a grain of salt. The Kindergarten year is a summation and consolidation of all the Montessori learning that has gone on. It is really important to get that year to maintain the enormous gains the child has made in the Montessori program. Studies have shown that Montessori kids who go to traditional KG don't maintain their benefits as long as kids that stayed for the KG year.

My experience bore that out. My parents put me in to traditional KG after Montessori preschool and quickly pulled me out and put me back in to Montessori because they realized that I was way ahead of what they are teaching in a traditional KG and I wasn't getting what I needed. For example, I was already reading the Little House on the Prairie books by myself, while the other kids were still doing their letters and trying to learn sight words.

Edited to add: Our Montessori school asks parents to commit to the KG year if they want to be in the language immersion program.

Hope that helps!

@T-Mom: Keep me posted! I'm interested to see what you decide. We were on the fence too, especially since it may impact our daughter's ability to get into the G&T Spanish Immersion public program...

@T-Mom: Yes. The 2 year old program in Montessori is not true immersion, it's more dual language. At 3, they transition to immersion and continue that until completion of KG. At that point, Montessori here becomes English, with some Spanish classes. But 4 of our public schools in the area are Spanish immersion. We would like our daughter to get into the G&T Spanish immersion program for 1st through 5th. I have a feeling that not starting in KG is going to negatively impact her chances to get into that school. After 5th, we'll have to re-evaluate our options because we REALLY don't like the public junior highs here!

@T-Mom: I'm so jealous of Chinese immersion!
Where we live, hardly anyone from the dominant culture goes to private school, so we're competing with a big pool for entrance and those who start in KG are obviously at an advantage because they are already in when we're applying.

@T-Mom: My school had a lower and an upper elementary - 1-3 and 4-6. Each grade usually had about 4-7 kids in it. We had one teacher for the class, and several assistants. This was in the early 90s, though, a long time ago.