Saying goodbye to our children is always a difficult moment after spending a whole year growing up together, learning, and bonding. It is so precious to hear the children say “I love you.” or “I’m going to miss you in summer.” Some children express love with a warm hug and a sparkle of joy in their eyes. Others show love with big smiles that shine on their adorable and happy faces. It is a very satisfying and joyful feeling to watch our children share their passion and confidence with us. I also want to thank each child for all the warmth, beautiful memories, and learning we have shared throughout the year.

Thank you, parents, for allowing us to be your child’s teachers. It has been a wonderful and rewarding year for us.

Lots of love,

Kaoutar and Sara  

Summer is almost here. This is our favorite time of the year. One way to start the season off is to talk about the ocean theme and care for the environment. Soon we can start heading to the beach and the children always have been fascinated with sea creatures, shells, and of course, playing in the sand.

At our nature table, we include a natural large shell and a magnifier for the children to explore its details. This is also an important sensory experience for the children to hold, touch, and feel the shell in their hands. Our water sensory table looks like an open aquarium. It has manipulative fish, sea shells, blue beads, scooping cups, and blue water. The children take turns to cool down with the water sensory table and feel each piece in the ocean bin. We also have seashell sorting cards with labels. It includes a beautiful shell collection and matching cards. The cards have the name of the shell which introduces new terminology for the child. There is something very special about seashells and the children enjoy these activities.

We have our Field Day planned for Tuesday, June 7th. Just a reminder to have your child dressed in comfortable clothes and sneakers and not to forget their water bottles! We’re looking forward to a whole morning outside with lots of fun activities planned by Ms. Pam.

Wishing you a peaceful  weekend,

Kaoutar and Sara

One of the many gifts a Montessori education brings is a lifelong love for geography. There are two main purposes of presenting geography to our three to seven–year-old children. First, to help the children visualize the Earth and localize our country and state, and second, to learn about other countries and cultural differences.

Maria Montessori divides geography into physical geography, cultural geography, political geography, and cartography. We introduce physical geography to three year old children through the sandpaper globe and show the land and water. The political geography includes the globe of the continents, the painted globe, and the puzzle map of the world with the continent outline map that is known as control of errors.

Every day, the children visit the Geography area, either to explore the globes or to use the continent puzzle maps. Our classroom has just three year and four-year-old children. However, there is always a level at which even the youngest children can have a sensory experience that will prepare them for a deeper understanding in the future.

Wishing you a peaceful long weekend.
Kaoutar and Sara

Last week the children were so engaged in learning sounds around us and we continued into this week by learning about our birds theme and we came up with more listening games to add to our theme. Listening to birds’ sounds added to the children’s excitement and learning. This is a simple, yet effective activity of seeing photos of different birds and listening to the sounds they make. The children were so engaged and also enjoyed imitating the birds’ sounds. We also learned about the life cycle of a duck and a robin and their chicks. The children loved the book Have you Heard the Nesting Bird. This is an enjoyable book about unique bird songs with beautifully illustrated bird pictures. This week we also released our three beautiful butterflies on the playground. It was a very beautiful moment watching the children so keen on following butterflies and wishing them a happy life.

Have a great weekend,
Kaoutar and Sara

On Thursday, we had a visitor from the EverWonder Children’s Museum.  She facilitated with the class some scientific experiments to help the children “see” sounds. We hear all different types of sounds every day, however, have you ever explored sound at a visual level? How is a sound created? Through some scientific activities presented to the class, we learned that sound is a type of wave and the children had a chance to visualize sound waves by exploring a variety of sound experiments.

First, our guest explained the significance of being a scientist by listening, observing, and asking questions about things around us. Then, she asked each child about their favorite sound?

• Soren likes lion sounds
• Jonathan loves dog woofs 
• Levi likes cat sounds
• Carter prefers dog sounds
• Ella V. likes elephant and cheetah sounds
• Rusher prefers to hear a dinosaur roar
• David loves birds’ tweets
• Joey likes the piano sounds
• Christopher loves dogs and banjo sounds
• Lucia loves unicorn sounds
• Remington likes cricket sounds

It was very sweet to hear the preferences of each child and observe their engagement. Our visitor and sound expert also read a book about different sounds around us. Then, using different recycled tools to demonstrate the relationship between sound and wave, we explored sound vibration levels and learned how the vibration size determines the volume. A larger vibration yields a louder sound and a smaller wave results in a softer sound. Our visitor also talked about rain sticks and how people in the past who lived in rainforests used them to send messages to one another. The cool visual experiments helped us see the passage of sound through matter and learn how sound travels through solids, liquids, and gases. The children enjoyed being little scientists, experimenting with different sounds around us. They also had lots of fun creating their rainstick and bringing it home.

Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Kaoutar and Sara

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Everyone wants to be remembered and cherished on the special day they were born. Every week during May and June we are going to celebrate the life of one of our beloved children. In this blog, I’m going to explain how the birthday walk takes place in our classroom. The Montessori Celebration of life is a lovely way to celebrate a child’s birthday at a school.

Our birthday walk begins by placing a mat with illustrations of the sun and the seasons and with labels that represent each month of the year, as well as the seasons.  We light a candle that represents the sun, and a child carries the globe that symbolizes the earth. Then we discuss the fact that it takes one year for the earth to orbit around the sun. The birthday child stands beside his birth month. Then the teacher reads the life story up until the age of one and shows the child’s photos at this stage. After that, the birthday child starts walking slowly around the sun one time again, with the globe in his hands stopping when he reaches his birthday month. While the birthday child walks, the children who are sitting in the outer circle sing a song.

The earth goes around the sun

The earth goes around the sun

It takes 12 weeks 52 weeks 365 days in a year.

Then the reading of the life story continues until age two. The birthday child walks around the sun again, and the children in the circle sing the birthday song again.

This continues until the child’s life story is complete. Then, we sing “the birthday song” in French and English and the child blows out the candle. Then the children enjoy a special birthday snack at the big table.

This week, We had our toddler moving up visits on Tuesday.  A couple children from Mrs. Wilson’s class visited our classroom to experiment the primary. We also had the Newtown Strong Therapy dogs visit us and some of the children had the opportunity to spend a peaceful time with the dogs.

Thank you so much for Kenyon our class parent to devote his  time to collect the beautiful cards.  Children write cards  with lots of love, Sara and I enjoy each one of the lovely cards.

whishing a peaceful weekend.

Kaoutar and Sara

Like most primary classrooms in the springtime, we continue to learn about the life cycles of plants and creatures found in nature. In our classroom, we set up an “observation station” with a magnifier and four caterpillars for children to see the life cycle of a butterfly take place. Every day they visit the observation area and some of them write and draw what they have observed. Children are very fascinated by the rate of change and growth of the caterpillars. Everyone is eagerly awaiting the chrysalises, the final phases of the caterpillars’ development before they emerge as butterflies.

We also went for a nature scavenger hunt on our playground. Children had so much fun carrying their clipboards with a checklist and hunting for natural objects including soil, leaves, and bugs!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

Kaoutar and Sara

Earth Day is all about our beautiful earth environment and a reminder of how we all interact with it. Earth Day is a reminder about our precious and limited natural resources and the need to be considerate everyday about our planet earth. We can simply celebrate it by planting a tree, digging a garden, or going for a nature walk.

In the classroom, we have our science unit on how plants grow and we are planting more seeds for Earth Day. We incorporate the Three Rs about “reduce, recycle, and reuse” by using the recycling bin as part of our daily routine. We also read books in celebration of Earth Day to learn how to be mindful and caring about our planet Earth.

Wishing you a happy Earth Day.

Kaoutar and Sara