Blog

Mrs. Carroll’s Class: Exploring Our World

Posted on by Cindy Carroll

These last few weeks have been a particularly busy and exciting time with your children. We have traveled through space, explored the eight planets, discovered that the sun is a star, rocketed back to the planet Earth, and are now exploring the first of seven continents; the orange continent, our continent, North America. We will continue to explore the plants and animals native to our continent, map North America’s countries, examine topography, and study how a continents’ proximity to the equator impacts its climate.

The Montessori cultural studies curriculum provides children with an opportunity to explore the whole world including the continents, countries, people, animals, terrain, music, and arts. Children use didactic Montessori materials to familiarize themselves with the needs of all humans for such things as food, housing, and clothing. This early cultural awareness helps cultivate independent, joyful citizens of our world.

Global Culinary Night is Thursday, November 14th, from 6:00-7:00 pm.

This community event is for FWM families to gather together and share a unique dish from their cultural, ethnic, or regional background while also sampling dishes from other FWM families’ cultures. The dish can be homemade or purchased from a local restaurant. We hope you join us as we celebrate the wonderful cultural diversity at our school! This is an entire family event not be missed. Kindly RSVP by November 11th.
Enjoy the week!
Cindy & Sharlene

Mrs. Doyle’s Class: Exploring Our World

Posted on by Michelle Handibode

These last few weeks have been a particularly busy and exciting time with your children. We have traveled through space, explored the eight planets, discovered that the sun is a star, rocketed back to the planet Earth, and are now exploring the first of seven continents; the orange continent, our continent, North America. We will continue to explore the plants and animals native to our continent, map North America’s countries, examine topography, and study how a continents’ proximity to the equator impacts its climate.

The Montessori cultural studies curriculum provides children with an opportunity to explore the whole world including the continents, countries, people, animals, terrain, music, and arts. Children use didactic Montessori materials to familiarize themselves with the needs of all humans for such things as food, housing, and clothing. This early cultural awareness helps cultivate independent, joyful citizens of our world.

Global Culinary Night is Thursday, November 14th, from 6:00-7:00 pm.

This community event is for FWM families to gather together and share a unique dish from their cultural, ethnic, or regional background while also sampling dishes from other FWM families’ cultures. The dish can be homemade or purchased from a local restaurant. We hope you join us as we celebrate the wonderful cultural diversity at our school! This is an entire family event not be missed. Kindly RSVP by November 11th. RSVP here today.
Enjoy the week!
Michelle & Jeannine

Flag Football Unit

Posted on by Pam Pascarella

 

This past month, students in Kindergarten through 5th grade have been practicing and participating in the team sport of flag football. Did you know that the Super Bowl is the most watched television event in the United States on an annual basis? In flag football, instead of tackling like in American football, the defensive team tries to remove/pull the flag belt from the ball carrier to end the down.

During our flag football unit, most of our focus was on developing hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. Skills taught were: passing the football using the the proper grip (fingers on laces),taking a step with the opposite foot when throwing, passing with a partner about 10 feet away, catching a ball thrown to them (thumbs up for a high ball and pinkies down for a low ball), practicing the proper technique for kicking a football off a tee, punting the football, and understanding and using simple game rules.  Students also learned that the quarterback is the person who throws the ball, the center is the person who hikes the ball, and the receiver is the one who catches the ball and runs with it.

Important Information & Events

Posted on by Alison Kistner

Parent Communication Survey Thank you to those parents that have taken the time to complete the recent communication survey. If you have not had a chance to complete the survey, we would love to receive your feedback. The survey can be found here.

Volunteer Opportunity this Saturday, November 9th – 9am.-12pm. Hosted by the FWM Parent Community Service Committee at Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary in Newtown for a morning of fun, contribution, and exploration for the whole family!

As a group, we will be:

  • Winterizing the raised beds with cover crops (hay and leaf mulch) to help protect and prepare the soil for planting next year (both pollinator plants and vegetables for donation!).
  • Assisting the meadow restoration project by mulching the garden and sanctuary pathways with wood chips.
  • Moving some of the seasonal equipment into the barn.

The CVH crew has a fun project planned for the little helpers in addition to a Kindness Rock painting station.

We are asking for donations of gardening tools and gloves to supply the Sanctuary with for their upcoming seasons.  Small shovels and hand tools to work the raised beds as well as full size pitch forks, rakes, and shovels.  Kid size tools are also welcome!  It will be a learning station for years to come.

Questions regarding this event? Please email: parentassocation@fraserwoods.com and they will direct you to the appropriate person(s).

Family Event: Global Culinary Night Thursday, November 14th – 6:00-7:00pm. Join us for a cultural potluck cuisine. Grab your “passport” and travel along with us as we visit countries near and far, sampling foods at each stop!

This community event is for FWM families to gather together and share a unique dish from their cultural, ethnic, or regional background while also sampling dishes from other FWM families’ cultures. It is expected that each family attending will bring a dish with enough food to serve between 6-10 people. The dish can be homemade or purchased from a local restaurant. Kindly RSVP by November 11th.  RSVP here today! 

All children (and adults if interested) will be given a “passport” as they travel around the globe. When a child samples a food, the child will get a stamp on their passport from that particular country.

We hope you join us as we celebrate the wonderful cultural diversity at our school! This is an entire family event not be missed. Let’s celebrate our school’s cultural diversity together!

Parent/Child Night Thursday, November 14th – 6:30-7:30pm. For students and their parents in Primary through Middle School. You and your child are invited to attend an hour of educational engagement.  Parents/ caregivers will have an opportunity to learn about the different Montessori works from their children in the classroom.  This event is open to all parents in Primary through Elementary.  Please park at Sand Hill Plaza to take the shuttle bus.

Mrs. Hood’s Class: Gradual Learning!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

 

Practical life activities present themselves as a highly logical, sequential chain of activities that indirectly lead the child to grander things.

During the last few weeks your child has been gradually learning how to independently use materials in the environment. One example of this is found in our practical life area where children have been practicing transferring and pouring different sized dried objects, in addition to many other exercises. This week we were excited to introduce a new fun activity, one that your toddlers seem to really enjoy, transferring water. Working with water is a great sensory experience and is a good exercise for their hand muscles and fine motor skills. We can’t wait to present all the wonderful works that require water and to watch the children freely and respectfully using these activities in our environment.

In language, children were attracted to a new work called the mystery basket. This is a preliminary exercise for reading. Through this peek game children label objects in the environment. On this occasion we used objects that we usually use in our kitchen. Words such as: whisker, masher, strainer, ladle, pitcher, and strawberry huller were introduced. Children observed, touched, and learned the use of each tool. We hope you can reinforce the use of these vocabulary words by inviting your child to cook with you and show them how you use these tools in your daily lives.

For food tasting, children enjoyed the flesh of a roasted pumpkin. They also enjoyed roasted pumpkin seeds! Most of them liked the pumpkin flesh but ALL of them loved the roasted seeds! We encourage  you to  incorporate this yummy snack at home with your children! They truly devoured them!

We hope all of you that celebrated, had a wonderful Halloween!

Mrs. Wilson: Let’s Carve Out Some Fun!

Posted on by Cynthia Wilson

This week the excitement of Halloween was in the air!

The children were taught a new song called 5 Little Pumpkins.
5 Little Pumpkins
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate. (hold up one hand)
1st one said, “Oh my it’s getting late.” (point to wrist)
2nd one said, “There are witches in the air.” (point up and cackle like a witch)
3rd one said, “But we don’t care.” (shake head no)
4th one said, “Let’s run and run and run.” (motion running with arms)
5th one said, “I am ready for some fun!” (hooray motion)
And OooOoooOoooOoo went the wind and out (loud clap) went the light
and the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight. (roll hands around and around)

Food Tasting: Roasted Sugar Pumpkin

Each week the children excitedly gather on our circle and try to guess what food we will taste. The item is hidden underneath a towel and every time they always say apple. The excitement on their faces when I revealed the item this week was priceless. This was something that they are so familiar with, and most of the children find joy seeing its presence. “PUMPKIN!! A PUMPKIN!!!” I cut open our pumpkin for them to explore and see all the parts. Then we tasted the roasted pumpkin. We were very surprised that almost all tasted it and actually enjoyed the taste.

We ended our week on Halloween with some more fun! These children really love having dance parties. We played some fun Halloween themed music like Monster Mash. Now we are starting to see them mimic each other’s dance movements.

We also carved out a Jack-O-Lantern and the children had an opportunity to explore the squishy and slimy mass of pumpkin goop and seeds.

Mrs. Wilson, Miss Sara, and Miss Heather

Middle School: Happy Halloween!

Posted on by Michelle Lamb
We hope all our friends in the middle school community had a happy Halloween!
On Thursday, October 31st, we celebrated the Halloween spirit by dressing up in costumes, eating sweet treats, and marching in the school parade. We dressed up as inflatable dinosaurs, scary witches, super heroes, football players, Dunkin’ Donuts and many more fun characters. We enjoyed holiday treats such as festive cupcakes, apple cider, homemade cookies, and spider donuts. Thank you for your contributions to our class party.
It was wonderful to see our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders be leaders and role models in our school parade. They greeted all younger students with warm smiles and happy waves as they passed each other in the halls. Thank you to everyone who helped make this morning special and fun for our middle school students.

Upper Elementary: Nature Center

Posted on by Brian Comstock

On Monday, we kicked off the week with a fun field trip experience to The New Canaan Nature Center. First, the students learned about the watershed and how pollution, or introducing invasive species can impact a watershed. They completed a drawing activity to make connections in this lesson. We went outdoors to test the nearby pond water to determine the health of a local watershed. Back inside, we met two owls. One was a barn owl and the other was a great horned owl. We learned about owls and their diet. Afterwards, each student dissected an owl pellet, which is the regurgitated material that an owl cannot digest. They identified bones from different rodents that were contained inside the pellets. We concluded the week with some fun holiday activities connected to Halloween. I hope everyone had a safe and happy Halloween!