Best Montessori schools in Los Angeles

Montessori Shir-Hashirim

One of the best known Montessori preschools in Los Angeles, run from a small Hollywood campus on Carlton Way with a second site near Beverly and Vermont. The program leans hard on the arts: the children stage elaborate original plays every year through a drama program that dates to 1995, and Spanish, French and Mandarin all appear in the week. Parents describe it as a hidden gem whose graduates are well known to elementary schools around the city. Admission is deliberately slow, with a tour and a required Parent and Me session before you may even apply, and the tuition sits at the top of the range for LA preschools.

Little Paws Montessori

A tiny farmhouse-style school a few blocks from Hollywood and Highland, built around a one-to-three teacher-to-child ratio and a rhythm that follows the seasons. It is a single classroom rather than a campus, so places are few and a tour with your child is required before you can apply. Both lead teachers hold AMS credentials, and the school runs a conventional late-August to late-May calendar rather than year-round care. Families who need long days should look closely at the schedule, which ends in mid-afternoon.

Eagle Rock Montessori School

A neighborhood institution on Colorado Boulevard, founded in 1975 by Ute de Lara, a German-born civil engineer who could not find a Montessori school for her own children; her daughter, a former student, now runs it. The geodesic dome her husband built still houses the youngest class and is a local landmark. Children start in a pre-primary toddler room and move up into a mixed-age primary classroom after a ten-month year, and the school has leaned into environmental stewardship and a broad enrichment program. Tours are offered on set dates and the school marked its fiftieth year in 2025.

Baxter Montessori

A small, deliberately affordable school tucked into Elysian Heights above Echo Park, licensed in 1970 and still run as a community program rather than a business. Parents in its own testimonials talk about the price and the tight parent community rather than the facilities. Potty training is not required, which matters if you are enrolling a young two-year-old. The website is thin on logistics: tuition and daily hours are only given once you take a tour.

Sunflower Montessori

A Van Nuys school that has taught two- to six-year-olds since 1980 and has just rebuilt its classrooms and outdoor play yard from the ground up. It is one of the few Montessori options in the central Valley that stays open from early morning to evening all year, which makes it workable for two parents on full-time schedules. Families come from Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana, Studio City and the surrounding Valley neighborhoods. It is a preschool only, so a child moves on at kindergarten age.

Woodlake Montessori Preschool & Infant Care

The far-west-Valley option, on Burbank Boulevard in Woodland Hills, and one of the few schools here that takes infants as well as preschoolers. It is a member of the American Montessori Society and of NAEYC, and it runs a separate kindergarten class aimed at getting children ready for first grade in either a private school or LAUSD. Doors open at 6:30am, the earliest on this list. The program openly blends Montessori materials with more conventional preschool academics, which is a plus or a minus depending on how purist you are.

Montessori Academy of West Adams

The West Adams campus of a three-school group that started in Culver City in 1986; this site opened in 2019 around a 9,000 square foot shaded yard, the most outdoor space of any school in this table. Mandarin and Spanish are taught every day from age two and are included in the fee rather than sold as an add-on, and there is no potty-training requirement. It is also one of very few schools here that publishes its rates online instead of saving them for the tour. Being part of a group, it runs more like a professionally managed school than a neighborhood cottage program.

Montessori Discovery Garden

A home-like school on a quiet Westwood street a mile from UCLA, run in a small single-classroom setting rather than on a campus. Its lead teacher holds Association Montessori Internationale training and a master's degree in education, and gardening and cooking are part of the daily work rather than treats. Art comes twice a week from a teacher with an MFA, and music, Spanish and yoga come in weekly from specialists. Parents in its reviews name the calm, domestic scale as the reason they chose it; there is nothing here past kindergarten age.

Santa Monica Montessori School

The oldest school in this table, established in 1960 and on Colorado Avenue since 1990, and one of the few Montessori programs in the LA area that carries a child from toddlerhood all the way through the elementary years. The elementary program is run on Montessori lines but measured against grade-level standards, with specialist teachers for science, social studies, languages, PE, technology, art and music, and a concert band for the older children. It runs year round and offers extended day care. Tuition is not published: the school emails rates only after you fill in a form.

Glendale Montessori School

Founded in 1971 by Arnolda Utrecht in a converted theatre building, this is a full preschool-through-sixth-grade Montessori school on a five-building campus in central Glendale. It is unusually transparent for a private school: age requirements, daily hours, the school calendar and every tuition figure are published on the admissions page, which almost nobody else in this table does. Elementary groups are small, running around ten children per teacher in the lower grades and eight in the upper. The current director attended the school as a child and taught there before taking over in 2017.

International Montessori Academy

One of only a handful of AMI-recognized preschools in Southern California, on a shaded two-building campus a few blocks from Old Pasadena. Full recognition by the Association Montessori Internationale means the teachers, the materials and the methods are all held to the association's standards, which is the strictest badge in Montessori and rare in Los Angeles. The founder took her AMI certification in the Netherlands in 1989 and has hired and trained every member of staff; lead teachers have stayed an average of seventeen years. It deliberately stops at age six and refers families on to elementary programs.

Meher Montessori School

An AMI-recognized school in Monterey Park, founded in Altadena in 1972 with the Monterey Park campus following in 1984, that takes children from two and a half right through to age twelve. Very few Montessori schools in Los Angeles County carry a child that far. The elementary program covers the full Montessori cultural curriculum, with science, language, history, geography, music and art alongside a heavy mathematics strand, and several teachers hold AMI elementary diplomas. Staff turnover is strikingly low, with a number of teachers there for two or three decades. Tuition is not posted; you have to ask the director for it.