Dear Parents,

It’s been a fun fall season at Indigo as our students have been learning a lot of new material through lessons that we chose to challenge your children. Needless to say, they have also been excited for the holidays over these past several weeks, and many have been sharing about family events and good times. We hope that you all have some more quality time ahead with each other during your festivities, and I’m sure we’ll hear all about it in the new year!

Language

This area has been the most focused area in general lately as the kids are learning new words through a variety of material throughout the classroom, as well as through their everyday social interactions. We teachers are often tuning into many conversations as kids learn to work together, and we regularly encourage kids to communicate with one another where we see that it would be helpful.

Everyone is learning at a different pace as you know, and they are all exposed to the language material in different forms. It is the positive experiences that they are having that will keep them interested and coming back for more. I have been referring back to my language observations that we spoke about during conferences for each child to make sure that everyone is being encouraged to practice new material that will challenge them, based on the knowledge that they have retained during the first half of the school year.

Beginning Sounds Memory Game. For students who already know a handful of beginning letter sounds, I like to play memory games with them as they are introduced to a few more letter sounds at a time. I like to lay out a few sets of imagery cards on the table, and the kids can rotate around the table like musical chairs to try to sort each set.  How the activity works: Ahead of time, I have placed our wooden beginning sounds letters under each image, and then I sit down with a child and quickly go over the images and letter sounds with the student, asking them to repeat after me. Then, I mix up the letters in front of them and ask the child to see if they can remember the beginning sounds of each image and place them with the appropriate image. Sometimes kids also like to write out or trace the letters after they have done the matching.

Sand Paper Letters & Writing in the Sand. Miss Anisa has been going over lessons with our students to encourage them to trace and sound out our sand paper letters as well as writing the letter in the sand. We also have the letter mugs to go with our sandpaper letters that kids continue to love as they explore beginning sounds.

Tracing & Writing. Over the past month, many kids are choosing to trace and/or write letters as they learn about the beginning sounds. We will continue to encourage everyone to give tracing a go in the new year.

Metal Insets. As many of you know, our metal inset shapes are an artistic form of language as kids make designs and patterns while learning to hold a pencil by tracing the insets. While they have fun being creative with colored pencils, it’s an indirect approach to helping children to practice and refine hand movements in preparation for writing.

Math

Our older students who are graduating soon have been working on math extensions with hands on counting material to solve simple equations. Many students of various ages are also trying out material with teens, and some are interested in counting out the 100 board. There are so many different directions you can go to apply math in our studio.

The teens board is a fun addition lesson that shows how the number ten can turn into a teen. First, the kids are shown to make the “bead triangle,” a prerequisite that they have been practicing this year. The bead triangle is a color coded set of beads that represent the quantities one through nine in the Montessori math section.

Once in order from one to nine, the child is then shown to match the quantities to the single digit numbers on our wooden tablets. We have a gold bead chain with ten beads that is placed next to each printed number ten on the “ten board.” Finally, the child is asked to add each single digit bead chain alongside a gold ten bead chain by adding the numbers together, counting out loud. The catch is, they need to start counting from 10. Let’s look at five plus ten: I explain that since we already know the gold bead chain has ten beads, we don’t have to count them out anymore; we only count the five bead chain out. I point to the gold ten bead chain and say, “ten” and then I point to each bead on the five bead chain, saying “eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen; ten plus five equals fifteen.” They slide the single digit number five over top of the zero of the ten tablet once they have added the beads together.

I could go on and on about all of these fun little steps and tricks we show kids in the classroom, but I’m sure you get the idea! Here are some more kids staying busy in the math area…

Practical Life & Sensorial Material

Handling Sharp Objects. After having lessons on how to carefully use our sharp objects to create decorative art, our students always feel privileged that we trust them to be very careful with material that most other kids aren’t “allowed” to use. Handling push pins and ball-head sewing pins takes mindful coordination in those little fingers, helping your child to naturally hold their fingers together in the pincer grip. During the new year, I will be introducing simple sewing techniques again.

Color Mixing. Miss Anisa recently gave a presentation on mixing our primary colors to make secondary colors. The kids have so much fun every year with this one as they feel like little scientists mixing food colored water.  

Social/Emotional Growth

Tattling Vs. Telling. We have been discussing this topic during some of our circle times lately, and we are already seeing great improvement in the way kids are communicating with one another. We are hearing far less tattling, and instead we get some occasional “telling,” and much more verbalizing between peers by using “gentle words.” I just wrote a separate post on this topic as I realized I had a lot to say about it… If you have some time on your hands and you could use some advice on dealing with tattling or simply want to learn more about what we’ve been talking about in the Montessori environment, I added a page under the “Extra Extra” section called “Tattling Vs. Telling.”

Tis the Season to be Thankful…

Lesson on Work & Money. We have had ongoing discussion on reasons to be thankful over the past month as we reflect on the things and the people that we have in our lives. I’ve given lessons about you, the parents, and all the things you do for your kids, along with reasons why you are probably working right now- that you (hopefully) enjoy the work you have chosen, but also so that you can help care for you and your family. I put together a little presentation on how you or I might be dispersing our money… I pretended to pay off my own bills (by using play money and counting out money for each bill- electricity, heating, water, groceries, gas for the car, etc.) and then I counted out a small pile of money left and said, hmm, maybe we have a little bit left to go out to eat one day or go to the movies… and what would happen if I spent ALL of my money on toys and candy and other “wants” before paying my bills?  I had library books and slides about all of these topics as well, to get them thinking about the big picture… I hope that your children can be a little more aware and thankful about the things you do for them 🙂

Opportunities in Life. On another day, we had a PowerPoint lesson on various jobs that people work towards in their lives. We took turns talking about some jobs we might enjoy doing one day and I showed images of some random people with interesting jobs. Then we talked about school and the work we do here at Indigo- and how material that we have introduced can give us ideas for various jobs. Here are just a few of the slide examples that I put together to teach about how practicing some of our Montessori material could lead to much bigger projects one day…

…It is the child who, making use of all that he finds around him, shapes himself for the future. ~ Maria Montessori

Talking about Poverty with Children. Talking about opportunities in life is one way to lead into the sensitive topic of poverty.  Poverty is something that we gently discuss in the Montessori environment as we continue to teach about global awareness. After talking about opportunities in school and in our future, I began to mention how many children wish they could be going to school right now… We watched short video clips by Good Neighbors, an organization working to help kids in poverty, and we viewed images of families in poverty to get a glimpse of how it is a struggle to get by each day. This is a topic I have been teaching for years, and I am very careful with my choice of words and imagery as I don’t want to scare anyone. We only touch the surface and show success stories as we want our students to see the hope for children in poverty. I talk about programs like UNISEF and I only show videos of kids who are now getting sponsored and enrolled in a school. We also touch base on people who are homeless as many of your kids have seen someone begging for money at the corners in the Triangle. I simply tell the kids that these people all have different stories about how they got where, and then I offer some simple (and innocent) examples like, maybe they ran away from home and didn’t finish school, maybe they didn’t learn how to get a job or how to be nice to people, maybe they don’t know how to ask for help– we just don’t know… On a hopeful note, I showed images of how the Durham Rescue Mission wants to help homeless people to get them off of the streets and to find a better life. I wrapped up the lesson by asking our students what they are thankful for, reminding them that they are very lucky to have wonderful parents that work hard so that they have a safe home and loving family, and so on. Our little students are very sympathetic and thoughtful during these conversations and they have the sweetest things to say. As we continue to teach our students about empathy, gratitude, and global awareness, we hope that they begin to feel truly thankful for their own lives.

The child is both the hope and a promise for mankind. ~Maria Montessori

Children Teaching Children. Our students love to set examples for others, and our senior students who have been here for a while especially get the opportunity to give lessons to their peers. They love taking turns and working as a team. We see small groups like this on a regular basis 🙂

Music

We are always playing music in our studio… Classical and different styles of instrumental music is a Montessori staple as it serve as great background music during the work cycle, but we also like to teach our kids about different ways to make music. Some of you already know about my approach if your child has been in this studio with me for a while, but let me quickly mention for the others how this lesson works: Our color coded bells are used to to introduce sheet music as kids learn to recognize the C scale and they can see how the notes move up on the lines of sheet music, getting higher as we reach the octive. I also will be starting the color coded chord system in the new year with the piano again, which is always a hit 🙂

 Anisa and I both love to do sing alongs during circle time as well… below, the kids are singing “The More We Get Together.”

Music brings everyone together!

Popular Work of the Season: Red Rod Maze

The red rod maze is an extension to the red rods sensorial material that is for sorting in order from shortest to longest, and the number rods in the math area are similar, used to learn how to count from one through ten. Many of our students have a good grasp on their dimensions with order and they have now been shown to build a maze by starting with the shortest rod and building out and around to make a path that they can carefully walk through by placing one foot in front of the other.

Celebrations of Life

We had some more celebrations recently. We will be getting in touch with many of you in the new year to celebrate your child with us before school is out. Thank you parents for helping us out!

New Students

Elyse & Cameron joined us shortly after parent-teacher conferences, moving up from the Pre-Primary Studio. They’ve enjoyed all of the new challenges in our room. Welcome to the Primary Studio, you two!

Visitors

Sometimes, kids who have graduated from our school like to come back and visit on their teacher work days happening at their school. Recently, Eilish and Pippa joined us for a couple of days. They always have so much fun coming back to their old favorite works…

Just for Fun

The children were so thrilled about last Friday’s snowfall… The timing was perfect- everyone just finished their lunches as fluffy snowflakes began to fall heavily outside. Everyone raced to the window, excited to watch a while… Anisa turned on some holiday music, i.e., Frank Sinatra’s version of Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow, which led to a festive dance party! We’ve been trying to teach them that song lately 🙂

Work cycle & More

Enjoy these photos with your kids! They have all been staying so busy and productive lately.

What the hand does, the mind remembers. ~Maria Montessori

We hope that you all have happy holidays with your little ones and families and we will see you in the new year!