what's important - age or learning ?

Montessori Children's House (Pre-school) has children of different ages from 2 1/2 to 6 years, sometimes 7 years old if they decide to repeat 1 year. It is most of the time misunderstood as a playschool or a daycare. Not many people know that this is a Montessori pre-school or as we call it a Children's House is a place where children have challenging activities that are fun to learn. Children work and have fun. The older children help the younger children, and, younger children watch and observe the older children. School is like their fun ground where they learn, experiment, teach and explore activities. Our Montessori classroom is a place where children can learn using their hands on the activities. It's learning using trial and error methods. Each activity has a control of error that lets the child correct any mistake himself. The activities are self explanatory. Although teachers are there to present the activities to the child one on one. Yes, we give lesson to each child one on one. We also have group activities. It is fun.

While I am talking so much about activities why not talk little bit more about children and the areas they love to learn. Before I tell more about the activities, I'd love to mention this to you that once I had a 4 yr old boy in my classroom who would read more than 8 letter words, he was very curious and ambitious. He would amaze some teachers and parents with his learning and grasping capabilities. He would encourage me to introduce him to most challenging activities. Oh ! there had been so many days when he had cried badly just because he was not getting to do a multiplication problem or when I would explain to him that he need to wait for a few days to learn the next challenging activity. Yes, we do have children who either learn too soon or too late. Two opposite ends and this what makes my job more interesting.

My point here is that all the activities despite having the age appropriate norm may vary with each child. You have to observe the child to introduce an activity. You don't want to discourage or encourage a child with something too challenging for him. There is no activity that says a child of 5 years old should know this. I have seen children of 5, who would not know to read but they would have the most beautiful hand writing in the classroom. And that is OK. Those children catch up later. 

The thing we have to worry about is that if the child is able to give a logical reasoning to the objects around him, for example – why we wear warm cloths in winters and not in summer, is able to understand and associate to things around him. Those are the areas we work hard with, the rest the Montessori curriculum is so advanced it gives all that stimulus of learning. Look at  Things to Know for the Montessori curriculum !