Adjustments to Montessori

[CT Mommy]

Hi all-

After 3 long years of being on the waitlist, my dd (and now ds) are going to a wonderful AMI Montessori school !!

My dd will be entering e1 (for 1st grade). She is very bright and usually catches onto concepts fairly easily. She is a hardworker too. But, she has spent the last 2 years outside of a Montessori environment and this will be an adjustment for her. I have spoken w/her teacher and she gave us a set of the math beads to work with over the summer. And, she also told us that she will need to know/use cursive, exclusively at school. The teacher (there are 2 guides and 2 student teachers to 24 students) indicated that they will be helping her every step of the way and work with her until she is used to cursive, but I cannot help to feel that my lo is going to feel behind (she's very sensitive). To my knowledge, my dd has never even SEEN cursive writing. And, has spent the last 2 years learning how to print in catholic school and now we change the expectations.

Anyway, the teacher told us to work with her on her cursive for the rest of the summer and I was wondering if anyone had any tips or materials that might help us with that.

I'm sure that there are a million other little things that she hasn't been exposed to or used to, so if you can think of any other little things we can be doing the next month or so, please let me know!!

THANKS!

[RiverTam]

Don't worry, mama. She'll be fine.

All of the kids work at their own level, so she probably won't even notice that she's "behind." Montessori doesn't really lend itself to that kind of competitive comparison between kids. They don't notice nearly as much. Plus there will be stuff that she does know that the other kids don't.

The one area that I think Montessori kids are very ahead on is geography. Our schools starts world maps in primary. If you want to work on something over the summer, working on geography would be helpful.

They start them on labeling the continents and then labeling the countries on the continents. I have a beautiful map of the Middle East and Asia on the wall of my office that my son made and labeled when he was in primary.

[Lillianna]

I would do a lot of working with a chalkboard where you write the letter and then she writes directly on top of your letter until she is ready to write it herself.
Also, something that the children in our class love to do around your daughter's age is to make little books that have one picture on each page, and one word. They are called classification books. You can pick any category: animals, fruits, numbers, etc...

[sapphire_chan]

If cursive is going to be the sticking point, I'm surprised they lent you math beads instead of sandpaper letters or another tactile writing work.

[CT Mommy]

She is TOTALLY into the math beads. In fact, they go almost everywhere with us. She is NOT, however, into the cursive. I have tried the chalkboard (my 4 yo was interested) and gotten some great paper and new pencils and tried to encourage her, but she is just not interested in learning this right now. She is great at printing, but it took her the Kindy year to learn it well and I think she just wants a break.

I'm hoping that the Montessori philosophy will work out in our favor here--and that she'll be able to pick it up quickly when the timing is right for her...

[sapphire_chan]

But Montessori writing doesn't start with pencil and paper, it starts with feeling the shapes.* It's ridiculously difficult for most children to look at a shape being drawn and to imitate that with pencil and paper.

Maybe the teacher wants to be sure that your dd gets a proper introduction to the sandpaper letters and moveable alphabet and isn't horribly worried about how long it'll take her to pick it up.

*Okay, it really starts with seemingly unrelated activities that develop the child's ability to use a pencil, but your dd is older and already can use a pencil.

[KimberlyinFL]

I transferred ALL my boys out of Public School to a Montessori school a few years ago. I have a son who is terribly Dyslexic and I was panicing over the transition. Well to my surprise, it was perfect. They helped him the whole way and he never on came home upset like he had in PS. The other boys had no problems either. They had to work a bit harder but always felt welcome and that they could do it.

Good Luck...it will be fine.