Why we stayed at Montessori@Home for Grade R - Bob and Sarah Roux's Story

I think a lot of parents arrive at the Grade R decision with a strange mixture of instinct and panic.

You know your child. You have a sense of what they need. And then the school system arrives with its own logic. In Paarl, where there are many excellent public schools and many children applying to them, Grade R can start to feel like the year that decides everything else. The message, whether anyone says it directly or not, is that if you do not move your child for Grade R, you may be taking a risk with Grade 1.

That is a real pressure. I do not want to pretend it isn’t.

It also made me angry, and still does, because it felt like the tail wagging the dog. The decision should be about the child in front of you, not about the admissions machinery around the child.

I also need to say this clearly, because I know it matters. Our son is now at a private school, and that school was our first choice. We did not end up there because we missed out elsewhere. We never applied to the other schools, because they were not the right fit for our family. We also have the enormous privilege of being able to choose private schooling, and I know that changes the pressure. It does not remove it completely, because the Grade R question still felt loaded, but it does mean we had more room to make the decision around our child. I am very aware of that.

Our starting point

Before our son moved to Montessori@Home, he had been in lovely schools with kind teachers and beautiful classrooms. This is not a criticism of those schools. They simply were not the right fit for him at that stage.

Before coming to Paarl, we had been living on a pretty remote farm in the Northern Cape. For much of the day, it was just him, his sister and us. Moving to town was a big step for him, and, with two small children at home, I was also very ready to claim back whatever hours I could in the day. So we enrolled him in school as quickly as we could. If you know, you know.

What I had not expected was that school would make parts of him we already knew so visible. He notices things. He compares. He wants to do things well. In a classroom, those lovely traits could suddenly become hard. Even something as simple as colouring inside the lines could carry more weight than it should.

Mornings became hard. There were tears. He would go quiet. He complained about tummy aches. And when we picked him up in the afternoon, he was not a happy boy. My husband and I started saying that he was losing his spark.

So we had to do something. Around that time, we found out there was a Montessori school nearby. We visited Montessori@Home, and after one visit my husband and I both felt it would be a better fit for him. After about six months in mainstream preschool, he moved there.

Our Montessori years

What Montessori@Home gave him was the combined effect of the whole environment.

In the mixed-age classroom, children are not held to one implied measuring stick. A younger child might do something beautifully; an older child might still be working on it.

He could admire someone’s work without feeling he had failed by not being there yet.

Crucially, it gave him time to grow into being one of the older children. For a boy who was physically small for his age, this mattered. Instead of navigating a new classroom and teacher every year, he stayed in a stable environment where he eventually became one of the children who could help, guide and lead. His self confidence went from strength to strength.

The individual pace mattered too. He was not held to the pace of the group in the same way. He could spend more time where he needed more time. He could move faster where he was ready. He could choose work, stay with it, return to it, and experience the satisfaction of doing something properly.

The reinforcement came from the internal feeling of getting something right, or noticing for himself that something needed correcting. This way of doing things produces a very different kind of confidence. The kind that says, “I can try this. I can make a mistake. I can fix it. I can keep going.”

And that was the confidence we wanted him to take into whatever his next schooling step would be.

The Grade R decision

Academically, we felt he was ready to move for Grade R. Emotionally, we did not. Nici, the principal, helped us hold our nerve around that. Keeping him at Montessori@Home for Grade R gave him one more year in a place where he was already known, already settled, and growing in confidence.

By the end of that year, we saw the result in a way I will never forget.

At their little graduation, every child stood on stage, held a microphone, and said what they had enjoyed about Montessori and what they were looking forward to. When that microphone started moving towards him, I thought, here we go. But he stood up, held the microphone, and spoke.

My husband and I looked at each other in total shock. Everyone who knew him had the same expression. He would not have done that a year before.

The transition to Grade 1

When Grade 1 finally came, our worries were not really academic. We worried about the newness, the uniform, shoes every day, a new environment, a different rhythm, a different way of working and learning.

We’re half way through term 2, but he’s taken to it like a duck to water.

He was happy to put on his uniform. He was happy to be left at school and happy when we collected him. And because we had seen what it looked like when he was not happy, we knew the difference. This was a happy child.

His teacher has commented on his academic confidence and curiosity. He arrived with a strong foundation in reading and maths, but more importantly, he arrived with the habit of work time: the ability to sit down, commit to a task, and see it through.

Our view is that Montessori@Home prepared him for Grade 1 in a way that was exactly right for him. It filled his confidence cup, so to speak, and it meant that instead of using all his energy to manage fear, comparison or overwhelm, he could spend that energy on the new environment, new social dynamics, new routines and new expectations.

Our daughter and Grade R

We are now making a similar decision for our daughter, although she is a very different child. For her, the reason is more about academic freedom. She is only due for Grade R next year, but has already been reading and writing for a while because

Montessori@Home saw that she was ready and did not hold her back. She has been encouraged to follow that interest without becoming isolated from her peers, because in a Montessori environment there are always children working at different levels, in different areas, at different times.

That has been valuable for both of our children, in different ways.

A final thought

I cannot speak for every school, and I would not pretend that staying at Montessori@Home for Grade R is the right decision for every child. Some children may need a more fixed routine or a different group structure. Teachers also matter enormously and should never be underestimated.

But for our son, staying at Montessori@Home was absolutely the right decision. We chose to prioritise his confidence over the pressure of the schooling system, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Bob & Sarah Roux

15 May 2026