My daughter has been to the Montessori Toddler program (Hope Academy in Creve Coeur) for over a year, and I think I am becoming a Montessori dad. This is a bit abstract, but I like to list a few examples about the school and teachers, and show why they are great.
This is the first US pre-school I have first hand experience. I never went to pre-school when I was young, I was raised primarily by my grandmas. There was an old saying “it takes a village to raise a child”. Hope Montessori was pretty much organized this way. We increasingly live in a consumerism society, but that I mean we run around for work and material things, and lose family time and equally important, quite time for reflection and time with friends. Hope has a few interesting activities each semester to bring kids, teachers and parents together. In the fall there is the parent work day. Today is the second parent work day we attended, while I had to admit I didn’t contribute much building the wooden slide. Our daughter did have fun painting the climber. Last year we helped out in the kitchen.
There are 4 fields trips each year: farm field trip in fall, magic house in winter, botanical garden in spring, and a state park trip in summer. Dave (the director) always makes sure the food are good in those field trips. Now when I think about it, the activity fits the season very well 🙂
Now a few words about the teachers. The most important thing is they love/care the kids very much. I am 100% sure my baby is in good hands when I drop her off in the morning. We also learned some parenting lessons from the teachers, tell the truth (be honest) to the kids, encourage her use the words, and recently, how to deal the emotion problem with the kid. One interesting thing is the teacher told my daughter we all have moms and we all miss mom (when my daughter cries for mom during nap time). Kinda cute, isn’t it?