Scroll down to the section that says “What can you do if your child starts Montessori and seems to be struggling?” There is a lot of great advice there.

Children almost always do better in Montessori than other educational settings, so it’s worth trying to work it out rather than moving her to a traditional program.

Is it the changes, or a phase where she is influenced by other children. I am worried. My guess is she wants to do what older children are doing but those activities have not been introduced to her, so turns around to do what younger children are doing but bored as she has done these activities a lot number of times. Will her progress be hindered? Her not being independent but influential – is it a phase or should I move her to traditional school, were all children would be doing the same thing?

This article and the forum has been very helpful. My 2.2 year old is joining a montessori with mixed age group classes in a week and you have shed so much light on this.

THanks & Cheers
Anu

My first year with my own elementary classroom, I had only first and second grade. That’s all we had. It did work out and the next year, everyone moved up and we added some first graders so it balanced out.

The multi-age classroom is a great feature of Montessori, but just one feature out of many – and your daughter can still have a wonderful Montessori experience without it. In your daughter’s class, in spite of the similar age, there will definitely be some children who know more or who are move advanced than others.

Since cooperation and working together is emphasized in Montessori, regardless of age, they will be able to teach each other even without the differing ages.

The most I had in any elementary classroom at any school I taught at was 18. More may be ideal but enrollment numbers often don’t support that. But there are benefits to a smaller class as well – more attention from the teacher (if needed) and a more customized learning experience.

At this point, you can’t know how it will turn out until you see it. I would give it 3 months, staying in close communication with the teacher and school director, and you might find that your daughter will thrive.

In my experience, Montessori schools are always adding children throughout the year (people move, switch schools, etc). So my guess is that they will be able to add more children, quite possibly of different ages, to your daughter’s class.

I’m not sure there is an “ideal” Montessori classroom anywhere – there will always be something that can be improved upon. If your daughter’s teacher is well qualified and the room has lovely materials, you’re already ahead of the game in many ways.

They cited the need for socializing as the reason to move her but did not tell us it was not going to be a mixed age classroom. I only discovered that at the orientation. I am extremely upset but not sure how to tackle the problem with the school, in my brief chat with them yesterday they asked me to give it time and that since there are only 12 kids in the class rather than the 25 I should be happy but that is not what we want for our daughter, we want the Montessori experience. They also said they would be adding more kids in January but I don’t see how they can magically add the older kids to the class if they are not moving the classes around now.

Any opinion or advice on how to tackle this problem is so greatly appreciated.

Some great sources for Montessori info are back issues of Montessori Life magazine, and the book “Montessori Madness” by Trevor Eisler. And you can forward her a link to this post, too.

It sounds like she needs more info into the “why” of the mixed age group, so that she understands it better. Also, does she know that no work is truly off-limits to any age in 3-6, it’s just “how” they do it that differs?