Winter holidays are used in our environment as a fun way to keep children engaged, encourage joy of learning, and help us to introduce the passage of time and seasons. Since they bring a sense of light and joyfulness to the long, dark winter months and create a sense of community, we welcome them wholeheartedly. 

In addition to other materials, some of the favorite holiday works in our environment have been placing little ornaments onto the Christmas tree, placing candles on the Menorah, spooning and transferring holiday jewels  and colorful ornaments and flipping pretend latkes in the pan.

Holiday songs have also been present in our environment daily and children have had some fun times playing and dancing with the jingle bells!

This week we also introduced grapefruit as food tasting and let me tell you how well  this fruit was received by your toddlers. Even students that don’t really like fruits were eager to try it and ask for more!  

We can’t wait for our holiday pajama celebration next week! Please feel free to send your child in pajamas on Wednesday, December 15th and thank you in advance for all your support to make this happen!

Have a joyful weekend,

Mrs. Hood and Mrs. Maria

Hand-eye coordination is one of the most important parts of the learning process. It helps your child track the movements of their hands with their eyes, which is essential for reading and decoding. Because your child also uses their visual system with hand-eye coordination, it can greatly impact their writing skills and handwriting as they use their eyes to guide, direct, and control their hand movements across the page as they write letters and words.

Our Toddler environment is set up in a specific way, looking to sharpen and challenge these skills while meeting your child exactly where they are developmentally. Each material is displayed in progressive order, from easiest to hardest, and from left to right. This logical structure encourages children to organize their thinking and to absorb the outcome of the material at their own pace. The left to right orientation of the materials also assists children with preparation for reading and writing, and is the way that the brain naturally processes information.

Some of the most popular works in our environment these days, sharpening these skills, are peeling, cutting, transferring, and serving a banana, the nesting forest animals, the shapes box, cranberry transferring, gluing work, matching pictures from children around the world, vehicle object to picture matching, and using a dropper to transfer water, along with many more. 

On another note, last week we had a great time baking banana bread. Children learned names of ingredients and had the opportunity to touch, smell, watch, and obviously taste the fruit of their work during our Thanksgiving celebration. Gratitude is definitely something we cultivate every day in our environment. We are conscious that showing gratitude is an important part of who we are as humans. It strengthens our relationships and our connection to our communities and even makes us happier and more compassionate people.

Although adults understand the worth in expressing gratitude, young children find it more difficult. Gratitude involves being sensitive and empathetic to others, and truly appreciating what others do for you. While children can quickly learn to say please and thank you, it takes time and guidance to help them truly learn to be grateful. Using The Thankful Book, we have had multiple conversations and it has been great to hear children start expressing thankfulness for things like mommies, daddies, siblings, and of course hair, shoes, ears, ice cream, dinosaurs, and “horsies”. 

During this time we also welcomed a new student and her family to finally complete our class, celebrated two wonderful birthdays – one of those mine (THANK YOU VERY MUCH!) – and explored sweet potatoes and pomegranates as a class. 

As always we couldn’t do this without your support so we honestly thank you for it and for entrusting your children to us every day! 

As we all prepare for the holiday season, we wish you joy, love, and peace. 

Enjoy the pictures, 

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

Learning cannot happen without concentration. Concentration cannot happen without interest. Whether we are learning to brush our teeth, write our name, bake a cake, or solve complex algebraic equations, there is intense concentration specific to the task at hand.

Concentration is a skill that needs practice to improve and develop.

Our Montessori classroom provides an environment that offers the time and opportunity to practice deep concentration. The uninterrupted work period enables the children to focus on a task for as long as they wish without an adult-imposed schedule. The adult in the environment is cautious not to interrupt and break the children’s concentration. As the ability to concentrate improves, the children also develop better self-control and self-regulation.

What can we do to nurture and protect concentration at home?

In recent times there has been a strong social message for parents to spend lots of ‘quality time’ with children. This could be because of the increased amount of time typically spent away from the home. Parents sometimes fear their children may get bored and try to compensate for the loss of quality time by providing videos, iPads, and computer games that can keep children occupied.

It is important to spend meaningful time with your children interacting with them. It is just as important to offer children the opportunity for self-initiated play and the time to become bored. The best way to develop concentration is to practice it, and the best way to let children practice is to avoid interrupting when they are beginning to pay attention to something.

Here are some suggestions for you to do at home:

• Observe your child and identify what it is that holds his attention.
• Arrange the materials he uses so they are accessible and organized.
• Nurture his creative endeavors.
• Resist the urge to interrupt when he is deeply concentrating. Just supervise.
• Be a good role model and show your child that you have work that needs concentration.
• Provide uninterrupted time to complete his task or activity.
• Ensure your child has opportunity to develop his gross motor skills through outdoor play.
• Work on relaxation and introduce meditation or quiet time at the end of the day.

Adapting these practices at home will support your child to develop concentration, a skill essential to success in schooling and life.

“Concentration is a part of life. It is not the consequence of a method of education.” ~Maria Montessori

Best,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

Last week we celebrated the Fall harvest with our annual wagon ride and visit to our very own “Fraser Farm” located in our Zen garden which was transformed into a beautiful Pumpkin patch for our toddlers to explore.

First the children were invited to ride in wagons all around the school knowing that they needed to keep their eyes open for the pumpkin patch. The children seemed to enjoy the ride and were eager to find the pumpkins.

Once we arrived at our Fraser Farm,  children were ecstatic to run around and pick their own pumpkin. There were giggles and so much excitement! Children explored different sizes of pumpkins and worked hard to carry them around. We all had a great time! When the time came, every toddler got into their wagon, carrying their  chosen pumpkin and we went for another ride around the school arriving  at our classroom, satisfied with the experience and happy to hold their pumpkin.

A big shout out to our wonderful Middle School students who happily offered to pull the wagons for us. Also a big THANK YOU to Angela Giorgio for helping with communications  and Patricia Martinez for finding the decorations, wagons and purchasing the pumpkins for all the children.  Thank you to all of you as well who donated  for the pumpkins.  We are thankful to be part of a community that cares!

We also celebrated life and growth with two birthdays and got to enjoy some delicious treats! It was a celebration week and we went for it!

We thank you so much for sharing some time with us during Parent-teacher conferences! It’s truly one of our favorite times of the year because we get to talk more in detail about all the wonderful observations we have seen in each of your children. There is so much that happens here at school that won’t ever fit in a weekly blog! Thank you for partnering with us in providing the best experience for all our toddlers!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria