Oak Park's Alcuin Montessori School Introduces All-Year Education Program

Alcuin Montessori School, Oak Park’s most established progressive school for children ages zero to 14, serving the western suburbs and Chicago for 56 years, introduces a new all-year Montessori education program for children of ages three to six, joining a rapidly expanding number of 3,700 all-year education programs throughout the U.S., according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“We asked ourselves, our current families and surrounding communities, ‘What would it take for families to provide inspired learning and curiosity in children all year long?’” said Gina Gleason, director of Alcuin Montessori. “What we found was a deep need for all-year Montessori education programs to foster and ignite our children’s development beyond the traditional school year, and our research confirmed it.”

When school is out for the summer, often parents’ work schedules remains unchanged, leaving children to go to camps or seek alternative methods of external childcare. These methods don’t always cultivate development or a child’s inherent curiosity about the world around them. All-year schooling has shown to help children retain their learning, and while the concept has been around since the early 1900s, it is expanding quickly across the country, serving 410 student is 1985, to serving 2.2 million in 2014.

Beginning June 2017, Alcuin will provide its new all-year Montessori option for children of ages three to six years, operating approximately 50 weeks per year, from 7:15 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. The extended hours allow both teachers and children to form closer relationships, while offering more time for children to benefit from challenging academic lessons and engage in meaningful experiences such as cooking, baking, gardening, and community service.

Invitation to the 2017 Open House

To learn more about all-year Montessori schooling, an accredited Montessori program for children of ages zero to 14, the Alcuin experience and to meet the growing community of families engaging in progressive education, the press and public are invited to Alcuin’s Open House:

Date: Sunday, January 20, 2017

Time: 2 to 4 p.m.

Location: 324 North Oak Park Avenue in Oak Park

Content: Participate in guided tours of the school and meet teachers, administrators, and current parents

RSVP: GGleason@alcuin.org or call 708-366-1882

For more information, see also: http://www.alcuin.org/

About Alcuin Montessori

Alcuin Montessori School has been serving Oak Park, the western suburbs and Chicago for 56 years, and remains Oak Park’s most established progressive school for children ages 0-14 as well as one of the country’s oldest Montessori schools. Alcuin’s mission is to empower children’s inherent love of learning, inspiring and challenging each child to engage the world as an independent thinker, creative problem solver, and compassionate citizen. Classrooms operate on the principle of freedom within limits with children, under the guidance of a teacher, working at their own pace with their chosen learning materials. Different levels of ability are expected and welcomed within each classroom and education occurs in multi-aged classrooms, where children of various stages of development learn from and with each other. Alcuin Montessori School is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization.