Our One Room School House

Today was Nora’s 1st day of Preschool.

I love Nora’s school for so many reasons.

It is a true Montessori environment with 3 grade “levels” in one room.  It is an old barn, set on beautiful grounds, so it really does give the old time feel of the one room school house.  I love how peaceful it is there.  It is really a great learning environment, free from a lot of distractions.

They encourage the child to explore their interests and to use those interests to learn and challenge themselves.  They also have a huge emphasis on independence, grace and patience.  Their expectations about behavior is a large part of why we chose this school.

There are no electronics.  And as they said in our parent orientation “There are specific developmental reasons behind this.”  They also make a point of asking parents not to have their child actively using electronics when they pull into the school parking lot so that they don’t have to start the school day being disconnected from these gadgets.  I love this.

The teachers come to the car to get the kids and bring them to the car at the end of the day.  This Momma LOVES this part most of all.  I will admit, it was a little weird to not walk Nora into school on her first day, but as someone who works second shift, I love the fact that I won’t have to be 100% presentable when I take her to school in the morning.

They do encourage parents to come utilize their observation room, so it’s not like parents can’t ever see their kids in their school environment.  But, I do appreciate the efficiency of the drop off process.

They also utilize their parents a lot as volunteers, so I plan to try to become active in the community as well.  They do nature walks on the grounds and since I have several days off each week, hopefully I can help out with these as well as other things that may pop up.

Nora is very excited about all the things she is going to learn this year, especially reading.  When Miss Molly brought her to the car today the first thing she said to me was “She didn’t teach me to read today though.”  Miss Molly laughed, but I hope she knows that once Nora gets it into her head that she wants to learn something, she does not stop until she does.  It’s going to be a fun year.