Country Garden Montessori Academy Reviews

When Maria Montessori began designing the method that would eventually bear her name, she was charting some very new and controversial territory. In contrast to rote learning, or treating children like miniature adults, she felt that children were people too, with their own lives to live. Today those ideas aren’t at all controversial, and indeed much of the things that Montessori was doing then have found their way into all early childhood learning environments, as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They include the right to play, to follow their curiosity, to grow and develop in a healthy way with kind, caring support. Not all environments deliver those things equally, with some doing it much better than others, and CGMA is certainly one of them. The school site itself is a great strength of the school, with green space offering a buffer from the world around, and allowing for a very clear understanding of place. When children arrive, they find themselves in a familiar, caring, vibrant, and entirely sympathetic environment. That’s important, as Maria Montessori knew, then, and which we know even better today. The programs are progressive, with lots of intergenerational interaction, something furthered by the scope of the school from preschool through Grade 12. There is a great fidelity to the hallmarks of the Montessori method, which is a draw for many families, the most important being a sense of respect, and for accepting children for the people that they are, and allowing them to grow and develop comfortably into a sense of themselves and the place they hold in the world.