Elderberry Montessori

Coming September 2020!

Elderberry will be located in Noe Valley, San Francisco, CA.

Stay tuned for our exact location!

Monday – Friday

8:00am – 1:00pm :: $2,150

8:00am – 3:00pm :: $2,500

(Elderberry offers a tuition assistance program.  If interested, please click the box for tuition assistance on your application.)

Monday – Friday

3:00pm – 5:30pm :: $400/month

MaryAlice is a dedicated, life-long educator who hails from South Portland, Maine. She is passionate about the Montessori method being especially designed to focus on the whole child and bring out the most in children, emotionally and academically. MaryAlice has 12 years teaching experience in Montessori, Public and Special Education fields and is well crafted as a Teacher Collaborator, Parent Educator and Curriculum Designer.

She has a dual-BA in Elementary Education and Special Education from Salve Regina University. MaryAlice received her Montessori Early Childhood Certification from the North American Montessori Center and has spent 7 years teaching in a Montessori Primary classroom here in San Francisco.

Q:  What do you love most about the Montessori Method?

Maria Montessori had a deep and resounding respect for children, and this is reflected in the Montessori Method and pedagogy.  I love this idea of celebrating children’s innate curiosity and drive to learn and engage in the world around them. Montessori classroom materials have so much intentionality.  There is little redundancy across the materials and if there is, it’s on purpose. It’s inspiring to see how these interwoven classroom experiences help children make connections.

Q:  What’s your favorite Montessori work? 

As a whole, Math. If I had had Montessori math as a child I know I would be more keen on it.  The bead bar system is both simple and powerful. The materials are concrete and sequential, building on past lessons.  The children can visualize and physically explore numbers. There is also a control of error which makes the works self-correcting to help children stay engaged.  This concrete process of learning numbers and of being introduced to the decimal system makes math not only fun and educational but also more retainable.

Q:  What’s your favorite children’s book?  

My favorite book to read to children is Amos and Boris by William Steig. It tells the tale of an unlikely friendship between a mouse and a whale. The language is vividly rich as the book weaves an incredible journey of how two strangers help each other through kindness and compassion.

Q:  What do you enjoy most about working with preschool age children?

Young children have minds like sponges.  Their synapses are firing all the time, and you can see it in their expressions.  It’s incredible to see that power of discovery. I especially love guiding them through their processing.  When you can give them that tender moment and guiding hand, it feels like a huge honor.   

There’s a harmony and beauty that’s created for a child when they come to school and spend their days with a classroom full of their peers.  Those peer interactions are energizing, as children marvel at their discoveries and go through the spontaneity of their day. Maria Montessori said it well when she said, “The child is endowed with unknown powers, which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.” (The Absorbent Mind)

Rocio is a bilingual Montessori educator who is passionate about bringing a multicultural perspective to her teaching practice.  She grew up in Costa Rica, Mexico and the United States and is fluent in English and Spanish. Rocio went to Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico, earning a degree in Economics and International Business.  After successfully launching and running her own business in Costa Rica, she decided to pursue her life-long passion for Montessori early childhood education.  Rocio received her Montessori certification from the Montessori Institute of San Diego in Costa Rica and has over 10 years of teaching experience. Rocio is an avid Montessorian who believes the Montessori Method helps children develop to their fullest potential.  

Q:  What do you love most about the Montessori Method?

I’m most inspired by how the Montessori Method focuses on building a strong foundation for each child’s character development as well as academic development.  The child’s experience at school is largely self-driven. The classroom is truly the children’s space and everything in it is child-sized. The Montessori works are specially designed to be step-by-step and self-correcting so the child is both challenged and highly motivated.  Children have many opportunities for decision-making throughout their day, helping them develop self-confidence and independence.  

Q:  What’s your favorite Montessori work? 

My favorite work is the Sandpaper Letters, a cornerstone of Montessori’s Language area.  It is so simple and engaging for the children and so powerful in its multi-sensory approach – the child sees the sound, feels the sound and hears the sound.  The child traces each letter which builds a foundation for writing. At the same time, they hear the sound and understand how it’s written which builds a foundation for reading phonetic words.  This is the first work children do in the Language area, and the students are always excited to work with it.

Q:  What’s your favorite children’s book?  

My favorite children’s book is The Everybody Club by Anne O’Brien because it’s such a sweet and powerful example for the children of how to be inclusive.  At times I’ve encountered a student struggling with feelings of exclusion. After reading this book to the entire class during Circle Time and reflecting on the moral of the story with the children, they really become inspired to practice empathy and inclusiveness.   

Q:  What do you enjoy most about working with preschool age children?

Working with young children fills my days with inspiring moments and sweet challenges.  I love how curious and present children are as they engage with the Montessori works. Each child is different so I’m constantly challenged to think creatively about how to best engage each student to help them absorb a lesson.  Those moments where a child makes a powerful connection and shares a new idea that occurred to them is incredibly fulfilling.  

Wildflower is an ecosystem of decentralized Montessori micro-schools that support children, teachers, and parents. Our schools aspire to give all children and families the opportunity to choose high quality, beautiful learning environments as they follow life’s unfolding journey.

Our aim is to be an experiment in a new learning environment, blurring the boundaries between home and school, between scientists and teachers, between schools and the neighborhoods around them.Our schools are small and teacher-led, with deep parent engagement. At the core of Wildflower are 9 principles that define the approach.

Our network is supported by a foundation that works to build capacity, systems, tools and research to grow and strengthen the network.

Learn more about our story.

Blurring the boundaries between home-schooling and institutional schooling, between scientists and teachers, between schools and the neighborhoods around them. At the core of Wildflower are 9 principles that define the approach.

Read about them here.

After the first Wildflower school was created in January of 2014, there was intense interest in the school and the approach. This interest led us to open-source the model and help other family groups and teacher-leaders to create new Wildflower schools. Each teacher-leader at each Wildflower school serves on the board of at least one other Wildflower school, creating a community of schools that are linked by both a shared philosophy and a network of shared relationships.

View our network.