In the Montessori curriculum, care for living environments is one of the most important aspects. Children love animals and plants and can relate to them as individuals. Those relationships and that intimate, personal contact form the base for our biology curriculum. Children are drawn to living things and they want to know and learn more about them. We nuture and build on that interest by helping them to sharpen their skills in observation, and to learn and apply methods of appropriate caretaking.

Lower Elementary students have been loving their biology lessons! The third years are learning about the body functions and external parts of moss. They are enjoying searching for moss while outdoors and closely observing it under a magnifying glass. The first and second graders are learning about amphibians. The first year group is taking a close look at the external parts of a frog meanwhile the second years are studying the inside, the body functions of a frog.

 

It’s important to practice self reflection from a young age because it can help children recognize their emotions and regulate them. One way we did this was in our journal writing this week. The children wrote about something they liked about themselves, and something they thought they could work on. It was beautiful to watch each child express and reflect on themselves in different, unique ways. I feel so humbled I get to support and assist each child on this journey of life! Here is a list of what they came up with:

Favorite Qualities:

• Kind heart
• Positive attitude
• Eating a lot
• Being the best at staring contests
• Running fast
• My soul
• Playing soccer
• Reading and writing
• Being talented
• Not getting angry when people are upsetting me
• Being funny

Qualities to Work On:

• My art ability
• Climbing trees
• Math
• Remembering to brush my teeth
• Patience
• Manners
• Reading for Concepts
• Remembering to teach my dog
• Making my soul happier
• Being nice to people who upset me
• Getting over my fear of heights

 

We are thrilled to be back at school! The students hopped right back into their work like we never left. It’s amazing how the children can adapt and overcome any circumstances that are thrown their way! A huge thank you to the middle school community for making us feel so welcomed by making us a card. Even though we can’t gather as a whole school this year, it’s heart warming to know the sense of community is still here.

We are diving right into our Writer’s Workshop lessons and the children are loving it! Our first unit focuses on writing true stories about our own lives; “small moment” stories. The children participate in a mini lesson and then spend some quiet time writing and practicing the new skills they are learning. This week the children have learned about how to stretch out their memories by magnifying a small moment and adding details. To help solidify this objective, we have been dissecting the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. We did this by finding a powerful part in the story, deciding what made the part powerful, and finding details and examples in the passage that proved it. After our mini lessons, Ms. Mary and I move around the room and conference with individual students, giving help and instruction where needed.

We periodically get together as a whole group and share our writing with each other; this is a favorite part of Writers Workshop for many. This year, our author’s circle looks a bit different in order to facilitate the social distancing guidelines, but that is okay! Some children shared from their work spots, and others wanted to come up to the front of the classroom to read. How incredibly wonderful is it that the children feel safe and respected, and as a result, want to share their writing with their peers!

This week the third year students told the first of Maria Montessori’s Five Great Lessons, the Creation of the Universe. The third years have been working so hard for the past few weeks, preparing and practicing, to give this lesson to the younger students. Even though the third years told me they were nervous about being the “teachers” and presenting this lesson to the class, they leaned into the discomfort and did an outstanding job. What an amazing thing to witness! They should all be so proud of themselves.

The children also enjoyed their first classification lesson, learning about living vs. non living. This was a group discussion which introduced the concept of life by contrasting living organisms with non-living matter. We used our class pet, Rocky, and a rock from outdoors to facilitate the discussion. The children were thrilled to observe and touch our leopard gecko! The objective of this lesson was to distinguish living organisms by these functions: metabolism, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli and adaption to the environment.