Color recognition can provide children with essential learning tools in life. For example, color recognition is used in mathematics 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 important to 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. However, during the next weeks, we will purposely focus on studying the colors of the rainbow.

As introductory activities this week, we used a lot of verbal communication, sorting, and small group games. 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.

As a Sensorial experience, we decided to explore together the color green a little bit more since many of the materials and decorations in our environment have this color right now due to San Patrick’s day coming up. Children were encouraged to create green by mixing yellow and blue playdough! And oh boy! They seemed to enjoy that!

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 eating fruits and vegetables from each color to keep our bodies strong and healthy. During snack and lunch, children started to share and discuss the colors they saw on their plates. We encourage you to do this at home as well.

On another note, the children were very curious about what food we would taste this week, as they recognized this activity as a part of our weekly routine. So, the children explored and tasted lemons, which was very well received by most of the children, and we enjoyed the pucker little faces. Sour and juicy were the words to describe this fruit.

Reminder: Please make sure your child has proper snow gear at school. This includes snow pants and boots, a winter coat, a hat, and waterproof mittens with their clips. We want your child to be comfortable and safe while exploring outdoors. Thanks!

See you next week,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Marissa

“Of all things, love is the most potent.” – Maria Montessori

Humans have an innate desire to connect, to experience dynamic relationships with one another. At around 18 months, there are notable changes in cognitive skills that help real friendships blossom. The toddler becomes more consciously aware of themselves and others. Watching toddlers making friends for the first time is truly a delight! In our environment, children show excitement every morning when they see their amigos and love practicing their names. Younger toddlers, still working on their expressive language, like to point to their friends with big smiles and do a little dance of happiness. During circle time, children look to sit closer to their buddies. Daily, we count how many children are present in Spanish and always reflect on who is not in class. Children seem to enjoy eating snacks together, and they love walking while holding hands.

Grace and courtesy is one of the most critical areas in our Montessori curriculum. Grace is the outer expression of our inner selves as observed in body language and movements: facial expressions such as smiles, eye contact, tone of voice, inflection, body movements, and the actual words used to express ourselves. Courtesy is the manners given for human interaction. As we all know, neither grace nor courtesy are instinctive but acquired. This is why in our Toddler environment, we use constant, daily lessons in this area through intentional modeling rather than specific lessons presented, as children will encounter at our Primary levels. It’s truly amazing to observe how your children continue to grow in gentleness, respect for each other, care and expressions of kindness, etc.,  despite their young age. It’s SO wonderful!

On another note, based on the coming Valentine’s day, children have been exploring new works on the shelves and preparing for our Friendship Celebration! They worked this week on a little art project that will be added to their Valentine’s bags.

Lastly, in the movement area, we got to say goodbye to the stairs structure and welcomed a fun Pikler triangle. Children practice using this structure to practice balancing, climbing, reaching, pulling, and falling. As a result, children begin to understand their strengths and abilities and gain better control of their movement. We also explored delicious oranges for our food-tasting lesson!

We leave you here with a sign language song the children started learning this week: “The more we get together!”

Enjoy your weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Miss Marissa 

“The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.” – Maria Montessori

Art is one of the many ways children express themselves. When it comes to art, it is the process, not the product that is important to the child. As adults, our goal is to produce a product, but the child interacts with the world differently. The child works to develop self. The focus is on the process, not the product. Once a child creates something, they do not feel the need to keep the product. It is the process that gives them satisfaction and inner joy.

In our Montessori environment, art materials teach each skill separately so that the children can combine them on their own: line drawing with crayons, holding and managing colored chalk, cutting without and with a guideline, stamping, working with clay, painting with watercolors, etc.  All of these skills will be mastered independently and then combined at the child’s discretion in some grand piece of artwork later on in their development.

This week we added a fun Sensorial experience to tie in with our winter studies: ice cube painting! Children enjoyed creating different pieces of artwork while combining colors, but the truly big point of interest in this exercise was to feel the coldness of the paint! They LOVED painting their hands and were mesmerized for long periods of time by the sensation on their hands!

On another note, older toddlers received a lesson on learning to recognize the special markings of three different types of penguins: emperor, rockhopper, and chinstrap. Children then practice matching the adult penguin with their chicks. Since this is a picture-to-picture matching work and it’s a more abstract concept to grasp, we added an extra control of error on the back of the cards with some color coding stickers so the toddlers can self-correct as they continue to sharpen their observation skills. They also received a lesson about the names of the seasons and their different characteristics using a great puzzle that children like to call the pizza puzzle. This has become one of the most popular works of the week.

Lastly, we all explored parsnips as a food-tasting lesson. I have to confess, it was my first time trying this vegetable and I loved it. I also need to report that it was a very well-received vegetable from your toddlers. Feel free to add it to the grocery list. We also celebrated two great birthdays and the children enjoyed the yummy treats and hearing the stories from the donated books.

Enjoy the weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Marissa

Maria Montessori believed that the initial six years of a child’s life are crucial for their language development; that from birth a child must receive appropriate stimulation. This is also widely recognized by many specialists in language, also when referring to learning foreign languages.

Research shows that learning a second language boosts problem-solving, critical-thinking, and listening skills, in addition to improving memory, concentration, and the ability to multitask. Children proficient in other languages also show signs of enhanced creativity and mental flexibility.

In our environment, children are exposed to Spanish multiple times a day. From songs, to books, to counting, to direct conversations and commands, Spanish is always part of our routines.

As Highlights and in continuation with our winter studies, this week we introduced one of the conditions of water that is truly magical: snowflakes. Thankfully, the weather helped a bit to reinforce this lesson while the children were able to observe the beauty of the snow falling. Children learned that even though snowflakes have in common symmetry and a hexagonal structure, the detailed structures of the snowflakes are totally different, this of course, was introduced to them in a language they can understand.  I can’t stop thinking about how the individuality of a snowflake is parallel to human life. Each one of your children are so unique and so precious and we are grateful we are able to “contemplate” them as they grow and continue to share their beauty.

To tie this lesson with the Spanish language, children have been  learning the song called:  “Copo de nieve” (snowflake) by Super Simple Español. We used fake snowflakes of different sizes to follow the steps of the song and represent the snowflakes falling from the sky, practicing  some body parts such as: cabeza (head), nariz(nose), mano (hand). As time goes on we will continue adding and practicing more body parts in Spanish.  We recommend you to add this song to your playlist and sing it with your little one.

Also using educational videos, books, songs and animal models, we traveled last week to the Arctic and learned about Polar bears and this week we took a trip to Antarctica to learn about Penguins. Children learned simple facts as:

POLAR BEARS	PENGUINS
Are warm blooded	Are birds
Have thick fur	Are expert  divers and fast swimmers
Baby bears are called cubs	Have flippers. They don’t have wings
Have big paws	There are different types of penguins
Live in the Arctic	Live in Antarctica

Children really seem to enjoy being imaginative on the Polar Bear family’s table and had a blast taking the penguins to skate in our Sensory table, where the penguins were stuck in real ice.

Lastly, we explored carrots as food tasting and celebrated one of our friends’  birthday together!

Have a great weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Marissa