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 jingle bells and colorful ornaments, tweezing pretend presents, and flipping pretend latkes in the pan. 

Another highlight of this week was the introduction of a beloved work by all the children: a baby doll. Her name is Rosie. Through this work, children practice grace and courtesy, gentleness, and a lot of patience, since everybody wants to take care of the baby. Children enjoy this work so much! Some of them cuddle Rosie with such care while others seem to quietly enjoy observing her and pointing to and naming some parts of her body. 

Also, as children have shown readiness to safely practice climbing up and down the stairs independently, we presented the climber in our movement area. Aside from being a basic life skill, this exercise helps them build leg muscles, strengthens their balance and coordination, and boosts spatial awareness. 

For food tasting, the children tried a fun seasonal fruit, papaya! As always, children were very attentive to this activity and were eager to taste this fruit! I am happy to report that papaya was approved by 70% of the  class! 🙂 I encourage you all to continue exposing your toddlers to this wonderful fruit. For even more sweetness, I recommend you to add a Hawaiian papaya to your grocery list! Yum!

Warm regards, 

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria

Dr. Maria Montessori introduced Practical Life exercises to provide the children with opportunities to perform simple tasks that they have already observed at home. Practical Life exercises enable the children to care for themselves, take care of the environment, and develop respect for others.

Care of environment activities encourage the child to interact with the environment, exhibiting respect and love. These activities help the child form a connection with their environment and find a personal responsibility towards it.

This week we introduced one of the most beloved activities in our Montessori environments: flower arrangement. This is a beautiful activity that offers so much to your child’s development. Through this exercise, children develop a sense of beauty, work on the mental task of sequencing, and learn to exercise their judgment of size and capacity in matching flowers to vases and also in pouring water. This activity also indirectly prepares your child for botany studies in our Primary program and offers a great opportunity to work on independence and concentration.

Another highlight of our week was our first lesson on food tasting. As children grow beyond the infant stage, they begin the journey to independence as toddlers. Many parents notice this change in their children when it comes to mealtime, as they begin to hear a resounding “no!” when it comes to eating the foods they once loved and trying new ones. In order to help families, we have integrated food tasting into our toddler program as a way to ease children into the idea of trying new foods by teaching them all about the food and encouraging them to participate as a group. 

This week we introduced some delicious yellow peppers. 

Children were really excited to see the food tasting tray covered. They knew there was a surprise and they immediately gathered quietly around the tray. They were attentive at the moment we removed the towel that was covering the pepper.  The pepper was presented as a whole first, then cut in front of them, presented as half, and then served individually while following all COVID safety guidelines. In our conversation we included such adjectives as cold, big, smooth, yellow, and tasty to keep adding to our vocabulary.

Children observed while I slowly picked up a piece of pepper and placed it inside my mouth, tasting it slowly and dramatically, with the purpose of encouraging curiosity and expectation when it was their turn to taste. They immediately started to ask for their turn to taste it! They really liked it! 

From now on, these two exercises will be available in our environment every week! Thank you SO much to the Mica family for the gorgeous flowers they donated this week and thank you all for your support providing your own child’s food tasting. Your support is greatly appreciated. 

Happy weekend, 

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria 

The crisp in the air, the change of colors in the trees, and the smell of pumpkins tell us fall is finally here, and we celebrated in a special way this week. Due to COVID we are making adjustments to different events and traditions we hold dear in our hearts here at FWM, but that didn’t stop us from having fun at our little Fraser Farm.   

Our little ones got very excited when we told them we were going pumpkin picking. We told them they needed to keep their eyes open and let us know if they saw some nice pumpkins. They walked quietly as a group around the school’s halls until they were able to spot the pumpkins displayed in our beautiful Zen garden. This is a new place they have never visited before as a group. As they entered the garden,  they not only focused on the pumpkins, but on the whole new environment. They explored the trees, the benches, the bridge, and contemplated the sky. Something they seemed to enjoy was hearing their steps while they walked on the tiny rocks.

Each child chose a pumpkin and used their muscles to carry it around and place it into the wagon to be transported to the classroom. In the classroom, children had some extra fun freely painting their chosen pumpkin.

We want to give a big shout out to the Cinquegrana family for the pumpkin donations for the class! We are always so appreciative of the support of our families! 🙂 

Also, thank you all for meeting with Ms. Maria and I last week during Parent-Teacher Conferences! It was really great to spend some time with each one of you and share stories and the progress each of your children have made so far! 

It’s truly an honor to be able to see your children grow in our community!

Enjoy the pictures,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. 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 progression order, from easiest to hardest, and from left to right. This logical structure encourages children to organize their thinking and 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 fun highlights from this week were the introduction of water transferring using a dropper. It’s a challenging work but children were so proud of themselves when they were able to make the dropper work and hear the sound of the water touching the silver bowl. The children named this work “Squeeze and Open” as they worked hard to coordinate their hand movement while repeating those words. 

The children also received a surprise this week! They were able to work their gross and fine motor skills while using chalk or brushes and painting with water on our new giant chalkboard.  They seem to love it so much! 

Children also enjoyed making pumpkin sun catchers and taking sunflower seeds out of a huge mammoth sunflower head, strengthening their pincer grip.  

Ms. Maria and I can’t wait to “see” you next week for our Parent- Teacher Conference through Zoom and to talk more in detail about your child’s progress. 

Enjoy the pictures,

Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria