What age should a child start Montessori?
Most children start between two and three, at the beginning of a three-year cycle — but the more useful question is whether you can complete a cycle rather than when you begin.
Montessori classrooms are built around a three-year span, and the benefit compounds: year one is largely absorption, year two consolidation, and year three is when the child leads, teaches and works most abstractly. Starting at two or three lines a child up to finish the first cycle in the kindergarten year.
Starting later is perfectly possible and children do it all the time. A child joining at five or six will spend part of their first term learning how the room works before the academic side takes off, which is normal and worth expecting.
Where to go from here
Other things parents ask
Still deciding?
Call the school office at 650-616-9000, or come and watch a morning.