If you want your child to go to preschool, you should consider signing them up to one of your local Montessori preschool programs. Here are some reasons why.

It will provide them with both practical and academic knowledge

Many preschools focus mainly on teaching children the fundamentals of subjects like math, art, and geography and do not give them much opportunity to acquire practical life skills. In a Montessori preschool, however, your child could not only learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic but could also accumulate a lot of practical knowledge that could be useful in their (and your) daily life. Montessori preschool teachers will, for example, often give the children a chance to learn how to wash their hands, brush their hair, water plants, and use cutlery correctly.

While you may be trying to teach your child these skills when they're at home, you will probably find that it takes them a lot longer to master these activities if the preschool you send them to for most of the day does not give them any opportunities to practise them. Furthermore, if you work full-time, you might not want to spend the brief bouts of the day that you are at home with your child trying to teach them these skills, instead of just relaxing and having fun with them. If you sign them up to this type of educational program, you can spend your time together playing games or taking it easy, without worrying that by doing so, you're cheating them out of the chance to learn life skills.

It will give them the chance to solve problems and acquire knowledge without constant supervision and instruction

In many preschool programs, the children are expected to simply sit down and listen, while the teachers give them quite rigid instructions regarding how to, for example, do their math or science exercises. The teachers also tend to talk at, rather than to, the children. While some children are perfectly happy in this setting, many others have learning styles that clash with this approach and these children's scholastic progress may suffer in this environment.

In a preschool which uses the Montessori teaching philosophy, each individual child has the freedom to explore and experiment with the materials in their classroom and use them to acquire knowledge about one of the subjects included on the preschool's program. They are given the space to figure out, for example, math problems on their own, with the available books and supplies, but can call on their teacher to help them if they need to. Children not only normally enjoy this method of learning a lot but also tend to become much more independent and better able to take the initiative as a result of being encouraged to learn in this manner. The latter can benefit enormously later in life, not only in educational settings but also when they get jobs that require them to solve problems without anyone else's input.