What is Montessori. Part 5.
/Why five year olds thrive at Montessori
As parents and caregivers we all want the very best for our children. We want, and try, to do everything we can to make sure that our children are happy, confident, and successful. With so many choices and opinions it can be a real head swimming mission to know what is “right”. Many parent’s are now choosing to keep their children in a preschool environment until they are six, but how do you decide if this is right for your child?
The advantages of joining the local primary school often seem obvious, especially if you have an older child already attending and doing well. It’s also most likely the choice your family and friends have made, and there is a strong tradition in New Zealand to send children to school as soon as they turn 5. The advantages of staying that extra year from 5-6 at Montessori preschool are numerous, below is a portion of a fantastic article written by Aleksandra Zajac from the Capital Montessori School, who wrote this so eloquently I decided not to reinvent the wheel. Included are some things to think about that might help you make the best decision for your family and your child.
The Montessori 3-6 programme is based on a 3-year cycle.
The Montessori 3-6 programme is based on a 3-year cycle. Your child joins the class as a 2.5 - 3 year old and enjoys the guidance and mentor-ship of his or her older peers - usually the 5 year olds, who know the curriculum, know the class, do all the exciting work with reading slips and bead materials, and show the younger ones just how much there is to look forward to in this environment.
As your child grows, they progress through the Montessori curriculum. They learn to concentrate and make informed choices, and with time, they become that 5-year old leader who can reap the benefits of ‘knowing’ and ‘being there’. From 5-6 they not only develop their academic skills, but they also build and consolidate their sense of self, their self-esteem and resilience, to become self-assured young children ready to enter the second plane of development with confidence - whichever environment you choose for them next!
They will have learnt how to learn and how to find information. Their work with concrete materials to visualise such concepts as ‘thousand’, how many hundreds make a thousand, how to ‘put together’ to do addition, and ‘share equally’ to divide, will gradually allow them to form a mental picture that guides them towards abstract work. By helping the younger children with these kinds of concrete concepts, they consolidate their knowledge and then build on this foundation with our designated five-plus classroom materials such as grammar, the function of the words, analysing sentences in language and all operations in maths.
However, academic progress is not our only our ultimate goal. Our hope is that, by the end of this first cycle, your 6 year old will have an innate enthusiasm for learning and the curiosity to pursue it, and an enormous sense of self-confidence - to feel good about themselves and enjoy their learning journey at whichever school they join.
Montessori children, with all those amazing social benefits, normally easily adapt to all sorts of new situations. At 6, they will be excited and ready to join a new school environment and their mind will be at the stage where imagination, aided by their well-developed confidence and independence, will make them a delight for any future school to have.
It is always such a pleasure to observe the workings of the Bambini classroom and the five year old children we have attending Athenree Montessori. They are caring, respectful, kind, so capable and real leaders. I am consistently blown away by their social competencies, emergent maths and literacy. I believe this is linked directly to the Montessori way of teaching, with the child’s individuality in mind and the smaller adult to child ratios. The Ministry of Education have recognised the benefits of children starting school after five, and fund the 20 hours up to the age of six years old, giving parents a choice about the age for their child to start school to best suit the child. The time-honoured tradition of starting school on your fifth birthday is not always in the best interests of the child, university lecturer and neuro-science / brain development expert Nathan Mikaere-Wallis says.
"Research shows that the majority of children are disadvantaged by starting school at age 5 and the children's brains need them to be physically active as the neuro science shows that movement and learning go together."
