We had a lively week of celebrations, lessons, and sandwich making.

Our week started with an enjoyable day of Halloween celebrations. We began the day with a costume parade around the field to the amusement of the Toddler and Primary children. After our parade, we joined Kindergarten, Lower El, and Middle School for FWM Monthly, a meeting run by our eighth graders each month. After our meeting, we returned to our room for our class party. Thank you to all who contributed yummy treats for our celebration! In the afternoon we had a great time scooping and carving our pumpkins.

The middle of our week was packed with lessons and classwork. In Biology, we continued with our Vital Functions of Plants lessons. This week we learned about the needs of the plant. In History, students collaborated on research of Homo habilis. Next week they will present their research to the class and begin a class timeline of the evolution of humans. They will then work on research of Homo erectus. In Geometry, the fourth graders learned about key parts of polygons and the fifth graders learned to prove equivalence of a trapezoid to two different rectangles. Individualized math lessons were in abundance this week, as well as collaborative work on vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Perhaps the highlight of the week was the end. On Friday we spent the morning enthusiastically making sandwiches for the St. Vincent DePaul Mission in Waterbury. This mission “support[s] and empower[s] people experiencing poverty, [housing insecurity], hunger, and mental health challenges so they may recover with dignity and develop sustainable solutions for a brighter future.” (svdpmission.org) This is a monthly activity in Upper El and is work that the children love. Maria Montessori’s vision was of a peaceful world, created through children. With this in mind, we intentionally plan lessons and spend time teaching our students to care for the Earth and its inhabitants. Our monthly community service work helps students become caring, empathetic people who think beyond themselves and feel the joy of giving.

“I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.” -Maya Angelou

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.” -Issac Asimov

We start each morning with quiet writing time. We warm up for writing with a journal entry and then move into our personal narrative writing time. We are learning the stages of writing a personal narrative: prewriting, first draft, revising, editing, and publishing. Most students are finishing up their first drafts and are working on revising them. They will edit next, first with a peer and then with a teacher, before moving on to publishing. This has become a very pleasant way to enter into our work cycle each morning and provides a nice bridge between our arrival activities of recess-yoga-read aloud, and the work cycle. We are finding that this quiet writing time really settles the children and prepares them to have a focused work time.

We had two highlights of our week. The first was a fabulous snare drum presentation by one of our fifth graders who recently joined a fife and drum corps. The second was the fire safety presentation by the Botsford Fire Department. They demonstrated what to do if there is a fire in your house, how to feel for heat from a fire on a closed door, and how to get out of the house safely. They also showed us how smoke moves through a house and we got to sit in their fire truck and ask questions about the equipment inside the truck. The presentation ended with a demonstration and explanation of all of the gear a firefighter wears and how to operate a fire extinguisher.

During our short, but productive week we had our first student-led, Upper El Community Meeting, lessons, and our first Eighth grade-led monthly meeting of the year.

During our Upper El community meetings, the fifth graders lead. They consult our class binder to set the agenda and lead us through the meeting steps of: stating the problem as a question, brainstorming solutions, openly discussing options as a class, and taking a vote on the final solution. Teacher involvement during our meetings consists of note-taking, occasionally contributing to the open discussion, and recording the results of the vote. The fifth graders did an amazing job! They kept the class on topic, moved us from one step to another, and facilitated a very productive meeting. We are looking forward to many more meetings throughout the year!

In history we are learning about early human cultures. This week we learned about Homo habilis who lived 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa. Over the next week students will work in small groups to research more information about the Habilenes to share with the class and add to our Timeline of Humans. In biology we learned about the concept of taxonomy and the classification system used to label and study plants and animals. Students will use this information in future botany research as we study the vital functions of plants this year.

Our week ended with our October Birthday Breakfast and the first monthly eighth grade-led meeting. Upper El students had a great time gathering with first through eighth graders to hear highlights from each level, Lower El through Middle School, and play an energetic game of Freeze Dance.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Karen and Angie

“When the child goes out, it is the world itself that offers itself to [them]. Let us take the child out to show [them] real things instead of making objects which represent ideas and closing them in cupboards.” -Maria Montessori

The highlight of this week was an amazing field trip to The Adventure Park; full of climbing, zip lines, bravery, and trust. Each of us challenged ourselves to try elements of the ropes course which were challenging and, at times, even a little scary. Every student should be proud of the effort they put in today, not only in their own experience of trying new things, but also in the help and encouragement they extended to their classmates along the way. They worked together, with more experienced climbers helping the less experienced ones. They offered words of motivation when friends were nervous and they cheered when their peers completed a course. These students exhibited outstanding teamwork. Bravo Upper El!

“There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving.” -Maria Montessori

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.” -Amelia Earhart

A beautiful thing happened this week. We have a math material in elementary called the test tubes. It is used for division and contains 100 beads for each place value, units through millions. That’s 700 beads. While a student was putting this material away after completing their math work, they dropped it. 700 beads on the floor. Immediately the class sprang into action. Without a word from a teacher. Students stopped what they were working on and quietly came to help their friend find each and every bead and place them back in the test tubes. They did this joyfully, chatting with each other cooperatively, turning what could have been a stressful event for that friend into one that created feelings of being supported completely. This is empathy. As I talked with the student who dropped the beads after everything was cleaned up, it was clear that they felt the love and kindness of their classmates. This kind of thing happens all the time in our classroom and in each of the other classrooms throughout our school. We can learn so much from our children.

I leave you with this quote from Maria Montessori. “Let us treat them [children], therefore, with all the kindness which we would wish to help to develop in them.”

Wishing you a lovely weekend,

Karen and Angie

“…we have before us in the child a psychic entity, a social group of immense size, a veritable world-power if rightly used. If salvation and help are to come, it is from the child, for the child is the constructor of man, and so of society. The child is endowed with an inner power which can guide us to a more luminous future. Education should no longer be mostly about the imparting of knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentialities.” -Maria Montessori

This week we celebrated the International Day of Peace, a day established in 1981 by the United Nations for all of humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace (internationaldayofpeace.org). On this day each year, we join Montessori schools from around the world to Sing for Peace. Peace education is a major part of the Montessori curriculum, in fact, Maria Montessori is considered by many to be a founder of peace education. As Montessorians, we believe that the root of peace lays in the education of young children and we work with students to establish global citizenship, respect for differences, and personal responsibility from a very young age. It was really wonderful to gather as a school again this year, toddler through middle school, to sing for peace with elementary and middle school children signing the song as they sang.

Our Upper Elementary lessons this week included lots of individualized math and spelling work. The fourths learned about the Seven Triangles of Reality and the fifths learned about proving equivalence between a triangle and a rectangle and a rhombus and a rectangle. In biology we learned about the classification system scientists use to categorized living things. In history we began our lessons on Human Evolution with an examination of what it means to be human.

Wishing you a peaceful weekend,

Karen and Angie

This week we dove further into our typical class routines. On Monday morning, the children chose their job for the week. This will happen each Monday. Our jobs this year, decided on by the children, are: Attendance, Lunch and Dishes, Care of Living Things, Floor Cleaner, Supplies, Books and Games, Writing the Board, Shelves, Lamps and Diffuser, and Trash and Compost. Doing jobs and contributing to the community is part of daily life in a Montessori classroom. Taking care of their own environment helps the children to take ownership of their space and teaches them responsibility.

We started to have some work cycles this week. Each student had an initial math assessment and lesson followed by an assignment to complete during work cycle. Everyone also completed their first spelling lesson. Next week we will begin our group lessons in each of the other subject areas. Our lesson schedule is: Monday – Geometry, Tuesday – Science, Thursday – History, and Friday – Language.

Literature Circle discussions began this week as well. Each of the two groups did a nice job discussing the first 42 pages of their books. They received their first Lit Circle assignment on Wednesday, to read the next set of pages and complete their role sheet. Completed role sheets and books need to be brought to school each Wednesday in preparation for the weekly Lit Circle meeting.

We are in the process of planning our first field trip of the year on October 4th. Please look for an email next week with details and an opportunity to sign up to join us on our trip. We can take two parents with us so check your schedules!