We are so excited to be back at school! All of the children are settling in and enjoying reconnecting with old friends and making new ones.

We start each day outside getting some exercise and when we come in, we spend a few quiet moments meditating, preparing for our day. Our third year students are being very helpful mentors to their new classmates. They have been showing them some good first grade work and helping them with classroom routines. The children worked in small groups to write our classroom rules and they all came up with some really meaningful ideas.

Lessons are in full swing. The children are enjoying Writer’s Workshop lessons and daily writing time before they start their work cycle. They have also already started lessons in grammar, geometry, science, spelling, and math. First year students learned about nouns with Ms. Beckett and are enjoying labeling lots of objects in our classroom. Last week we ventured into the woods for a scavenger hunt. The children enjoyed being in our outdoor classroom.

We are all enjoying fostering seven baby bunnies and have welcomed their mom and her sister as our new school pets. The children are doing a great job taking care of them and love taking trips to the zen garden to see them.

We had a fantastic two days at Camp Jewell. When we arrived we started our fun by taking a trip down the giant slide. Then we enjoyed some group games on the field with our counselors Jaime, Simon, and Robert. After our games we visited the mini farm complete with llamas, guinea hens, goats, sheep, and Wilbur the 750 pound pig. After taking a break for lunch, we continued our activities with archery, climbing, kayaking and canoeing, and candle making.

Our meals were family style. Two children from each table got trays of food and each child served himself/herself. After our first meal one of our counselors explained to the children that we would be weighing the uneaten food left on our plates, called ort, and then it would be fed to Wilbur the pig. The goal was to decrease our amount of ort with each meal. Our first meal had seven pounds of ort and our last had just three. Nice work!

After dinner and some down time in our cabin we had a campfire, s’mores, and skits and songs. At the end of our campfire the children proudly sang a song from the play for their counselors.

We spent our second day at camp on the giant swing. The children got securely strapped into harnesses and after climbing a ladder and getting hooked onto the swing line they were pulled high into the air by the rest of the children until they said “stop.” When they were ready, they released themselves to swing through the air.

Our trip to Camp Jewell was a great experience for all of the children. They bonded, took risks, and made discoveries about themselves while having a great time in a beautiful place.

Maria Montessori believed that music is a natural component of a child’s development. The integration of musical theater into Montessori classrooms helps children become more outgoing, take on leadership roles, and gain confidence as they read and deliver their lines. In addition to the benefits of being involved in musical theater, participating in immersion week together with other Elementary students creates a very strong sense of community and of working together toward a common goal.

We are hard at work keeping up with our lessons and practicing for the upcoming play. We met with our director, Miss Linda, this week and learned the choreography for two of our songs. The children had a great time learning and practicing the moves. We also had the opportunity to get on stage and run through some scenes and songs. Everyone is very enthusiastic and all have done a great job learning lines and songs. Next week we will start our immersion week on Monday morning. Children will be completely immersed in preparations for the play. We are looking forward to our final product next Friday, but we are thoroughly enjoying the process along the way!

We enjoyed seeing all of the grandparents and special friends today. The children eagerly shared their work with their guests and the room was full of wonderful energy. Grandparents’ Day is an event loved by all.

We enjoyed our field trip to the Eli Whitney Museum this week. We learned about magnetism and ecosystems. The children got to use their hands and their creativity to make a magnet project while learning about the ecosystem of a butterfly. They learned what butterflies need to survive as well as the dangers to them, including predators, loss of habitat, and insecticides. The children learned how magnets work; magnetic fields, and the opposing ends of a magnet. They made their pendulums work by turning the magnets over to make the predator, city, and insecticide repel and the flower garden attract the butterfly. We had a wonderful trip. It is always great to experience learning outside the walls of our classroom. Thank you very much to David, Liz, Magda, and Jenna for accompanying us on this trip. Your help is much appreciated!

There is such a great sense of community in our school. Within the class, the children love just spending time with one another. Each F day we have community building time at the end of the day. The children play games, build with blocks, and get creative with friends. They work with different classmates each week and, as a result, many friendships are being cultivated.

Outside of our classroom, relationships are formed as well. This week we visited the Upper Elementary and Middle School Science Fair. The projects were amazing! Upper Elementary students worked with sound, light, and magnetism and Middle School students’ projects focused on environmental conservation; each of the topics were relevant and important to Lower Elementary students as well! The older students were very knowledgeable about their topics and did a great job presenting to us, giving the younger students a glimpse of what the coming years hold for them.