Blog

Riddle Me This: Week #2

Posted on by Michelle Lamb

That’s a wrap! Production week for Riddle Me This, the 2021 Middle School written and produced play, is behind us! The children were incredibly patient, flexible, and hard working. It has been an absolute pleasure for the teachers to work with the students. From the genesis of the play’s concept to writing the dialogue, creating the set, and filming, it has been an amazing experience! With having to keep Covid protocols in mind, adding another layer of challenge during the entire process, the students stayed positive and made the show a great success.

We can’t wait to share the show with you once the editing is complete! Thank you for your support!

Immersion Programs and Experiential Learning at the Middle School Level

Posted on by Gina Tryforos

Immersion Week in a Montessori School is an excellent example of the experiential, real world learning that our students participate in.

It combines challenging academic discussion surrounding playwriting, play production, and performance. In addition, this year the students are filming the production themselves. Unfortunately, we are unable to host the performance live due to the restrictions we are following to mitigate the risk of spread of COVID-19.

Under the guidance of our incredible team of Middle School teachers and Mrs. Reid, our Art teacher, the students experience a week long (sometimes longer) immersion in the process. Working with Mrs. Lamb, the students write the play. They create the plot, create the characters, write the acts and the scenes, and tell their story. Under the guidance of Mrs. Sutherland, the students decide how they want it to look, visualize the set, decide on the stage layout and block each and every scene, and prepare for rehearsal each day. Mr. Brown leads the students who make up our light and sound technicians and our stage crew. Mr. Brown, an artist in his own right, also assists Mrs. Reid in set design.

A Montessori Immersion program satisfies the adolescent’s sensitivity to issues of justice, their need for a sense of belonging and self-worth, and their desire for creativity, self-expression and productivity. The academics and the management of immersion week gives the students opportunities for group collaboration and individual success which meld together to nurture a community of thriving young adolescents.

Mrs. Wilson: Spring Is In the Air!

Posted on by Cynthia Wilson

How wonderful it is to feel the warm sunshine and see the new life blossoming in nature! As we are continuing to explore the weather, we are also looking around for the signs of spring. As we walk to our playground, we stop to look at the flowers that have grown. We have observed these flowers from just tiny sprouts peeking out of the dirt into bloomed daffodils. As we walked by them on Thursday a friend shouted with excitement, “Look flowers, look flowers!” More signs that we spotted are buds on the trees and our forsythia tunnel now has yellow flowers.

The sensory bin has two smaller bins inside, one is filled with ice-cold water and the other has warm water. The children can experience the warmth and cold simultaneously. Along with that, they can use the model of a cloud to fill up and watch the water trickle down like rain.

There is a seed starting station set up in the classroom for the children to start their own vegetable plants. After they plant their seeds, they are then put inside our greenhouse. Once it is time to transition the plant ,the children can take theirs home to be planted into the ground.

Happy Birthday!

Mrs. Hood’s Class: Chirp, Chirp!!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

Life cycles are all around us. They are part of us and part of every living thing. Explaining and illustrating life cycles can be an important milestone for children, helping them to learn how better to respect and care for those around them. 

Spring is definitely the perfect season to introduce these concepts as the children not only receive information about it but learn to observe and appreciate so many of these wonders happening  just in front of their eyes. 

Based on cultural traditions surrounding last weekend’s holiday, this week we introduced eggs and chickens as a unit of study in our toddler environment. We focused on two concepts so far: chickens come from eggs, and a baby chicken is called a chick.

To bring a real life experience to this topic, we explored an egg as part of our food tasting lesson for the week. We introduced vocabulary words like shell, egg white, and yolk. Children seemed to be surprised to find “a yellow ball” -as one of the children called it-  inside their egg. Some of the children didn’t find the sliminess of the boiled egg very attractive and didn’t want to taste the egg, however when given the opportunity to use an egg slicer, they got excited and ended up tasting it. It’s always so fun to observe how the children react to these sensorial experiences and how their brain seems to work hard on classifying the textures and flavors of the food items we introduce. 

As an extension, the children had the opportunity to practice their fine motor skills by learning how to peel their own egg. They seemed to enjoy cracking the egg and carefully peeling the shell. I encourage you to give your toddler the opportunity to practice this skill at home as well. The children really seemed to feel proud of themselves. 

To reinforce the Spanish language, the children were also introduced to a fun Spanish song called: Los Pollitos. By the way,  in Spanish, the chicks say, “Pio, pio,” instead of “Chirp, chirp.” Just an interesting cultural bonus sent your way :). I hope you enjoy the song at the bottom of this note and practice with your children at home, if you would like.

Lastly, two announcements:

  1. We are happy to welcome the Osorio family to complete our FWM toddler community for this school year! So happy to have you with us!
  2. We wish a very happy 2nd birthday to our beloved Ella! She is an incredible gift to all of us! 

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend and if you are planning to visit a farm as a fun Spring activity, please take the time to observe the chickens and talk with your toddler about what you see. 

Best, 

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

Mrs. Lopes’s Class: Cultivating Compassion and Empathy

Posted on by Amanda Lopes

“So in the child, besides the vital impulse to create himself, and to become perfect, there must be yet another purpose, a duty to fulfill in harmony, something he has to do in the service of a united whole.” ~ Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind

Maria Montessori believed that children are the key to peace and empathy among humanity. This important belief is a foundation in our Montessori classrooms beginning with practical life lessons and continuing throughout childhood and beyond. I’d like to share how a “simple” lesson can provide the mechanism from which children in the classroom learn, practice and express their empathy and love for their community.

“Flower arranging work has a more important indirect aim than simply admiring nature’s work of art.  It is an opportunity for little hands to contribute to the beautification of the environment.  It is a tender moment when a young heart lays down a symbol of friendship, love and peace on a table for someone else to enjoy. It is a brief yet integral step outside of oneself and one’s own needs. -The CHILD centered Blog

Flower arranging is only one of many classrooms works and activities sowing the seeds of compassion and empathy in your children.  Please remember, compassion in your homes helps your children do the same.

Have a peaceful week,

Amanda and Sharlene

Back To The Routine

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

We are all so happy to be back in the swing of things. It always amazes me how quick the children are to pick up on the routine, like we never left! I hope everyone had a safe, restful, and rejuvenating break.

One of my favorite aspects about the Montessori curriculum is that it fosters autonomous learners, which means, children are learning the skills they need to be independent, successful citizens. When children are provided with concrete experiences, both academically and emotionally, they are able to progress to abstract concepts. They learn the skills, they are able to reflect upon their strengths and learn from their weaknesses. The goal I have for the children in my class is to be self confident, empathetic individuals- something they can take with them for the rest of their lives!

As we enter April, the end of the year seems right around the corner, and I can’t help but reflect on each child’s progress throughout the year. I am so pleased to see what a compassionate, kind-hearted, unique group of students we have in the classroom!

Welcome Back Upper El!

Posted on by Karen Sankey

It was great to get back together this week and continue with our good work in and out of the classroom. We got back to our individual lessons in math and some small group lessons in grammar and geometry. Fourths focused on collective nouns this week and fifths on a review of verbs that show physical action. Students in both fourth and fifth grade took advantage of open lessons this week and joined the geometry lesson of the other grade level as well as their own. The fourth grade lesson was on finding the area of rectangles and they learned to use a formula to find area. The fifth graders learned about the concept of circles as the limit of regular polygons. We learned that both figures have similar elements called by different names: perimeter/circumference, apothem/radius, side/center, diagonal/diameter. We ended our week in the outdoor classroom, exploring, building, and playing an in-person game of Among Us.

Mrs. Hood’s Class: As Fresh As Spring!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

I remember a couple of years ago sitting by a small window and observing the gigantic icicles that covered my view. Suddenly I noticed how, so slowly, water started to drip from the icicles on a sunny morning! I remember so clearly how this sense of joy filled my life! This was the end of my first winter in America and since then, I love the hope that spring brings when Earth seems to wake up and become alive again! Longer, warmer, and sunnier days, windows opened, greener views, flowers growing, trees budding, birds singing, and that crisp in the air are just some of the things that spring offers us and that we all appreciate! 

To celebrate the return to school and the  beginning of spring, the children worked on an art project creating a spring crown. They worked hard and attentively by painting and then gluing flowers on it. Together we got to say good-bye to winter and welcome spring, and naturally, dancing with the crowns on our heads was part of the welcoming.  

As we continue to practice recognizing colors, the children discovered this week what happens when you mix the color red with yellow, creating the color of the week: orange! 

And talking about orange, children absolutely loved not just exploring and tasting a yummy orange during our food tasting lesson but also the children were introduced to the process of making orange juice all by themselves! 

Children worked their muscles and their maximum effort by making sure they squeezed and twisted their orange into the handheld juicer. After this, children practiced their fine motor skills by transferring the juice into a small pitcher and then serving themselves their orange juice into an open cup. To say that they seem to enjoy the process and the result of this activity is an understatement. They kept asking to make it all over again and again. I highly encourage you to provide the opportunity for your child to practice this lesson at home many times! We thank you again for your support in providing the requested food items to make this type of lesson a reality during COVID times, still following the safety guidelines. 

We can’t wait to dive more deeply into our Spring studies! It’s going to be fun! 

We hope you enjoy this beautiful weekend and we wish all of you that celebrate a very Happy Easter! 

Much love, 

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria