Hi princessbride, im back!
Our DD has been at montessori since she was 2 and a half and has now just left for school in september. I did alot of research into montessori's and the local play schools and decided on the montessori.
I love the way they work, very quietly most of the time. Everything being at child level, she can chose her own activities, chose when she would like her snack, the list goes on....
Some of the activities they do are really fascinating. Most of it is based on practical life skills. A first activity they would start off doing is pouring rice into idential jugs, then they progress onto water, then pouring from a teapot and the final exercise being pouring water with a funnel into a graded bottle. Then there are exercises transferring peas with tweezers, opening and closing shakles, nuts and bolts and locks and keys. Threading small beads and cotton reels and discs. Dressing using buttons, hooks and eyes, zips,bows etc.
One exercise I always remember is cutting. When DD first started they get a thin strip of paper with thick black lines on which they cut up on the lines, when they can do that they progress onto thinner lines, cutting up to a red line and the final exercise is a thin zig zag line. DD cutting is very good. they also do lots of maths work with different coloured rods and making shapes and lots of writing.
As this montessori is 5 miles away from us she didn't have any friends in our area so I also got her into the local preschool last september. She has learnt things from here but for instance some children cant use scissors and definatly don't do the activities she does at montessori.
Montessori is a completely different way of learning and it has definatly worked for our DD and has been worth every penny.
We now have a 10 month old and she wont go there as DD going to an independant school and they want siblings to go to their nursery only so I will be interested to see how she gets on.
Hope this is of some help. If you have any questions let me know!