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Mrs. Hood: Observing and waiting!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

“We cannot create observers by saying ‘observe’, but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and the means are procured through education of the senses” – Maria Montessori 

The grass is getting greener, the birds are chirping louder, and after a long winter, we continue to happily observe how the Earth wakes up from its deep slumber. Even though we witness this season every year, it feels so magical every time!

Like Dr. Maria Montessori, we believe that nature is a patient teacher and that Earth is our classroom. Corresponding to how we teach children in the Montessori tradition, nature provides us with both concrete and abstract learning for students of all ages. At our level, children have experiences that introduce them to marvelous wonders by using all five of their senses to comprehend concrete things and build a foundation for understanding the processes of natural life, plus children absolutely love the outdoors! Lately, even the shoes come off!

On that note, we have great news: Our very small, hungry caterpillars have arrived, and the children seem in awe!  The amazement in your children’s eyes is indescribable, but we can tell you that they seem very excited about our new visitors. For the next few days, your children will be able to observe the metamorphosis of a butterfly. Meanwhile, our bird studies have provided endless fascination as our feathered friends grace us with their presence at the window feeder, accompanied by the occasional comical squirrel.

This week, as we savored the sensory delights of juicy kumquats, marveled at the treasures of nature brought from home, and came together to celebrate one of our youngest students’ second birthday, we were and are reminded of the richness of our curriculum and the sense of community that binds us all together.

In these moments of shared discovery and wonder, we hope you find as much joy and fulfillment as we do. May the magic of springtime infuse your days with warmth and wonder, and may you enjoy every precious moment with your loved ones.

Enjoy the weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Mollie

Mrs. Sargeant: A Peek at the Week

Posted on by Christine Sargeant

Friendship development in toddlers is an intriguing process, marked by significant milestones and stages. Here’s a breakdown of how it typically unfolds:

In the early stages, toddlers engage in parallel play, where they play alongside each other without much interaction. They may observe each other’s activities but don’t actively engage together.

As toddlers grow, they start to engage in associative play, where they begin to interact with each other during playtime. They may share toys, take turns, or mimic each other’s actions.

As children mature and develop social skills, they start to engage in cooperative play, where they interact with peers to achieve common goals or participate in group activities. This stage encourages collaboration, communication, negotiation, and empathy.

These stages of play are not strictly sequential, and children may engage in multiple stages simultaneously or move back and forth between them based on their interests and developmental needs. In a Montessori classroom, the environment is carefully prepared to support and facilitate each stage of play, allowing children to learn and grow at their own pace.

It has been exciting to witness the blossoming of friendships among the children both in the classroom and on the playground. 

This week, we learned about white button mushrooms. If you ask your children where they grow, they will probably tell you, “in the dark, in the dirt.” They may also tell you that their teachers both love mushroom pizza! We examined the stem and the cap, and the children enjoyed taking a closer look using a magnifying glass. Not everybody was willing to try a piece of mushroom, but we kept offering – we engaged in our food-tasting lesson all week long! The class was fascinated by the mushrooms and truly enjoyed exploring them.

Looking forward to an exciting week ahead! Christine & Lizette

Ms. Marissa: Can You Say “Metamorphosis”?

Posted on by Marissa Frisk

We continue to admire our Painted Lady caterpillars each day. We have an observation station set up where children are invited to draw and document the growth of the caterpillars. While we are watching this metamorphosis in real time, we are also using hands-on materials to visualize the life cycle of a butterfly.

Learning about the different stages of a butterfly’s life: adult, egg, larva, and pupa has been so interesting and eye-opening! Some questions I have received from students are:

“Do butterflies have families once the eggs hatch?”

“Well, is it a full cycle if the butterfly or caterpillars die?”

“Is “larva” and “pupa” a fancy word for caterpillar and chrysalis?”

“What is the difference between a chrysalis and a cocoon?”

Do you know the answers to these questions? These would be great conversation starters with your children!

We also continue our journey through Chicken Soup with Rice by Maurice Sendak. This month’s poem goes like this:

In May, I truly think it best
To be a robin lightly dressed
Concocting soup inside my nest.
Mix it once, mix it twice,
Mix that chicken soup with rice!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Marissa & Sue

This Week in Upper El

Posted on by Karen Sankey

“Trees are poems that the Earth writes upon the sky.” –from “Sand and Foam” by Kahlil Gibran

We enjoyed an active week in Upper El. Highlights included gardening, an Arbor Day presentation, and new math, geometry, and chemistry lessons.

Students began the week moving the raised bed flowers to pots in preparation for relocating those beds during the field construction. As is typical of these students, they tackled the project with joy and enthusiasm. We are hopeful the plants will survive the move, and we can replant them in the fall when the field is complete.

We had a visit from Charlie Arrindell, who gave a captivating presentation about the benefits and anatomy of trees and Arbor Day. He gifted each of us a sapling to plant at our homes. Thank you for sharing your time, generosity, and knowledge with us, Charlie!

In geometry this week, fourth graders learned to find the area of a parallelogram and discovered they use the same formula they used to find the area of a rectangle. Fifth graders learned about the concept of the circle as the limit of regular polygons. They researched this with Montessori insets of each plane figure, three through ten sides, and a circle and learned that each “side” of a circle is a point on the curved line that forms the circle’s circumference. They identified the circle as the “ultimate polygon.” Their follow-up work was to translate the nomenclature of regular polygons into the nomenclature of the circle. Fifth graders also prepared for next week’s lesson by beginning a study of the apothem of each figure, triangle through decagon. They drew each figure and traced their apothem, radius, and base.

This week in chemistry, we learned about the sun’s nomenclature and discovered some amazing facts about its distance from Earth, temperature, size, mass, gravity, age, and core reactions.

We are still waiting to hear back from the bus company on their cost for our trip to Nature’s Classroom. I will email you your final cost as soon as they confirm.

Wishing you a lovely weekend,
Karen and Deb

Mrs. Hood: Listen Up!

Posted on by Andrea Hood

In a world filled with distractions, developing concentration and focus is becoming increasingly challenging for young children. Sensorial works in Montessori education promote the development of these essential skills. Toddlers engage in activities that require sustained attention, such as sorting objects by size or shape, arranging objects in a specific order, completing puzzles, and more. These tasks demand concentration, enabling toddlers to develop their ability to focus for extended periods, a skill that will benefit them in all areas of life.

This week, we initiated our studies on birds. Cardinal, blue jay, woodpecker, robin, warbler, indigo bunting, and oriole are names you hear over and over in our environment. The children also received a lesson on the birds’ calls and songs. Children are learning to identify each bird sound through a fun work where the children press a button, hear the bird, and have to match the picture card with the sound. As every work in our environment has a control of error built within it, the child has the opportunity to self-correct by matching the color dot behind the card to the color of the button, helping the child to match the sound to the correct bird. As children practice this work, they will learn to identify the birds just by listening, and they won’t need to look at the back of the card anymore to be successful. After the children have matched the sound to the picture, they reinforce their visual skills by matching the picture to the model of the bird, learning to recognize them visually as well.  To say that this has been a big favorite work is an understatement! It has been precious observing the children taking the time to listen carefully and observe the details of the birds’ pictures. We hope you can take time with your toddler around your backyard and listen to some birds singing! Your toddler might surprise you by recognizing the name of the bird!

On another note, we had a super fun food-tasting lesson this week. We explored mushrooms! Thanks to the Calcagnini family, we enjoyed some special mushrooms from their mushroom farm! The children explored lion’s mane, trumpet, and oyster mushrooms. They enjoyed the tactile sensation of these different mushrooms. Some of them really enjoyed the taste and kept asking for more.

Lastly, Grandparents and Special Friends Day was a success! Thanks to all the families that participated! The children are always so excited to show off all that they can do!

Enjoy the weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Mollie

Mrs. Wilson: Earth Day and Grandparents and Special Friends Day!

Posted on by Cynthia Wilson

This week, we started by making Earth Day placemats. We used green and blue markers on a coffee filter and sprayed it a few times to watch the colors spread and create a beautiful Earth-like pattern. In addition, we have started recycling plastic, paper, and cardboard packaging as our contribution towards the environment. During recess time, the children pretended to clean up the trash (sticks, rocks, and mulch) on the ground and filled up the dump trucks together.

It was lovely to have all of the grandparents and special friends. The children were excited to show off all their favorite lessons and to introduce their friends and teachers. We hope they had as much fun as we did!

Food Tasting: This week, we tasted black and Spanish olives. The majority of the children liked the black olives the best.

Mrs. Lopes: Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Abdomen!

Posted on by Amanda Lopes

We are hard at work becoming entomologists. This is always a favorite unit of study for the children. An entomologist is a scientist who studies insects. We began our unit by discussing what we already know about insects, what they are, and what they can do. We discovered that insects are slimy, little, gross, soft, and hard. Insects can crawl, sting, bite, eat, fly, walk upside down, and jump. We learned that insects lay eggs and have antennae and three main body parts: a head, thorax and abdomen, eyes, and six legs. Insects are also cold-blooded, have an exoskeleton, and many have wings. Finally, we found out why a spider is not an insect. Ask your child to see if they know why.

We also welcomed five tiny caterpillars to our classroom. It is so exciting to observe each step of the fascinating life cycle of the painted lady butterfly. Right now, our caterpillars are busy eating, spinning silk, and growing bigger every day. During this incredible period of growth, they will shed their exoskeletons four times and grow more than ten times their original size! When they have finished growing, the caterpillars will climb to the top of the cup. Once there, they will hang from the paper disk in a “j” shape under the lid. Finally, they will shed their exoskeletons one last time before they pupate and form a chrysalis.

On Wednesday, to enhance our unit on South America, we had a special presentation about Brazil from a classmate’s mom, Vanessa.  She shared some interesting information about Brazil, brought in a Brazilian specialty called “pão de queijo” for us to try, and helped the children make a paper plate macaw.  Thank you again for a wonderful presentation Vanessa!

Wishing you a week filled with peace and love!

Amanda & Hema

Makerspace: Monthly Update

Posted on by Carl Frisk

As spring rolls along, we’ve had all grade levels help revive our aeroponic tower garden. The Kindergarteners planted seeds in January, which grew large enough to transfer into the tower garden in early March. We currently have beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and lettuce growing. As time allows, everyone has been doing their best bumblebee impression, helping to hand pollinate the cucumber flowers, which will hopefully culminate in a small harvest in the coming months.

Kindergarteners have taken on a variety of challenges. We worked on finger knitting in January and February, which requires incredible focus and hand-eye coordination to successfully complete all of the steps. More recently, they began a joint project with the Middle Schoolers, where they drew and colored an animal or character, which the Middle Schoolers are currently working on sewing into stuffies as gifts. They’ve asked many times to see how theirs are progressing, but it will be a fun surprise once they are finished in the coming weeks.

Lower El also began the year with knitting. We began with the basics, learning finger knitting and then progressing to small circular looms, which the Third Graders made themselves. Once everyone was proficient with the small circular looms, we began on the larger circular looms, which resulted in a variety of completed projects such as pillowcases, scarves, bags, and arm warmers. Most recently, Lower El has been very interested in what their older peers are working on in Robotics class, so we’ve worked on various Lego challenges that utilize the same obstacles and lessons, such as ramps and our paper airplane launcher.

Upper El has just completed a larger mask project, choosing an animal and utilizing cardboard as the main material. They’ve been passionate about the details and final touches for the last few weeks, and the results are impressive. In Robotics prior to Spring Break, they were challenged to make the longest car possible in teams of 2-3 students. We then connected all of the cars together to make one incredibly long car, totaling over 24 feet in length. It was exciting to see their creation make its way down the hallway. Since Spring Break, Robotics has focused on smaller, seemingly simple challenges that require very innovative solutions, such as making a vehicle go up the steepest ramp possible, creating a gondola to go up a tight line, and using gear ratios to make the fastest car possible.

Middle Schoolers are in the midst of a number of projects. A furniture design challenge presented in February has progressed from sketches to 3D modeling and 3D printing, then refining to finalize dimensions with a preliminary design cut on the laser cutter. The final step will be a ⅓ scale model version, which will have all of the needed detail to assemble as if it were a real piece of furniture. At the moment, they are busy working to turn the Kindergartener’s drawings into stuffies. This involves cutting pattern pieces before cutting fabric to ensure the proportions and details are correct. They are now working to get those pieces sewn up, stuffed, and adding any final touches to make the Kindergartener’s drawings come to life. In Robotics, they’ve spent some time brushing up on some construction and coding basics with the Lego Spike kits and some more advanced tutorials. Using that as a foundation, additional challenges have been presented to push their creativity and come up with innovative solutions.