Montessori Programs

[Circa89]

Today is school registration day. My Son will be entering Kidergarten next year and I am shopping for a school for him. I live in the outer rim of the urban sprawl that is Calgary. As such, we have no community school yet and the designated school for our community is 24Kms away. I don't feel overly enthusiastic about loading him on a bus and sending him that far away when he is 4&5 years old attending Kindergarten next fall. I stumbled across 2 closer schools that offer unique programs.
French Immersion or Montessori.
I registered him for both this morning, But I don't know a thing about Montessori schools other than what I read on the website 5 minutes ago.

Does anyone have experience with Montessori or any information for me that might make my decision a little more knowledgeable?

Thanks

[Circa89]

The cool thing is its all covered by regular Alberta school taxes. It's a CBE school, not a private school.

[RougeUnderoos]

I don't have any sage advice for you, but I do know Anne Frank went to a Montessori school so it's been around for a long time.

One peek at the CBE thing and I see they teach ecological studies, global studies and peace studies and student choice of activities. Damn lefties. Sounds a lot better than the kindergarten I went to. Old bat made us sit in the corner if we didn't raise our hand to answer the question, even if we had the correct answer. Soured my entire educational career in year 1.

[arsenal]

This might help
http://montessori.org/?defaultarticle=&defaultnode=162&layout=29&pagefun ction=Load%20Layout&formfields[newnode]=162&PHPSESSID=c87324d0f1ed72835968cb7b6649adcc

[looooob]

can't tell you much about montessori

our guy (age 4) will be going the immersion route in the fall. he's attending preschool there right now

we seem to be in a similar situation to you re: local schools. ie zero

[Antithesis]

Montessori in a nutshell is a program where they teach students a subject until they can master it. Generally don't push kids to a certain grade level based on their age rather than whether they have mastered concepts or not.

IE, a mathematically brilliant eight year old student with problems grasping language could study "sixth grade" math and "first grade" language arts rather than generically being dumped into third grade.

If you have any questions about different programs, feel free to PM me as I teach for CBE.