Your children continue to observe patiently how our very hungry caterpillars fulfill  their metamorphosis process and become beautiful painted lady butterflies! They have already witnessed how these tiny caterpillars have grown, climbed up, positioned themselves upside down and how quickly they had made their chrysalis.

At some moments the children seem to despair a bit because the butterflies are not coming out so this has been a great opportunity to talk and reflect about the importance of waiting and being patient. The children have helped to collect nature items to decorate our glass house and prepare the environment for when the butterflies emerge. We might come back on Monday to find butterflies out of their chrysalis but we are having our fingers crossed for them to wait and give the VIP show to the children next week. Regardless of what happens, we can’t wait for next week!

To reinforce this special life cycle lesson, the children have learned a new song and since it has been so LOVED by your children, we want to share it with you at the end of this note, so you can rock it at home and watch your children dance to it. We hope you enjoy watching them dance to this song as much as we do everyday!

Another highlight of this week has been the introduction to a Pikler triangle into our movement area. Children have been thrilled to explore it and challenge themselves in it. Using this equipment enhances gross motor development, Increases spatial awareness, provides vestibular stimulation, strengthens limbs, promotes proprioceptive learning (physical self-awareness) and enables open-ended play. A Big shout out to Mrs. Wilson in our toddler team for sharing this equipment with our class!

For food tasting children explored crunchy cucumbers and had a good time sharing about the purple item they brought from home. We absolutely love to witness the explosion of vocabulary that your children are experiencing lately! It has been so fun to hear them express themselves much more clearly!

Lastly, Mrs. Maria and I want to thank you for the love shown through this teacher’s appreciation week.  Your children’s cards are treasures to us and we value every expression of love coming from you all!  We feel so honored knowing each of your toddlers and working together with you to create the most beautiful experience for each of your children.

Enjoy the pics,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

 

This week we started exploring colors and discovering how mixing colors together creates new ones! We did the walking water experiment and we watched and observed the different changes in it during the week.  Children got to see the magic happening right in front of their eyes: We made a rainbow!

This reminded me of the importance of community! We for sure can shine by ourselves but the beauty and the brightness is stronger when we can rely on each other. A very strong sense of purpose and belonging is critical for all of us as humans.

In our toddler environment, it is evident how children already feel like a family. It’s common to hear parents to tell us each morning how excited their child is to come to school and we couldn’t be happier to know this! Your children are more than students to us! We belong together and we like it so much!

In the next couple of days and weeks there will be a couple of events that serve to strengthen our FWM community, and the toddlers, of course, are so excited to be part of it. We hope you can join us too!

This coming Sunday, May 1st,  is our FWM Auction and the toddlers worked on creating an artistic piece to participate in it. A couple of months ago I found this little cute bench and I brought it into our environment and since that day, children LOVE  rocking and reading their books on it. So, we decided to donate it for the auction and children worked this week on painting it in a very fun way! We can’t wait for you to see it this Sunday! We hope one family can really enjoy this little bench that comes with a lot of love from our toddler class!

We want to thank Kate and Patricia, who volunteered their time to come and work with the children for this project! We appreciate you SO much!

The children also worked this week with Mrs. Reid, our school art teacher for our upcoming School Art show. From May 9th through May 20th, Parents can come inside the building and view the art work from every child in the school, between the hours of 9am-2:30pm.

There are more events on the horizon for all of us to get connected, but for now we are going to leave you here with these two. We hope you also can participate and help us create a beautiful “rainbow”.

Enjoy the weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

P.S. Your children love kumquats and we love to see their faces testing them! Yum! 🙂

“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. 

We enjoy this season so much and we hope you do too! Happy Earth’s day!

Enjoy the weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria 

This week we continued with our eggs and chickens theme. Children learned that chickens don’t have teeth but they use their beak to crush their food, they have feathers but they can’t fly very far, and they also enjoy eating some worms and seeds. To bring a real life experience to this topic, each child got to explore an egg. We introduced vocabulary words like shell, egg white, and yolk. They also had the opportunity to practice their fine motor skills by learning how to peel their own egg. They seemed to enjoy cracking the egg and carefully peeling the shell, then they had the opportunity to taste it. Some of them were really excited to see their egg also had a yolk like the one I presented. I encourage you to add this activity at home! Children were feeling very proud of themselves!

To reinforce the Spanish language, the children were also introduced to a fun Spanish song called: Los Pollitos. By the way,  in Spanish, the chicks say, “Pio, pio,” instead of “Chirp, chirp.” Just an interesting cultural bonus sent your way :). Children requested this song over and over, so we wanted to share it with you and let your children show you all the movements that go with it, while, of course, practicing their Spanish and having fun!

We also explored the color RED during our sharing time! Children loved talking about their objects and one of the students delighted us all while playing his red harmonica. Of course, this encouraged his peers to get up and dance and we had a blast!

Finally, for food tasting we explored black beans and even though this food item didn’t receive an outstanding ovation by all, some children asked for seconds.

We hope you all have a wonderful Easter and enjoy this long weekend together!

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria 

Life cycles are all around us. They are part of us and part of every living thing. Explaining and illustrating life cycles can be an important milestone for children, helping them to learn how better to respect and care for those around them.

Spring is definitely the perfect season to introduce these concepts as the children not only receive information about it but learn to observe and appreciate so many of these wonders happening  just in front of their eyes.

In our language area, this week we introduced “Eggs and Chickens” as a unit of study for the next few weeks. We focused on two concepts so far: chickens come from eggs, and a baby chicken is called a chick.

Using books and an educational video clip, children got to observe how a chicken comes out of the egg and the smiles on the children’s faces demonstrated the amazement that life brings. There were giggles of happiness and many “cheep, cheep,”  “pio, pio,” and “gobble, gobble” sounds from the children’s mouths. Children even clapped their hands at the end of the video :). There is also a matching object to picture work on the shelf and plenty of other works using eggs to reinforce this topic.

On another note, we introduced two new works in the movement area. These both were the most popular works in the environment this week. The first was oversized blocks for building and imagination. Children exercise their need for maximum effort through this work and it offers a great opportunity for problem solving and bonding with a peer. The second: a new individual rocker that is also used as a climber!

For food tasting, we explored a mushroom. As children touched, observed and smelled the mushroom, the most recurrent adjective we heard was “stinky,” however, as we encouraged the children throughout  the presentation to not get deceived by the looks or smells of a food, but always try the food since they might get surprised, children followed the advice and I happily report that the mushroom was very well received by 98% of the class who kept asking for more and more at the moment of tasting it.

This week we explored the color BLUE.  Children seemed to enjoy sharing their blue items brought from home for our sharing time. They were thrilled to be able to sit in the teacher’s chair this week and share verbally about their objects. With few or many words, this is becoming one beloved activity in our environment. We thank you again for your support to make this happen.

Lastly, we celebrated together the life of one of our special friends and we couldn’t be more proud of how much growth has happened in her life.

Enjoy the weekend and see you next week!

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

I remember a couple of years ago sitting by a small window and observing the gigantic icicles that covered my view. Suddenly I noticed how, so slowly, water started to drip from the icicles on a sunny morning! I remember so clearly how this sense of joy filled my life! This was the end of my first winter in America and since then, I love the hope that spring brings when Earth seems to wake up and become alive again! Longer, warmer, and sunnier days, windows opened, greener views, flowers growing, trees budding, birds singing, and that crisp in the air are just some of the things that spring offers us and that we all appreciate!

To celebrate the return to school and the beginning of spring, the children worked on an art project creating a spring crown. They worked hard and attentively by painting and then gluing flowers and stickers on it. Together we got to say good-bye to winter and welcome spring by talking and learning about all the changes that we will be observing in the coming weeks  and naturally, sharing some treats together and dancing our hearts out. Shout out to Rebecca Page for baking those amazing cupcakes for all the class to enjoy! We truly appreciate your help!

On another note, due to the increasing amount of vocabulary your children use and recognize now, this week we introduced an activity beloved by all the children: sharing time!

I personally love this activity because it provides an opportunity for your child to develop expressive language as they learn to create and construct language. This act involves organizing ideas in sequence so they will make sense when communicated with others, choosing the words to say, and constructing a clear syntax. It’s a lot of work for our little friends but they ALL did such an amazing job sharing about their yellow object they brought from home!

Another reason why we added this activity to our environment was because of the enhancement of confidence it gives to your child: As they share something of themselves with one another, they gain confidence in becoming the focus of the group’s attention. They find out others are interested in them, they discover that there are things that they know about, and they feel good about themselves doing it! It was truly priceless to see their smiling faces and how proud they felt when they had a turn to share. It is never too early to start practicing public speaking and there is nothing better than allowing confidence to develop in a safe and familiar environment. Also, receptive language development is promoted as children listen to and comprehend the meaning of the speaker’s words.

Lastly, we celebrated a friend’s 2nd birthday and explored pineapple for food tasting! So sweet!

We can’t wait for all the adventures in the upcoming weeks as we explore and enjoy spring 2022!

Please remember to send your child with a rain coat and boots! We can’t wait for the puddle jumping season!

Enjoy the pictures,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

Color recognition can provide children with essential learning tools in life. For example, in mathematics, color recognition is used to categorize, sort, compare, and organize. Additionally, as children learn to identify colors and use color as a language tool to describe things, it develops and strengthens their ability to communicate effectively. Recognizing and identifying the color names is an important part of a child’s development. It is considered a marker and milestone in a child’s cognitive process.

Colors are part of our daily lessons throughout the school year when using the different materials, games, books, songs, and activities in our environment. This week, due to the upcoming holiday of St. Patrick’s day, we focused on studying the colors of the rainbow and children just seemed to love it!

As introductory activities this week, we used a lot of verbal communication, sorting and classifying games and activities. Verbal communication is a great way to teach the children about colors as we give them some vocabulary for starting to describe the world around them. With our youngest we focused on the primary colors, and with our oldest we worked on recognizing and identifying secondary colors and their light and dark shades. 

Exploring food color is one fun way to connect children with their surroundings. Who knew that colors also serve a nutritional purpose? 🙂 Children learned that it’s important to “eat a rainbow” meaning that it’s important to eat fruits and vegetables from each color to keep our bodies strong and healthy. During snack and lunch, children started to share and have conversations about the colors they saw on their plate. We encourage you to do this at home as well.  

On another note, children were very curious about what food we were going to taste this week as they recognize this activity as a part of our weekly routine. Every week they are hopeful the food tasting item is cake. 😉 Children explored and tasted asparagus, which was very well received by most of the children.  

We can’t wait to continue to explore this beautiful, colorful world with your children when they return. 

Enjoy the pictures and we hope you have a fantastic Spring break!

Stay safe, warm and happy!

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria 

Human emotion. We are so very lucky to each experience such a wide-ranging set of feelings, but that experience can be quite the roller coaster, especially if you are a toddler.

Supporting and teaching  emotional intelligence to our students is  definitely one of our main goals. We do so, first of all, by teaching the toddlers to identify and name emotions; their own emotions and the emotions they see in others.  It’s also a good to teach children there are a range of emotions and ALL  emotions are OK. Once children can name their emotions they can better express themselves, feel heard and understood. We can then help the child develop techniques to manage the emotion.

During the last couple of weeks we have focused on talking about this in our environment. We use songs, group games, emotion cards and beautiful books to practice their names and what that emotion looks like. This week, children also had the opportunity to use the emotion cards as an individual work using a table mirror. The children seem to love to observe  the picture cards and copy the facial expressions in the mirror. With the older toddlers, we also use this work as enrichment of vocabulary activities  by establishing conversations with the child and wondering together what they think happened to the children in the picture. Why are they feeling that way? Oh! the stories they come up with are just so great!

Some of the emotions the children have been already introduced to are: happy, sad, angry, silly, excited, scared, shy and surprised. In the coming months we will continue to add more to the list.

For some of you that are very interested in the books we read in the classroom, the favorite books this week has been: In My Heart by Jo Witek, The Feelings Book by Todd Parr, The Color Monster by Anna Llenas, The Calm Down Time and Feet Are Not For Kicking by Elizabeth Verdick. In another note Where is the Poop by Julie Markes and Come Out Mr. Poo by Janelle McGuiness are some of the favorite books as well 🙂

As final highlights, we welcomed a new student and her family to our class, had a blast celebrating wonderful Ms. Maria and we got to surprise our nurse, Mrs. Benoit!  For food tasting we explored Lemons and oh boy! It was fun! Children learned a new word and after tasting the lemon they couldn’t stop saying it: SOUR!

Enjoy the weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Mrs. Maria