School.
Who ever thought sending a kid to school would be so complicated? I mean Public or Private or Montessori or Waldorf or Charter or what? When should he start? The Montessori school I visited last week wants him to start May 1st, of course that school also wants me to pay them $5600 per school year for him to do so.
When I visited the very prestigious Global Montessori Academy on the Plaza last week I thought I would be impressed, but I wasn’t. I thought it was odd at best — I watched a group of toddlers sit around a table, silently eating their lunches and drinking water out of little cups. I got a tour of their four classrooms and an explanation about how they teach, about how each skill must be mastered and demonstrated for the teacher before they are allowed to move on to the next one. Nick and my Mom were both scolded for playing with a toy that was “too advanced” and difficult to put together. It was a cube made of wooden blocks people. It was a TOY. I did not take an immediate liking to their system to say the least.
I have a friend who has taught school for a number of years and when I asked her opinion she said she was not a big fan of Montessori and that she feels they don’t foster creativity and that kids who want to play a lot spend most of their time in trouble. This does NOT seem like the right environment for Nick!
She advised me to check out the theory of Multiple Intelligences. After giving it some thought Mike and I both decided that we think Nick is predominately strongest in Spatial Intelligence and Body/Kinesthetic. We need to do a lot more research but we think that public school will be the best choice for him, possibly with a start in a Waldorf preschool when he’s around three years old. Again the only problem is money! Dang, school is expensive!
I’m going to tour the Westwood View Elementary School soon because it seems to be well rated and is only about a mile from our house (so is the Pembroke Academy where he’ll definitely go if we can just win that stinkin’ lottery already!). The problem is that any school I tour has a lot to live up to because I went to a wonderful school called Leal Elementary in Urbana, Il. I wish I could send him there but that would be a little bit of a commute.
You MUST read this …..
http://deathbykids.blogspot.com/2007/03/full-montessori.html
NOTE — not all Montessori’s are like that one, but I found Montessori to be much too structured for my son when he was preschool age.
A study was taken sometime, somewhere and some Kindergarten teachers were asked the difference between children that attended preschool and children that did *NOT* attend preschool. The consensus was that children that *DID* go to preschool were MUCH better at standing in line when they reached Kindergarten.
Judging from some pictures you’ve posted, I think your son will be able to figure out that people line up pretty much the same way as Thomas trains, and he’ll do just fine.
[note, in some families, families where there are *not* people around to read and interact with children, preschool does serve a great need - but I've a hunch in the scooter/mommy household the kid is getting enough interaction]
Ah, an excellent link, thank you Mary! The comments are almost even better than his post because there are pro and anti-Montessori people throwing in their two cents. Sounds like the school I looked at was among the many “bad” ones but I still think we’ll explore other, less structured options for our little hellion. If his little girl stripped naked and started screaming I can only imagine what Nick would do…