Dear All,

I hope your new year is off to a refreshing start! Our students all seemed so thrilled to be back at school and as always, we spent extra time during circle times for the first week of the new year so that everyone had a chance to “check in.” Each and every hand was raised for a turn to speak as they all had something memorable to share about the festivities over break. 🙂

Upon our students’ return, we spent the first week with very thorough lessons to help everyone to refocus and get back into the swing of things. I’ve given many lessons on respect, care for the environment, how to make peace with each other, how to work through our frustrations, how to clean up after ourselves, and so forth. Cristina and I also have been giving small group lessons on new material that has been added to the classroom to challenge our students. At this point, we have a strong sense of your child’s abilities and specific areas where we see opportunities for growth, so we are also working closely with individuals on material that will challenge their needs and desires. This information will be more thoroughly discussed during parent teacher conferences.

There are plenty of activities to share that everyone is benefiting from, since we give lessons to all of our students on particular subjects throughout the year. Let’s start with babies! Nearly two months ago, we gave lessons on how to care for real babies by using life sized baby dolls to practice gently handling and holding them.

Caring for Infants

After a couple of weeks of practice with gently handling our life sized dolls, we started inviting students to visit the infant room during the infants’ lunch hours. We only send 3 children to visit each day since it’s a small room and we don’t want to overwhelm the babies, and so far every student has been offered the opportunity. Not all children have taken up the offer yet, since they are not all willing to take a break from their work during the work cycle. There will be plenty more opportunities throughout the year, so there is no need to push them. Miss Luisa is a wonderful and patient infant teacher and the kids seem to thoroughly enjoy their time with her and the babies.

New Parents: I only show a handful of examples, but I assure you that during the parent teacher conferences, I will have more pictures of your adorable kids hanging out with cute babies and more!

Welcome New Students!

I would just like to take a moment to introduce Georgia and Hazel, new students who just moved up from Miss Jackie’s classroom. These two girls have been visiting our studio over the past couple of months to prepare for the big move into the Primary Studio this year, which made for an easy transition when they joined us for the new year. Welcome, ladies!

      

Popular Material of the Month: Math Activities

We’ve had a lot of math lessons at the beginning of the school year to refresh the memories of longterm students and to introduce numbers to our newer students. These lessons are given in small groups to offer each child the opportunity to participate during the lessons. Below, students have laid out material in quantities of one through five all on their own after some basic Montessori math lessons.

During lessons, our students are encouraged to hold and “feel” the weight of the math materials in their hands as they are counting out the material and matching them to the printed number in order to grasp the understanding of physical quantities. During work cycles, they are free to take the material off of the shelf to spend more time exploring the physical quantities.

Below we have some examples of students seen working on quantities one through ten during the work cycle. Some kids love to work in groups of twos and threes. It’s so lovely to see how well our students work together as they divide up the material so that everyone gets a chance to participate in their small group. Our students also enjoy working on this material on their own as they take pride in their ability to place out the material all by themselves.

Many of our older students continue to work on simple operations. Below are some examples of material for addition.

Finding Order to Our Material

After a long winter break, we gave lessons to refresh our students’ memories on how to match cards and objects on their rugs from left to right or up and down, depending on the type of the material. We continue to add new cards and imagery to the classroom to introduce new vocabulary words. There are plenty of colorful picture cards to match, which can lead to a great opportunity for a child to practice building organizational skills on their own. Small groups are also encouraged to give your children opportunities to converse and cooperate with one another while sorting through the material together.

Practical Life Area: Hammer & Nails

Before introducing this activity, we held group discussions on professions that involve building, from furniture to sky scrapers. After building a good respect and understanding of the simple hammer and nail, the kids were excited to learn about our material that introduces the hammer and nail. And yes, we are very serious about going over safety persuasions with sharp objects as we are determined to keep our environment safe for our students!

For this introduction, we use a cork board, tiny nails, and wooden shapes to create pattern art by holding the shapes in place with the nails. As you can imagine, every single child in the studio was excited to get a chance to work on this one (multiple times)!

Teaching Creative Professions through Art

During the month of December, the kids were delighted to learn about the roles of fashion designers, interior designers, architects and fine artists. This included class discussions and opportunities to browse through a number of library books covering these professions.

Music & More

As of late, musical groups tend to form quite randomly throughout the work cycle… Sometimes, students form a little marching band, while others dance to our background music that we play throughout the day during work cycle. The piano is also an option as long as children follow our rules to play within the color coded notes on the piano, a great way to teach a large group of children as they learn to coordinate their own melodies, and needless to say, it prevents the distracting noises from banging on the piano as others are working… Circle times are good for sing alongs, too!

Our Little Teachers

We’re very proud that more and more of our junior and senior students are feeling very comfortable with inviting a younger student to sit with them as they teach them a new lesson. Our older students know only to give lessons on material that they have practiced and perfected multiple times on their own to ensure that our young students are learning how to use the material properly.

The Alumni of Indigo Montessori School

At least 5 times a year, several students who graduated from Indigo come to visit us. We are always thrilled to learn how much they have progressed. They enjoy going back to their favorite works during work cycle, and they are always happy to help with a lesson or a story book during circle times.

Recent Power Point Lessons

Children are typically visual learners, and they tend to be very responsive when shown real life imagery. I love using Power Point lessons to show examples of an emotions, behaviors, events, diagrams, maps, the universe and so forth. The images seem to resonate with the kids as I see their cute little faces light up once they begin to grasp big concepts. This leads for great discussions and lots of participation.

Caring for the Environment

The kids seem to have a far better understanding and appreciation for caring for our classroom when they are challenged to think about the reasons behind a tidy environment through imagery. We especially want our students to understand how to to keep our environment safe so that we can feel comfortable, inspired, and productive in our surroundings. I showed a variety of examples for kids to get involved by discussing the safety of a clean environment and the dangers of a messy environment.

   Some discussion questions included: Which classroom do you prefer? Why? How do you think the first classroom got so messy? How do we keep a classroom clean? Why?

Greeting Your Parents and Friends

This Power Point lesson included images of kids with crossed arms while making faces at their parents and refusing to greet them, followed by questions like: “How do you suppose this boy’s parents felt as he made this look at them when they arrived to school to pick him up?” The kids called out a variety of emotions and unanimously decided that this was not a very kind approach to greeting our parents. This lead to the discussion about what you are all doing during the day, and I explained that many parents work hard on jobs that (we hope) you love and that provide for their kids. I asked the question, “how can we make our parents feel appreciated when they walk through the door to pick you up?” And of course, I showed plenty of examples and suggested some nice comments they could say upon your arrival, so I hope that the kids have been practicing their greetings with y’all!

This lesson has been ongoing as we continue to talk about greeting friends, and not just their friends, but your friends, too! We are also discussing approaches to welcoming house guests as well as some thoughtful things to say upon entering a friend’s home. I try to get the kids to come up with some answers on their own by throwing out some silly scenarios such as, “should I walk into my friends house, make a face and say, your house is ugly!?” I got some wide eyed reactions to that question where kids called out “no! you should say, I like your house!” Then I ask, “even if I don’t like it?” This lead to the discussion about how everyone’s home is unique and people decorate in ways that we might not agree with, but if we are mindful that this is their way of creating home for themselves, we can find some respect and at least find something thoughtful to say, like “that painting is interesting!”

Language: Beginning Sounds & Word Building

Our youngest of kids have been introduced to the concept of beginning letter sounds lately in small groups where I ask them to each trace lower case letters made out of sand paper while pronouncing the most common letter sound. We use fun objects to match with the beginning sounds, and everyone is encouraged to participate. Whether or not the kids understand the concept right away, they enjoy the interactions, and this exposure will help to prepare them when they are mentally ready to jump on board.

Our students who have been with us for at least a year or so know a good amount of their beginning letter sounds, and continue to learn more. The oldest of our students are working on word building through phonics. They have also been introduced to simple sentences and punctuation. Every so often, I invite them to come back to the basics and match beginning letter sounds to keep their memories fresh.

Warm & Sunny Winter Days

We’ve been lucky with a few very warm days this January, so we’ve been taking advantage of the opportunity to get some fresh air and exercise lately. The kids just love the new matting on the playground, which works great for practicing yoga and muscle strengthening exercises. We start off by sitting together and reading a book or two about caring for our body and exercising our muscles. Everyone has been excited and motivated to participate in this gorgeous weather.

Preparing for Lunch Time

Each day, we invite a few children at a time to place lunch boxes and unload containers at each table setting. During lunch time, we encourage our students to open their own containers and prepare their lunches on their own. Of course, we are glad to help kids out where needed, but we want them to take pride in their own independence as they build coordination in their fine motor skills. We also want them to feel involved and helpful as we try to create a “family style” environment. Kids practice their communication skills by sitting in small groups of 3 to 8 kids per table, and each day they sit next to someone different so that they get the opportunity to communicate with everyone throughout the week. We have glasses and pitchers of water that children pass around to serve themselves. We also offer plates with dividers for kids to prepare their food on if preferred.

I wanted to take a moment to make some suggestions to help make meals easier for your children, so that they can enjoy this time to relax and eat their meals over a fun conversation with peers. Containers: several small or medium sized containers or jars work best for the child sized place settings. Feel free to load them with messy food such as pasta, because your child can pour it out on a plate for easier eating. Bento boxes are okay, but the lids that are attached to some tend to take up a lot of space at our child-sized tables. Ideally, we would like your child to be able to open the containers that you choose. We totally understand that many of our younger kids do not have the fine motor skills to do so just yet, so don’t stress. That’s where our older students are very helpful and know to help out anyone who needs help that is sitting at their table. Below are some examples of containers that fit nicely on the table mats offered.

Oh, and I have been debating on mentioning this one thing, because I don’t want to deprive kids of their fun foods, but well, let’s face it, a teacher’s least favorite food option are Go-Gurts. You know, those fun tubes filled with yogurt? I’ve just gotta say it– they are really tough for kids to open, and typically we have at least one yogurt explosion per day! We try to help the kids with opening the packages before they try to pry them open themselves, but even we teachers tend to have a hard time opening them. We tear it open which typically creates a plastic spiral covered in yogurt, or it splats or spills over us, the kids and our classroom! We have even tried offering scissors, but then the scissors get all yogarty…. Sigh, no matter what, they are just plain messy! Yogurt in containers are ideal, and we offer silverware (stainless steal, not plastic), so you never have to pack a spoon or fork. I hate to be that teacher to spill the beans, but figured it wouldn’t hurt to mention just this once and let you in on a little inside teacher funny note 😉

Speaking of offering plates and silverware, kids also have glasses of water throughout the entire day, so there is no need to pack a water bottle.

Celebration of Lives

We have celebrated many children’s lives over the past couple of months! Thank you parents for your participation to help make their day extra special!

Work Cycle

Last but never least, more work cycle photos! Your kids have not yet seen these photos, so find some time to go through the images together to encourage your kids to finally talk more specifically about what they’ve been up to at school this winter season. Cheers!

Thanks for checking in! This classroom and your children are a huge part of my world, and I am very thankful for all of your support. Thanks to everyone who somehow found time in their busy schedules to send us holiday notes and gifts. I had so many thoughtful gifts that were so touching, and I just wish I had a chance to write individual “thank you’s.” My family was in town for the holidays, and they are very demanding of my time, but I just want you all to know that I save the notes and cards to look back on, and I make use of all of the thoughtful gifts. Thank you all for being awesome parents, and I truly wish your new year is off to a wonderful start!

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