Dear Parents,

This is an exciting time of year for our students as they all have had so much to say lately, talking about the holidays. While we are still in session to teach a variety of subjects, we also try to bring in some of the festivities through our lessons. Overall, our students are enthusiastic and they each seem to enjoy the variety that we have to offer at this time of year. Now, where to begin… I’ll start with something upbeat!

Dancers Around the World

For some music and movement, we’ve been learning about various cultures and styles of dancing around the world. I have been showing video clips of performances and calling out common and simple dance moves of each style for the kids to try. For example, South America Latin Ballroom Dancing: “Stand up very straight, shoulders back, elbows bent, point them toes, and look serious!”  Irish Step Dance: “Straighten those arms, tap your toes, bounce around!” You get the picture… The kids have seen everything from American hip hop, country line dancing, Scotland highland dancing, various African dances, and so forth. Some of their favorite styles include hula dancing, belly dancing, ballet, tarantella, flamenco, and (my favorite), classical Chinese dance. I encourage the kids to get expressive, make up their own dance moves, and to have fun (which sometimes means getting silly). It’s been pretty entertaining and adorable, to say the least.

Geography: Learning about the Continents

We have been taking a closer look during lessons at states and countries within our continents to help our students to gain a better grasp on the size of our earth. They have seen many examples of various landforms, plants, animals, landmarks, and cultures.

Our color coded Montessori continent maps are a great introduction for kids to start learning about places around the world. Many students thoroughly enjoy coloring activity sheets as well as rebuilding our continent puzzles outside of the frame.

Language

Vocabulary

During lessons, the kids are learning their sense of order with matching, categorizing, and sequencing. During work cycles, I go around to each group and check in with them to go over the vocabulary words that our materials have to offer.

Reading & Writing

In small groups, we practice reading and matching words with imagery, and many of our older students are working on writing and word building.

Art

Color Mixing

Everyone loves to mix food-colored water to explore how the primary colors mix into secondary colors 🙂

Painting

As you might guess, art is one of my favorite subjects, and I always enjoy teaching about color mixing each year. The kids are learning to mix colors on a pallet, how carefully handle their paint brushes, how to keep their paintings from getting too “muddy,” and how to carefully clean their brushes.

One of the things about Montessori that I love as a teacher is that we can get as creative as we want, as long as we are applying the basic philosophy of the Montessori Method in our lessons. With my background in fine arts, I have enjoyed giving our students general lessons that I remember learning back in high school and college. Lately, I have been teaching them about drawing one point perspectives and how to paint a landscape using various shades of one paint color (by adding white paint to the color). They are also learning about how we can make our imagery more realistic in paintings and drawings by focusing on the highlights and lowlights created from a light source. I realize that such lessons might seem a little advanced for this age group, but in Montessori we have faith in our students and believe that they can benefit from the positive experiences, even if they’re not quite coordinated to replicate a demonstration. Whether or not they can apply the knowledge just yet, the visuals help to give them a better understanding of various methods and techniques involved. To prevent any type of discouragement, I encourage my students not to paint exactly what I am painting, add their own style, and I remind them that it’s okay to be “abstract.” These lessons are an opportunity for our little ones to find a creative outlet where they can get expressive,”think out of the box,” and enjoy the process of making art.

Sewing

Sewing serves many great purposes for young children. While it is a practical life skill, it is also a great way to exercise little fingers as children are working on their fine motor skills. Children naturally tend to grasp push pins, sewing pins, and needles in the pincer grip as they carefully try to handle sharp objects. It might not sound like such a big deal, but our students tend to pick up their pencil to draw and write at a much earlier age than I have ever seen in a traditional school, and it is obvious to me that handling all of these tiny objects helps immensely in building fine motor skills at an early age.

Math

Everyone continues to practice single digit quantities with a variety of material. Many of our older students are picking up on higher numbers as well as simple operations. Overall, everyone is exposed to math on a daily basis (directly or indirectly). Our students are using their math skills every day, whether it be counting out snack items, circle time practice, or handling the Montessori material.

Celebrations of Life

We have had so many lives to celebrate in our classroom, and we are very appreciative of all of the families that have helped out thus far. Your help makes for a very special celebration. We love learning about the history of our friends and their families. Thanks again!

Work Cycle

It’s been a productive season and I hope that this has been very helpful. When you get the opportunity to sit down with your kids and talk about school, these photos can be very helpful!

Have a great week and please, feel free to comment!

Thanks,

Angelique

P.S., Reminder to new parents: I tried to have at least 4 images of each child, but I admit it’s hard to keep track with such a big group. Sometimes at random, a child gets featured more often than others due to being in photos with other kids or because I am trying to share about a topic or material. I have at least 20 more photos of each child– I just can’t share them all here, so let me know if you have any concerns and would like a few more sent to you to assure that your child has been staying busy! Otherwise, plan on getting all of the photos during our next parent teacher conference 🙂