The Importance of Montessori for the Kindergarten Year
Kindergarten at SJB is the final year of our Children’s House early childhood program.
20 reasons to keep your child in Montessori for the Kindergarten year:
1. Kindergarten is not the start of schooling. By five, most Montessori children will begin to read, and many will be introduced to multiplication and division.
2. The third (or Kindergarten) year of Children’s House is the time when many of the earlier lessons come together and become a permanent part of the young child’s understanding.
3. As a five-year-old, your child has many opportunities to teach the younger children lessons that he learned when he was their age. Research proves that this experience has powerful benefits for both tutor and tutored.
4. Your child already knows most of her classmates. She has grown up in a safe, supportive classroom setting. Having spent two years together, your child’s teachers know her very, very well.
5. Five-year-olds have a real sense of leading their classroom community.
6. Montessori children cultivate a love of learning!
7. In Montessori, your child can continue to progress at her own pace. In traditional Kindergarten, she will have to wait while the other children begin to catch up.
8. If your child goes on to another school, he will spend the first half of the year just getting used to the new educational approach.
9. Your child has been treated with deep respect as a child of God.
10. Montessori schools are warm and supportive communities of students, teachers, and parents.
11. Montessori teaches children to practice prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude.
12. Montessori is consciously designed to recognize and address different learning styles.
13. Montessori math is based on the European tradition of unified mathematics. Basic geometry is introduced at a young age.
14. Even in Kindergarten, Montessori children are studying cultural geography and beginning to grow into virtuous citizens.
15. Our goal is to develop students who really understand their schoolwork. Learning is not focused on rote drill and memorization. Students learn through hands-on experience, investigation, and research. They become actively engaged in their studies, rather than passively waiting to be spoon-fed.
16. We challenge and set high expectations for all our students. Students develop self-discipline and perseverance.
17. The Montessori curriculum is fully structured and integrated to demonstrate the connections among different subject areas. Every class teaches critical thinking, composition, and research.History lessons link architecture, the arts, and science.
18. Students live out the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
19. Students in Montessori are not afraid of making mistakes because they have learned how to self-correct; they see them as natural steps in the learning process.
20. Students practice collaboration in learning. They strive for their personal best, rather than compete against one another for the highest grade in their class.