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Keegan has been attending the Montessori school for a couple of months now. It has been a somewhat rough adjustment: many rules, a much stricter routine, lots of work, and trying to catch up to the other kids, beside, obviously, trying to make new friends.

The making new friends part is still an on-going process: he definitely has lots of friends (and once again, he seems popular among the girls), but he also has lots of disagreement and small fights with them. Oh well, boys, right? There are, after all, 24 kids in his class, (don’t ask me to name them all) so I am sure he will make lasting friendships. eventually.

One thing we can say, though, is that despite all the personal dramas, he is pretty happy there. And so are we: the progress he has been making is great. He started at the beginning of September not knowing how to read or write, and refusing to practice. By the end of October, his writing, while still uncertain, is almost at par with all the other kids. He is also much more willing to write, and getting faster and faster at it. This is the comparison between early September and end of October.

He also started reading…granted, simple, 1 syllabus words, but it is still reading. He brings a book home every week, and he seems more motivated at trying to read in general.

It interesting to see their method: they don’t focus on sight words at all. They went straight for reading and phonetic reading. It is “funny” to see Keegan getting frustrated at trying to pronounce words right. It does not seem to be any rules. Why wouldn’t  two OO always sound the same? Why do BLOOD and FOOD don’t rhyme? And I can totally feel his pain! Can anyone explain to me why don’t they??? He is definitely a lot better when he reads Italian, since letters always sound the same.

We also like the fact he gets to do a lot of interesting activities. He is learning computers, music, science. He has guest speakers. He already went to two field trips, to the Pumpkin Patch and the the natural History Museum. I could not be there, but a father posted some images. The kids learned about harvest and hunting and gathering in the old days. They even did some mud painting, using the symbols native American used. It looks like they had a great time.

painting ideograms

grinding acorns to make flour

If we forget the constant monetary request for this or that cause/event, we are really happy with the choice so far. We are still working on behavior, but I am glad that discipline and personal responsibility is also highly enforced at school.