Blog

Mrs. Lopes’ Class: A Walk Around the Sun

Posted on by Amanda Lopes

With the departure of Ms. Carroll, I feel so honored to be able to step into a classroom with such an amazing group of children and families. The children have acclimated to my presence with ease and have enthusiastically welcomed me into their classroom community. Thank you for your support during this transition. Ms. Sharlene and I are looking forward to a wonderful school year with your children!

This week we had our first classroom birthday celebration. Birthday celebrations are so special in a Montessori environment. For a child, one year is a significant amount of time relative to their life. As part of the Montessori tradition, we strive to celebrate birthdays in a way that is both meaningful and educational.

Our children in the primary environment celebrate birthdays with a tradition called “a walk around the sun.” A walk around the sun can be different from school to school, but typically begins by lighting a candle representing the sun in the middle of our class circle. Labels for each month of the year are laid out around the candle. The teacher and class form a circle around the candle and the birthday child walks around the “sun” once for each year of their life, holding an Earth globe. We encourage parents to share a milestone from each year of their child’s life during their walk around the sun.

The Montessori Birthday Walk is more than just a birthday celebration, it’s a Celebration of Life, a lesson in science, astronomy, and grace, and a community building experience for the entire class.

This Friday we will be sending home a “Friday Folder” with your child’s work from the week.  Please empty the folder and return it to school on Monday.  Some children come home with many items each week, while others do not.  Please remember that many of the lessons and materials in our environment are tactile, so even though your child may not be coming home with much “physical” work, our photos we share each week will show how they have been working hard in the classroom.

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

Mrs. Lopes and Ms. Sharlene

Who Am I?

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

This week’s art project was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings. After looking at images of Van Gogh’s work, each child took time to closely examine real sunflowers with their eyes and sense of touch. Students noticed the range of textures, vibrant colors, and shapes of the sunflowers. Then, they carefully drew their own using pencil and oil pastels. Each sunflower was then cut out and arranged to create one collaborative art piece that visually represents the bright, beautiful Lower Elementary community. Thank you so much Mrs. Reid for organizing such a thoughtful project.

Another exciting part of our week was creating the class “Who Am I” material together. “Who Am I” is a collection of Montessori biology materials used to learn about the different kingdoms of life; specifically, animals, plants, fungi, protists, and prokaryotes. As a fun beginning of the year activity, we made this material with a focus on the children in the classroom. This process started with the children answering questions about themselves. Next, it was typed up, and turned into a material the students can use during work cycle. Not only is the “Who Am I” material a fabulous and popular classification work, it also provides work in comprehension and fluency while helping the children get to know each other!

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

Mrs. Wilson’s Toddler Class

Posted on by Cynthia Wilson

Normalization in a Montessori environment is when the children freely choose their own work and are able to concentrate, and they do this joyfully. This week we have been seeing a growth in normalization happening. The children spend the first part of their morning preparing for their day and welcoming friends, then the energy of the room changes and we see the children taking the materials off the shelves and working with their lessons. It is a beautiful thing to see.

We will end our study of oceans this week and move into the start of our autumn lessons. The next couple of weeks ahead we will focus on apples.

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

Enjoy this week’s photos!

Mrs. Wilson and Ms. Sara

Mrs. Hood’s Class: On the Move!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

” Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas. ” -Maria Montessori

Your children have been enjoying our outdoor environment so much! They are developing their large motor skills by climbing our big rock and the hill to get to the top of the slide. They also like to practice walking on the big rocks path. They run and enjoy exploring in our forsythia tunnel! Some of them love walking around the sandbox frame and others seem to love the tree stump walking path which offers a bigger challenge for balancing!

Toddlers have an inner need to reach their maximum effort. Hand-powered materials build upper body and arm strength as well as develop cardiovascular health. In the classroom your toddler fulfills this need using different materials. One of them is a heavy wagon. Some of the children like to push it empty, others like to put some materials or heavy balls in it, and some children really enjoy asking their friends to hop on so they can give them a ride around the environment. It’s usual to see some children struggling a bit when getting to the corners of the classroom but it’s fascinating to observe how they find ways to move it around. This week in our outdoor environment, we introduced some big wooden spools. Some of the children even attempted to push the spools up the hill! So fun!

We also had the opportunity to enjoy playing in the rain this week! Some of the children were so excited to taste the rain and jump in the puddles, while some enjoyed watching the drops falling on their rain jackets and their friends jumping around.

Children also enjoyed a drum session and exploring some new works in the environment! As your children continue to become aware of their peers, new friendships have been developing and children have been participating more and more in community gatherings. Some of the favorite songs this week were: “Listen and Move” by Greg and Steve and “Drive My Car” by Laurie Berkner. The Animal Boogie by Barefoot Books was the most acclaimed book by the children.

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria 

Ready to Learn

Posted on by Karen Sankey

We love starting our day exercising our bodies and getting the blood flowing before coming inside to meditate and write in our journals. These activities get our minds ready for learning.

This year will be full of different types of lessons in Upper Elementary. One benefit of Montessori education is that students are able to move at their own pace in math and some areas of language. One way we accomplish this is through individual lessons. Each student has at least one meeting time with me each week. During this time, I observe, evaluate, and work with them on the next step of their learning. Students also meet with me as small or large groups for lessons in geometry, biology, geography, history, and evolutionary chemistry.

This week we had small group lessons in geometry. The fourth year students learned about congruent, similar, and equivalent shapes and the fifth years learned about the relationships between lines in equivalent parallelograms and rectangles.

We also kicked off our biology and history lessons. In biology we are learning about the vital functions of plants. We started by learning about three different categories of vital functions: vegetative functions (nutrition, respiration, and circulation), functions of relationship (support, sensitivity, and movement), and the function of reproduction.

In history, our fourth year students have started learning about the Time Line of Life, a study of the changes life has gone through since it appeared on Earth. Our fifth years are learning about the Time Line of Modern Humans which is an overview of fourteen cultures of the modern human species, Homo sapiens sapiens, who lived in Europe during the last 40,000 years.

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

Mrs. Wilson’s – Ocean and Outdoor Fun!

Posted on by Cynthia Wilson

In the classroom, there are all types of lessons on the shelf with an ocean or beach representation. I started the year with an ocean theme to bring something that they would be recently familiar with. The children had opportunities to match seashells and transfer objects that symbolized the color of the ocean, items found on the beach, or in the water. Our language shelf consists of figures such as sharks, a blue whale, a dolphin, and a humpback whale. In the background, the children can hear the sound of the waves with some relaxing music. Of course when there is an ocean, we need to dance along to Baby Shark and sing Slippery Fish.

The children seem to enjoy the newest additions to our playground. They utilize the tree stumps to rest, climb, and jump and also to balance across.

Enjoy this week’s photos!

Mrs. Wilson and Ms. Sara

Mrs. Hood’s Class: Slow and Steady!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

Your children have started to settle in little by little. There are less tears everyday at drop off time and more dancing and giggles throughout the morning. As your children’s confidence and trust have increased, they have started to explore the environment more intentionally. They have even started to socialize with some of their peers. Those that are able to say a few words have started to recognize and call their friends by their names.

As the children continue to use their freedom of movement and freedom of choice, some ground rules have been introduced. One of those rules is Respect for Others’ Work. In traditional school settings children this age are encouraged and even expected to share. Sharing is a very important concept, but for children of this age it’s a task that they are not developmentally ready for. In our environment we encourage the concept of taking turns instead. This encourages patience, mindfulness, independence, order, and concentration. Children don’t feel threatened by the idea that another child will take their material away, instead they can peacefully work with the material until they are done. When children want to work independently we encourage them to say: “This is my work. Please don’t touch.” We also encourage the children to observe quietly how other children are working with a material. It’s so fun to see that even at this young age children are able to work on mastering these skills! They just need the encouragement to do so.

Another rule we introduced this week is We Respect our Materials. As guides, we model slowly and consistently throughout the morning the importance of carrying and handling our materials in a gentle way. If one of our students decides to throw a piece of material across the room, we encourage them to use one of the balls instead and we verbalize to them in a few words how we should use the materials. “We throw the ball.” “We are gentle with our materials.”

On another note, children had a blast exploring our toddler fun outdoor space and learning new songs. Some of the children’s favorite songs this week seemed to be: “Walking in the Jungle” by Super Simple Songs, “We are the Dinosaurs” by Laurie Berkner and “La Lechuza” by Plim Plim.

We are excited for a new month and all the fun we are about to have! Stay tuned and enjoy the pictures of your beautiful children!

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria 

Mrs. Doyle’s Class: Friday Folder Fun Facts

Posted on by Michelle Handibode

“We have to remember as adults, that we want things done, and as quickly as possible, so that they are finished and out of the way; whereas the child is interested and content in the doing, not the done.” –Margaret Stephenson The Art of Montessori in the Home

Each Friday we send home the Friday Folders with the work the children have completed over the course of the past week. It is not uncommon for us to receive emails asking why there was so little work inside and what exactly are the children doing?

Sometimes it can be difficult to accept the idea of focusing on the process, not the product. What exactly does that mean? Many of the works in the Montessori classroom do not end with a physical product the children will bring home to share with everyone. There is often no way to visually assess what a child is learning. Overall, as a society, we are product driven and often times base our success on this factor. The experience a child has when working with the materials is truly what is most important. However, when you hear they did “nothing” day after day, it can often be unsettling.

Research shows that children from ages 3-6 learn best through their hands. In order to truly understand a concept they need to explore it through touch. This is why so many of the lessons found in the Montessori environment are not based on memorization alone. Most concepts we are teaching involve tracing, manipulating, and exploring with their hands.

Perhaps most importantly, focusing on the process protects the child’s intrinsic motivation to learn and understand. It is not influenced by external factors such as recognition, praise, or reward. The time and experience with the materials is what we truly value and encourage.

So, if your child’s folder comes home with little to no work, just know that their accomplishments can’t always ‘fit’ in that folder. Maybe after weeks and weeks of trying, they learned how to zipper their own coat or maybe they can finally carry a work without it dropping. Maybe after observing a lesson day after day,  your child tried it independently for the first time. The list of skills each child can accomplish will never be fully represented in the Friday Folder. So please enjoy the work that is in there but know it is not an accurate portrayal of all that the children are accomplishing.

Our Friday Folders will not be ready to go until next Friday, but this week, your child will still be bringing home any work they have completed.

Warmly,

Michelle & Lizette