Cedar & Sprout Montessori · Asheville, NC Book a visit
Overhead view of a long pale wood table set for a parent workshop, with cobalt notebooks, pencils and Montessori trays

Asheville, North Carolina · Montessori preschool

A Montessori preschool where parents get a seat at the table.

Cedar & Sprout is a preschool in Asheville where parent education is part of the day, not an afterthought. The classrooms, the workshops and the long conversations about your child all happen around the same table.

Start an enrollment inquiry See the programs

Infant care  ·  Toddler  ·  Primary 3–6  ·  Summer camp  ·  Parent workshops

Programs

Four seats along one long table.

Every program here is a place setting: different tools, different ages, the same table — and the same idea. The child sets the pace, and we set the table so the work can happen.

Seat 01

Infant care

The youngest at the table

Slow, responsive care for babies. We follow each child’s own rhythm for feeding, sleeping and moving, and keep the room calm enough that they can hear themselves think.

Ask about infant care →

Seat 02

Toddler program

A room built at their height

For the years when “I do it myself” is the entire curriculum. Low shelves, real pitchers, a place for everything — and adults who know when to step back and let it be hard.

Ask about the toddler room →

Seat 03

Primary classroom

Ages three to six

The mixed-age room where work gets long and concentration gets deep: language, number, practical life, and a great deal of time outdoors. Older children teach, younger ones watch, and both learn something.

Ask about the primary room →

Seat 04

Summer camp

Everyone back at one table

The same materials, more time outside, and every age mixed back together. Camp is where the whole school remembers it is one room with four corners.

Ask about summer camp →

A Montessori classroom at child height with low open wooden shelves and a small work table
The room behind the table — low shelves, real tools, and work a child can carry and put back on their own.

The method

We follow the child, not the clock.

Montessori begins with observation. We watch what a child is drawn to, then prepare the room so that interest can go somewhere. Lessons are short, work time is long, and interruption is rare. It is the first thing visitors notice: how absorbed everyone is, and how little we say.

Observation before instruction

We plan the room around what we actually see children doing, not around a lesson schedule.

Real tools, real work

Ceramic pitchers, wooden trays, a cloth for the spill. Children handle the real thing, and they take care of it.

Mixed ages, one room

Three years together in the primary classroom. Older children teach, younger ones watch, and both learn something.

The hand is the instrument of the mind.

Real pitchers. Real wood. Children carry their own tray, pour their own water, clean up their own spill. Independence is not a reward we hand out at the end of the day — it is the method, and it starts with a table a child can reach.

A young child carefully pouring water from a small glass pitcher into a cup at a low table
Practical life, every morning.

Parent education

Parents sit at this table too.

We run workshops for parents through the year, because the work does not stop at the classroom door. These are the themes we keep returning to with families — the ones that come up at bedtime.

Just things you can try at home, on a Tuesday, at the kitchen table.

Observation

Following the child

What to look for in your child’s play, and how to tell the difference between needing help and needing space.

Practical life

Real jobs at home

Small work, real tools, and a kitchen a child can genuinely use — without turning your evening into a project.

The prepared environment

A place for everything

Setting up one room so a child can choose their own work and put it back without being asked. It starts with what you take out.

Independence

Toilet learning, unhurried

Signs of readiness, a plan with no pressure in it, and what to do on the days it does not go well.

Mixed ages

Three to six, together

Why one room holds three years of children, and what older and younger siblings quietly teach each other.

Language

Big feelings, small people

Words for the hard moments that do not shame anybody — your child or you.

Workshop evenings are open to enrolled families and to families still thinking about joining us. Ask what is coming up next.

Ask about a workshop
An empty wooden chair pulled out from a long table in a bright classroom
One chair stays pulled out.

Enrollment

There’s a chair at the end of the table.

Tell us which seat you are asking about and a little about your child. We will follow up with next steps and a time to see the classroom.

Come and see the room first — that is the real test.