Mataupu
The specificities of Montessori pedagogy in kindergarten
Instead of putting their children in the classic school system, some parents opt for Montessori schools. What appeals to them: welcoming children from 2 years old, small numbers, 20 to 30 students maximum, with two educators per class. Children are also mixed in age groups, from 3 to 6 years old.
The emphasis is on the personalized and individualized follow-up of the child. We let him do it at his own pace. Parents can educate their child part-time if they wish. The atmosphere in the classroom is calm. The material is stored in a well-defined place. This climate allows children to be concentrated and, in the end, it promotes their learning.
It is possible in Montessori kindergarten classes to learn to read, write, count and speak English from 4 years old. Indeed, specific material is used to break down the learning. The child manipulates and touches everything that is at his disposal to carry out an activity, he memorizes and learns the concepts by gesture. He is encouraged to act independently and can correct himself. Particular importance is given to free activities for at least two hours. And a plastic arts workshop takes place once a week. The walls of a Montessori classroom are most often covered with small low shelves on which are arranged small trays containing specific material, easy to access for children.
The cost of schooling in Montessori kindergarten
It takes around 300 euros per month to educate your child in these private schools outside the contract in the provinces and 600 euros in Paris.
Marie-Laure Viaud explains that “it is more often well-off parents who turn to this kind of alternative schools. And therefore, these learning methods escape the rather disadvantaged neighborhoods due to lack of means of the families ”.
However, Marie-Laure Viaud remembers a kindergarten teacher classified as ZEP in Hauts-de-Seine, who had undertaken, in 2011, to use the Montessori method with her students. This project was unprecedented at the time, in particular because it had been carried out in a school placed in a priority education zone (ZEP) and not in the upscale districts of the capital where the Montessori schools, all private, are full of water. ‘students. And yet, in this multi-level class (small medium and large sections), the results were spectacular. The children could read at the age of 5 (sometimes before), mastered the meaning of the four operations, numbered up to 1 or more. In the survey of the daily Le Monde, carried out in April 000 and published in September 2014, the journalist was above all admiring the mutual aid, the empathy, the joy and the curiosity shown by the toddlers of this pilot class. Unfortunately, failing to see her project supported by National Education, the teacher resigned at the start of the 2014 school year.