After our first failed visit to a gifted kindergarten, and evaluating the type of preschool that was suited for a gifted toddler, I found a Montessori behind my parents place that I had intended to visit before lockdown. After lockdown had ended, Baobao has been quite restless and wanting to head out to play and meeting my friend’s children to play often. Even though we were not planning to send her to school so early for academic purposes, we figured it was better to do so for social purposes.
The school is situated in a one storey bungalow in a private estate. On the day of our visit, we were waiting in the garden before we could be admitted in and Baobao spent some time playing in the open area before being attracted to the closed playground and tried to jump over the fence to enter it.
During our discussion with the Principal, we left Baobao to play in the school. While at the gifted kindergarten they left her unsupervised, the Montessori kindergarten said that they would get a teacher to supervise her. We noticed that during her play, she got two different teachers involved to play with her and instructed them on what to do.
Montessori Curriculum
So based on my discussion with the principal, they follow most of the traits of a Montessori school.
- Online reviews from parents who attended previously mentioned that their kids were placed in mixed-age group so not sure if things have changed or it’s a special arrangement. The information shown to me was based on actual age rather than mixed-age.
- 3 hour work time blocks
- Montessori learning materials
- Montessori classroom environment (they get floor space to work on!)
- No homework, no tests – but they do check a child’s progress against expected milestones
- Focus on four key areas: Practical life, Sensorial, Language and Mathematics
Exposure to Mother Tongue/second language/Mandarin
I mentioned to them that the previous school we visited had a reduced focus on Mandarin and the Principal noted that they provide daily 30 minutes of Mandarin in the curriculum. Although there is some expectation on parents to supplement and encourage Mandarin at home to prepare the children for Primary School. Baobao has been making decent progress on Studycat and has recently started asking more about Mandarin so I think they added curriculum from preschool would help with that interest.
Gifted Ability Support
My slight major concern was how they would cope with children of different abilities (they take in special needs children as well). I didn’t use the G-word in my interaction with the Principal as I wasn’t sure how acutely educated/aware she was in the matter. I only slightly explained that she was ahead. I was told that their focus is not on academics but socio behavioural development. They would not stop a child who was ahead but help focus on their strengths as well as improve their weaknesses.
I’m not sure what this sort of arrangement would entail in a gifted child but as parents of gifted children/other gifted people always say – the preschool doesn’t matter. The child eventually learns to cope.
But honestly with the way the education system worked in our time, the coping methods learned were not ideal due to the asynchronous socio behavioural development. I’m hoping that with the preschool’s focus on this element, the gaps between Baobao’s asynchronous traits would be smaller.
Reaction to child
While the teachers were following Baobao around as she explored the Montessori classroom and materials, they also guided her on the material use and tidying up. Considering that we were there for 90 minutes (which is probably very long for a school visit) and held them up, they were pretty patient in interacting with her. As opposed to a regular school, Montessori teachers are supposed to direct rather than instruct so they gave her space to figure out for herself.
The Principal mentioned that for a child her age who has never been to school, she is quite different from other children in that kind of scenario. She also made some observations about her and asked us if it was accurate. We ended up getting into a discussion about observations not being the implied reality along wtih their goals and vision for Baobao and other children.
Conclusion
I’m not entirely familiar with how the Montessori structure works but being that it was designed for special needs children and should be beneficial for children of all types, it is something we have to try out to see. We decided to enroll Baobao next week and the preschool has mentioned that the first two weeks are for them to bond with the child and learn more about the child.
I didn’t go into specific detail in the enrollment forms about her abilities as I did not want them to form a preconceived notion or bias, just that she is a little bit different from most. So we’ll see how that pans out.