part-time preschool: Reggio Emilia or Montessori for AL?

[Neige]

Hi Everyone,

You were all so helpful with my earlier thread (here) that I wonder if you might humor me with one other question regarding pre-school and an HG/PG child. 

 

We work through a lot of math, puzzle books, LoE, etc. at home. He has been going to a play-based nursery program two mornings per week, mainly for socialization and to give me a break (plus he gets a chance to get messy and I don't have to clean!). 

 

We are considering options for next year, though. We still want to send him to a morning preschool program a few mornings per week, and then homeschool on his off days / after school in the afternoons. We definitely intend on HS'ing full time once he gets to K age (he is currently 3, so two more years given our state's age cutoff). We are pretty much done with the current nursery school -- they just aren't meeting our needs socially (he is by far the oldest in the class), and certainly not academically, and there are a lot of very active boys in the group that easily overwhelm the teacher, which leads to sensory overload for my little guy.

 

Two options we are considering instead:

 

A) A Reggio-Emilia preschool, with a big focus on hands-on art and sensory activities. No academic subjects per se, but they centre on "project-based learning" where the class decides what they want to do/study/learn and academic subjects get built into the projects. The kids in his class would be clustered closer to his age (his birthday would fall more or less in the middle of the group, and all are within a few months him).

 

B) A Montessori school, which follows the traditions *very* closely. They do teach academics along with "life skills", and with mixed-age classrooms (he would be among the youngest, with 3-6 year olds in the class) they claim to teach individually or in small groups to the level of each child in each subject, without regard to "grade" or age. This appeals to me not only because he's currently doing grade 1-2 math, but also because he tends to favour playing with older children and he does need to work on his fine motor skills.

 

I'm on the fence mainly because I think the academics would be the easier thing for me to do at home, and I could tailor every subject to his level probably better than a teacher who also has 20 other students. I do like the Montessori approach (we use RightStart and have some manipulatives), and it would probably be more challenging for him as a school environment than the Reggio school. Reggio seems harder to implement at home, and I will admit to that partially being because of the mess! But I also know how deeply he can engage with a topic that interests him, so I think Reggio could be a great thing, too.

 

If any of you are familiar with these two schools of pedagogy and/or have first-hand experience in terms of how your AL fared with them, I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or wisdom you could throw my way!

[freesia]

Right before I left teaching I Did some training in Reggio Emilio. I was very impressed and would have loved for my children to have had that experience had the gone to school. I like Montessori but think RE would be awesome.

[Dmmetler]

I taught music at the university lab school, which was a model school for both. For an AL, I would go Reggio Emilia all the way. Montessori can often be very rigid with the "right way" and "right order", and seems to work well for synchronous kids, but less so for asynchronous ones. It was fun when I'd go into both classrooms with the same curriculum, because the RE kids would jump in, explore, and come up with new ways to do things. It took guidance to get them going in the same direction, but oh, the creativity! The Montessori kids, especially once they'd been in the program awhile, would stop and pause, waiting for direction, but usually picked up on the material quickly. Both were amazing classes to visit (of course, realize that both averaged about one adult for every 2 kids between college instructors, graduate students doing research, and undergrads doing observation hours).

 

In both cases, since it was a lab program, we had a lot of kids from double doc families, and a lot who showed signs of being quite gifted.

[Neige]

dmmettler -- that is such a helpful perspective! Thank you so much!

[wapiti]

Regarding the Montessori, it would depend on how the teachers interpret "follow the child."  For example, when my ds was 4, he was able to do a more complicated math work before the simpler prerequisite, i.e., big picture before the details, and somehow his teacher figured that out and offered him the harder work. Not all teachers are as perceptive, though we were fairly lucky at the Primary level.

[Janeway]

My children have been going to a school that sounds just like A. I think different schools would fit different children in some cases. My older was a self learner and advanced so B would be the best. My 2nd child would not do anything unless others were doing it with him, so he needed A. The rest of my children, we have done A. I think A fits most children for the most part. But both can be great.

[SeaConquest]

I went to Montessori, and did a lot of Montessori activities with Sacha at home. But, in hindsight, I would choose RE. I agree that Montessori can be rigid (I am a linear-sequential thinker, so it was great for me), but it is also easier to implement at home. 

[chocolate-chip chooky]

I'm a Montessori-trained teacher and I'm involved in Montessori teacher training ..... and I homeschool my AL.

Montessori was fabulous for my two older girls but just didn't meet the needs of my youngest. This doesn't mean they all couldn't, of course. But ours, at that point in time anyway, just didn't.

 

If you're seriously contemplating the Montessori school, I'd suggest you ask if the teachers are willing to bring materials into the 3-6 room from the 6-9 or even 9-12 room.

Some will, some won't. As others have said, there is a lot of interpretation that goes into 'follow the child'. One thing that can hold teachers back is that they may only be trained in one age group and just don't know the materials for the upper cycles.

 

It may also help to get a feel for how both schools react when you discuss that your child is gifted/accelerated. Sadly, I've known otherwise-wonderful teachers to scoff behind parents' backs. They just hadn't seen enough gifted children or had any training in giftedness to really get it.

 

Good luck with your decision.

Edited February 3, 2016 by chocolate-chip chooky

[tm919]

Regarding the Montessori, it would depend on how the teachers interpret "follow the child."  For example, when my ds was 4, he was able to do a more complicated math work before the simpler prerequisite, i.e., big picture before the details, and somehow his teacher figured that out and offered him the harder work. Not all teachers are as perceptive, though we were fairly lucky at the Primary level.

My daughters go to a Montessori preschool, and I'd agree with this. It depends on the teachers.... at the one they attend they were allowed to skip past a lot of the steps, in others they are very rigid. My kids are not dramatically accelerated... maybe 2-3 years on average, and still -- it worked best for us when they were the youngest in the classroom. Once they started to get into the second and third year, unfortunately I think ALs run the risk of working alone a lot. 

 

We chose Montessori because we were comfortable with the teachers and ok with the school of thought. With the exact same teacher quality, we would have chosen Reggio Emilia I think.

 

I think the project-based homeschooling book by Lori Pikert is based on Reggio Emilia? I know a family that does this at home, skills get done using traditional curricula but their content is mostly project-based, so it might be workable for you to continue at home. They actually came from a Montessori preschool prior to homeschooling and everything went well, so its also possible to make a switch relatively smoothly.

Edited February 3, 2016 by tm919