Dear Parents,

We have been up to a lot since the last news letter, so I will just dive in. First off, Carrie was not feeling well today, so it’s just Angelique here. We missed her today and hope she feels better, but Bernadette was with me today and she did a great job filling in.

Maya L. will be moving on to a French immersion school. Her last day was yesterday and we also managed to fit in a “celebration of life” for her before she left. While we are sad to see her go, we hope she enjoys the French immersion program. Here’s an image of her at her celebration of life.

We will Miss you, Maya! Come visit!

Being Thankful for What We Have…

Lesson on Child Poverty

Last school week was a short one with the holidays following, but the kids all seemed to get a lot out of the lessons. We wanted to talk about some true reasons to be thankful by giving examples of others who are thankful. In Montessori, we talk about world awareness and with the holidays coming up, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about child poverty. I found some videos of children in poverty who show great thanks and appreciation for what little they appear to have. Poverty sounds like a pretty big issue to address at such a young age, however, the children were incredibly responsive. While this was meant to be a brief lesson with a short video on child poverty, many actually asked if they could watch more videos. So I was up that night finding a few more kid friendly videos, went to the library, and got some kids books on poverty. If you are interested in how my lessons panned out, I have written another post on the topic. I also added some of the videos that our students watched on child poverty here: Lesson on Poverty.

More on Community & Global Awareness…

Our students were so interested in the lesson on poverty that it seemed appropriate to branch out and teach about other topics that they seemed ready for. They enjoyed kids books on staying safe in their own community and community helper job books on doctors, nurses, police men, fire fighters, sanitation workers (i.e., picking up trash), and more. We also touched on more sensitive subjects such as homelessness, people with disabilities, bullying and racism, followed by reasons we should celebrate differences in people and families. We ended this week with a lesson on hope.

Public Speaking Activities

The kids have been taking turns standing in front of the group during circle time and sharing their thoughts on a topic. Prior to these circle times, we asked each child to draw a picture that they would talk about. On one day, we asked them to draw a picture after watching a short video clip on how to make a linear drawing, and on the following day we asked them to draw something that they were hopeful for. At the end of each day, the kids took turns listening to their peers explain their drawings. It was great to see how attentive and tuned in each child was when their peers got up and spoke. We will be sending their drawings home some time next week for you to see…

More Lessons

We had some other random lessons such as how a book is made, oh, and the kid’s loved Carrie’s explosive volcano experiment! Language arts and math were subjects taught at an individual basis this week. I’ll leave you with some photos of the kids at work.