Yes! We currently have multiple spaces open to welcome new children for the 2022-2023 school year. You can apply here for enrollment.

Tuition rates vary based on the number of days per week your child will be attending school as well as the amount of time your child will attend each day. For current tuition rates, visit our tuition page.

Yes. Our regular school year consists of 11 months of classes. September - May is our regular academic year. Summer I and Summer II sessions are during the months of June and July, respectively. The month of August is our vacation month where there are no classes. For more information, view our calendar.

We are conveniently located between Bozeman and Belgrade. Our address is 31 Border Lane in Bozeman.

Our school is located in a quiet, semi-rural subdivision on a two-acre lot.

We enjoy plenty of outdoor space to do gardening in the spring, water activities in the summer, and outdoor snow activities in the winter.

We have chickens that former students have helped to incubate and hatch, and soon the children will be able to collect eggs.

Yes! You are welcome to tour the school with advance notice. Should you enjoy the tour, we welcome each child for a “trial day” before committing to enrollment. To schedule a tour, please send a message through the “contact us” page.

Mi Escuelita Montessori means “My Little Montessori School” in English.

All activities are conducted in both English and Spanish. Most children who spend three years at Mi Escuelita Montessori are bilingual when they graduate.

Yes! The younger the child, the better. Ideally, we should start teaching second languages at birth -- or perhaps even before! Recent research has shown that newborns react differently to the vowel sounds that they have heard while they were still in the womb, compared to sounds from other languages that they have not heard before they were born.

Scientific studies have shown that the child absorbs a language naturally. Dr. Montessori reminds us that there are stages where the child experiences and develops the language to its perfection. The first stage is when the child can only pronounce syllables (six months), the next stage is when the child pronounces whole words (1 year) and the last stage is when the child uses the words to perfection with all the rules of syntax and grammar of the mother language (2 years old). A child can gain the language without needing to be taught it; he is capable of just picking it up. This is because children, at certain ages, have a special sensibility and predisposition to acquire certain skills effortlessly. But, once this sensitive time has passed, intellectual advancement can only be achieved through reasoning and hard work. This is one of the main differences between children and adults.

Only a child can learn several different languages perfectly at the same time, and this learning is an unconscious process rather than a conscious effort. Therefore, it is a myth that children get confused hearing two languages at once.

There is firm scientific evidence that early exposure to a second language actually causes physical changes in the child's brain -- increased density of gray matter and increased neural connections -- that carry over to all fields of learning, even seemingly unrelated areas like music and mathematics.

We should say 'writing and reading.' One of Dr. Montessori's observations, which is very counter-intuitive, is that most children are ready to learn to write before they are ready to learn to read.

The absorbent mind of the children learns the language as a whole and their ability to speak and understand their native language or another language comes naturally. However, the children need help and instruction to learn how to read and write, since these are acquired skills rather than natural processes. Montessori children can write and read at early ages (three or four years old) because the prepared environment the children have been actively in contact with has materials and lessons that have been designed for indirect preparation for writing and reading. Personally, I help the children to write and read in English and Spanish by constantly practicing "phonemic awareness" (that is the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words, this is concrete and auditory in nature, and does not involve words in print.) Phonemic awareness helps children to recognize individual sounds. The term "phonics" refers to the sound and abstract symbols that are related to reading and spelling. The bilingual materials we have in the classroom such as: classified by subject vocabulary, games, rhyming songs, and sandpaper letters aid the children to associate the symbols with the sounds and are useful tools to help the children write and read.

Montessori's method is based on three important principles: the prepared environment, the teacher, and the child.

These three important factors work in conjunction.

The environment of the Montessori classroom literally fits the child. The working materials and tools used in the classroom are all child-sized, which provides better physical and cognitive development for the child.

The prepared environment contains sensorial materials for learning in a variety of areas. These materials help the child to go at his own pace to discover the various prepared paths. The materials are designed to assist the child's physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual development.

The teacher is also part of the environment. The teacher’s job is to assist the child to do things all by himself. She is a guide who helps the child perform his own activities by himself and intervenes only when necessary. This allows him to reach his potential through his own efforts, leading to self-realization.

The child enters into communication with the environment and comes to love it. He directs himself and chooses his own work. The teacher maintains respect for the child’s personality and choices. The child becomes conscious of his own powers.

The child has the freedom to live in the environment and to absorb knowledge through his senses. Montessori said, “The impressions the child gets from the environment not only penetrate into his mind, but they form it: they become incarnate."

The foundation of Dr. Montessori's method is based on the work of three men, Pereira (a famous educator of deaf-mutes) and two French doctors, Itard and Seguin (educators of mentally handicapped persons). Montessori worked as an assistant instructor in the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome where visited the insane asylum to choose subjects for clinical instruction. This was the reason why Montessori got interested in mentally handicapped children, who were housed in the same institution. Dr. Montessori's interest in these children made her familiar with Seguin's teaching method for these unfortunate children and with Itard's experiments. She applied the lessons she had learned from these early experiences along with additional materials she developed herself to the education of her disadvantaged children in Rome. These children took the state exams in Rome, and they passed the exams and outperformed many normal children.

Montessori's experiences and studies led her to the conclusion that mental deficiency was more often an educational failure than a genuine medical problem.

The first opportunity Montessori had to apply her method to normal children was in Rome, in the first institution known as "The Children's Home” in 1907. This institution had about fifty children between the ages of three and six. The results amazed her. The children not only learned but they became self-disciplined and organized and their movements were more coordinated. The children showed interest and joy when they worked. Montessori allowed the children to choose their own work.

Montessori's observations, revealed to her and to the world, characteristics of the children's personalities never seen before. This is how the Montessori method was born.

In the Montessori classroom, six important points of learning are included in the prepared environment.

1. Motor Development. This supports the child in his physical development, refining the child’s coordination and control of movements.

Children learn self-care skills such as washing hands, eating correctly, or putting on a jacket. They also learn how to take care of their environment and their work materials. Skills such as learning how to carry a chair without making noise, cleaning, or dusting a table.

Exercises in food preparation and social behavior like grace and courtesy are also essential to social development.

2. Sensorial Experiences. This avenue contains sensorial materials that have a physical quality, such as dimension, color, form, texture, weight, temperature, and sound. Each object is grouped according to its quality and each group represents a common quality but with different gradation. "Montessori materials for the five senses (visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, auditory) assist in the development of the intellect through the work of hand". The sensorial experiences not only help the child in his intellectual development, but also in his physical, social, and emotional development.

3. Language Development: Starting with the sensorial avenue, the child explores the language area that later will lead to other paths to culture like reading, grammar, and literature. Language in the sensorial avenue is introduced in a "three-period lesson." In the first period, the child observes the material shown by the teacher and the teacher gives the new language to the child. In the second period, the teacher asks the child to demonstrate the vocabulary non-verbally, and in the third period, the child verbalizes the language.

 4. Early Preparation of the Mathematical Mind: The exercises of the sensorial avenue are also the bases for the mathematical sciences. The geometric shapes of this avenue lead to the paths of geometry and algebra; the cylinders, the pink tower, the broad stair, and long roads lead to the path to arithmetic.

 5. Cultural Activities: Art, Music, Science, Geography, and History. Exercises with the sound boxes in the sensorial avenue or the bells in the music area help the child discover paths that lead to writing, music, and dancing. Charts of the weather, maps of countries, continents, oceans, and other ordinary pictures lead the child to Geography and Science.

 6. Spiritual Evolution: In addition to the necessity of a prepared environment to bring out his abilities and to satisfy his intellectual, moral, and social needs, the child also should have spiritual enrichment to satisfy his religious instincts and his "immortal longings". Dr. Montessori said, "Let us not be guilty of that most disastrous of all errors; of supposing that because the young child has not yet attained the age of reason he is therefore not susceptible to religious influences, nor capable of a deep, though intuitive, spiritual development."