At the beginning of the week our toddlers entered the environment and were so excited to find a new object. This object is an all time favorite piece of equipment that offer great benefits to your children: The slide.

Slides are encouraging to kids and invigorating to play on. Children will climb almost anything if it means going down a slide. Since they use it over and over, it encourages balance, coordination, and spatial awareness. It also teaches the children social skills and organization. The children loved it!

With popular activities like this one, we set specific rules, the purpose of which are: Taking turns, purposeful delays, and teaching self-control. No matter how excited or how compulsive a toddler can be, learning to be patient is a necessary process that promotes good character. Children are never too young to start working on these character areas.

As children continue to work on body awareness we introduced a grace and courtesy activity called: Walking around a floor mat. As children have demonstrated interest in starting to use rugs to place their works on (as is typical in our Montessori classrooms), we practiced how to be aware of these mats and walk carefully around them. The purpose of the floor mats is to define the students’ workspace and to reinforce Montessori’s principle of freedom within limits.

For food tasting we enjoyed some broccoli this week! 9 of 10 children loved it!

As February ends, we welcome March with great enthusiasm and hope! We appreciate winter but spring and warm weather will arrive soon and we can’t wait until it’s here!

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 himself and others. Watching toddlers making friends for the first time is truly a delight! In our environment, our youngest ones shows excitement every morning when they see their friends and even though some of them don’t have words yet, they point to their friends with a big smile on their faces, pat their friends on the back (or on their heads), offer hugs, make sounds practicing the other child’s name, and some of them even bring materials to share. Our oldest have started to enjoy working in pairs and they try to find each other throughout the morning to share activities. To celebrate friendship, we gathered together last week and shared some love, some valentines, and some yummy fruit and treats provided by you all! Thanks so much! The children had a lot of fun!

A new leadership role was introduced this week. This one is part of our Care of the Environment curriculum called: 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; the mental task of sequencing; they learn to exercise the judgment of size and capacity in matching flowers to vases and in pouring water; also, manual dexterity in using scissors. This activity also indirectly prepares your child for botany studies in our Primary programs and offers a great opportunity to work on independence and concentration. Your children love it! We can’t thank you enough for your weekly flower donations!

This week also, we welcomed a new student and her family! We are excited that she and her parents joined our FWM community!

Two new books have made the list of favorites in our class. These ones are two very loved singalong books from Barefoot Books. One is called The Animal Boogie and the other The Farmyard Jamboree! We highly recommend them if you want to add them to your library!

For food tasting your children tried delicious and sour lemons. They are a great source of vitamin C during the winter months. Did the children like them? Judge for yourself. Enjoy the pictures!