Now Enrolling Kindergarten–5th Grade for the 2026–27 School Year | Apply Today or Enroll in Extended Day
The Dahlia School of San Francisco
Elementary
Serving Kindergarten - 5th Grade
415-425-3073
Program Overview
Our Extended Day program is a warm, nurturing continuation of the Montessori environment. Designed for K–5 families, it offers a seamless transition from the school day into an afternoon of meaningful engagement, Spanish immersion, and self-directed discovery — in a space where every child is known and supported.
Learn how full Spanish immersion, Montessori program supports STEAM education.
Hours
• Monday–Thursday: from end of school day until 5:30 PM
• Friday: from end of school day until 4:30 PM
• Early-release days (including Mission Bay's): covered from dismissal
Cost
• Full-time — $500/month for 5 days/week
• Set days — $25/day, choose 2–3 set days per week, ongoing
• Drop-in — $35/day for occasional, as-needed days
415-425-3073
Free Daily Pickup from Mission Bay School
Montessori care and Spanish immersion, with door-to-door pickup from Mission Bay Elementary.
Mission Bay Elementary families: we pick your child up at school.
We come to you. Our staff picks up enrolled students directly from Mission Bay Elementary each afternoon and brings them to Dahlia Elementary. Your child moves seamlessly from the classroom into a nurturing Montessori environment.
We cover early-release days. SFUSD's early-release schedule is built into our care so you're covered when the school day ends early.
THE PICKUP PROMISE
Register Here
Our full Spanish immersion, Montessori after-school program advances STEAM
We're not keeping your child busy until pickup. We're growing a curious, capable thinker.
Some after-school programs offer STEAM as a menu of activities: robotics one day, coding the next, an art project on Friday. We take a different path. Science, math, and engineering thinking aren't a subject we bolt onto the afternoon; they're already built into the way Montessori teaches. Rather than layering enrichment on top of the day, we build the underlying habits of mind — focus, problem-solving, and persistence — that make all of it stick.
Concrete-to-abstract math.
Montessori's signature materials let children physically manipulate. Kids use golden beads, the binomial cube, number rods, etc. to physically build quantity, place value, and even early geometry before they ever meet the symbols on paper. Research shows hands-on learning strengthens the neural pathways behind problem-solving and memory. These are the very foundation activity-based STEAM programs are reaching for. Montessori has been doing it for a century.
The engineering loop, every day.
Our self-correcting materials teach the core engineering loop — try, observe the error, adjust, retry — without an adult delivering the answer. That's the scientific and engineering method as a daily habit.
Art, the “A” in STEAM, is core.
Music, art, and movement are woven through the day as essential parts of how children learn and never enrichment tacked on at the end. (That's the whole point of the “A.”)
Focus and self-direction that last.
The strongest research on Montessori is in executive function — focus, planning, and self-regulation. Those are exactly the capacities that let a child stay with a hard math problem or see a multi-day project through to the end.
An additional lift from Spanish Immersion.
Cognitive flexibility transfers to math. The constant “switching” bilingual children do maps directly onto flexible thinking needed for complex math. In 2025, 64% of dual-language-immersion students reached math proficiency, compared with 55.4% of their non-immersion peers. And because your child does real math and science in Spanish, they build technical vocabulary in two languages — a genuine, lasting advantage.
Stronger executive function and working memory.
Immersion strengthens inhibitory control and attention, which support problem-solving broadly.
Real-world STEM edge.
Doing science and math in Spanish means a child isn't just "learning Spanish" — they're building bilingual technical vocabulary, which is a genuine future asset.
Montessori and Spanish immersion reinforce the same core skills — concentration, flexible thinking, and self-direction — from two directions. We're not keeping your child busy until pickup. We're growing a curious, capable thinker.
Have Questions?
We're here to help K–5 families navigate the Extended Day process. Reach out to our admissions team at elementaryadmissions@dahliasfmontessori.org or call us directly at (415) 425-3073.