Hi Y’all,

Our week started off a little on the rainy side, but no one seemed to mind staying indoors as we offered longer work cycles in our cozy environment.  Recently, we have welcomed some new students into the studio, and we are pleased to see that many of long term students have been helpful at demonstrating how we care for our environment.  Check out “The Cast” on the tool bar to view photos of this year’s class of the Indigo Primary Studio.  We have a great little community of students that we are very proud of as they take on new challenges that are improving their social skills, physical development, and psychological growth.

This Week’s Primary Focus: Celebrations of Life

As many of you are already familiar with our “Celebrations of Life” here at Indigo, it is still important that we refresh our student’s memories on the purpose of the ceremonies.  A Celebration of Life is a time when we put our focus on one student, reflecting on that child’s journey from birth to the present date.  We will reach out to each parent this year during the month of your child’s birthday, as we ask that you help in this process to tell his or her story.  If your child’s birthday falls outside of the school year, Carrie will get in touch with you within a few months and ask you to choose a date before the school year ends.   We will have a circle time gathering, reflecting on your child’s accomplishments, significant stories, and we will especially emphasize on why your child’s life is cherished.  This week, we celebrated Devereux’s life.   Below, you can see that he is holding the globe as he “walks around the sun,” (which is represented with a candle) as we discussed each year of his life.

During the week, we taught about the earth’s rotation around the sun, after reading books and watching videos on the earth’s orbit.  In Montessori, we want our students to have a grasp on her or his role in the universe, and our celebrations offer the opportunity to demonstrate this.  Your child practices the ritual of walking around the “sun” each time one year of his or her life is discussed, giving a visual of how time passes by.  For the first celebration of the year, our students showed great respect for their Devereux’s special day.  Thanks to Devereux’s parents, Zach and Christine, we learned more about his life as they shared stories and events from his birth to the present day.

Devereux’s parents joined us for a group snack time afterwards, as they shared some delicious homemade treats with the class.

 Science Lesson of the Week:  Sink or Float

This is a classic experiment that children enjoy each year here in our primary studio.  Even our long term students who have seen this lesson benefit from this experiment as they start to pick up on the science behind why objects sink or float in water (i.e., density and buoyancy).  As we demonstrate this experiment, our younger students begin to recognize that there is a consistency in the way objects behave in water.  Though we don’t expect any of our students to memorize all of the terminology that we speak of when discussing how everything is made of molecules, the explanation helps to give a visual for this concept.  We discuss how some objects are made with particles that are closely packed together, while others are packed more loosely.  Our students also enjoyed playing a “sink or float game” during circle time, where they took turns guessing which objects would sink or float.  And finally, during the work cycle, the kids were free to try this experiment out on their own.

The rest of the week, we learned songs accompanied by guitar or the piano and we practiced singing scales by choosing various letter sounds from our sandpaper letters.  Carrie and I spent time working with kids individually during work cycles including areas in language, math, and sensorial. Work cycles were peaceful and productive as our students feel comfortable exploring on their own now.  On that note, I will leave you with some images from our week here in the Indigo Primary Studio.  We hope y’all had a wonderful weekend.  Take care!

Rainy Day Art Activity