Dear Parents,

Your children have been very productive over the winter months, and we teachers are very proud of them! They have had plenty of opportunities to branch out and try new material, and they have been practicing their communication skills and finding peaceful outlets. Anisa, Addie, and I have given many lessons on a variety of subject areas that we offer in the studio, and we are so pleased with the interest and curiosity of our students as they tune in and apply their new knowledge on daily basis.

Thank You for Being on Time!

Thank you all so very much for your great efforts to get your children to school on time for our daily routine and lessons. You will see a good number of photos throughout this blog that show some of the morning presentations that we have given, which also capture our focused students paying close attention to the lessons in the early mornings. Early arrival gives your child the opportunity to settle in without rushing as they enter the classroom, and it gives them the chance to check in and mentally prepare for the day. Everyone is on track and nobody is missing out on essential lessons that will offer them more opportunities to grow and learn about the many topics we teach at Indigo. Your little ones are consuming new information like sponges, and we hope that you can see the difference at home as they find ways to share their new knowledge with you.

Lessons on Personal Growth

We are frequently giving lessons that will help your child to build confidence in their abilities, communication skills, and self worth. They have learned a number of ways in the studio to recenter, find peace within, and better communicate their needs. We take time during lessons to prepare our students for the near future as they will inevitably run into certain circumstances, transitions, and conflicts. A preventative presentation might be a topic on different ways to deal with conflicts that could potentially arise from miscommunication. We also plan lessons very specific to the current activity in the studio. An example of a current activity might be that we have several new students arriving and we need to talk to the class about approaches that will make our new students feel welcomed. We also have a lot of spur-of the-moment lessons as we “follow the child,” by paying attention to their immediate needs and finding ways to talk about issues that should be addressed promptly. For example, if we notice that multiple children are tattling on young students who are still learning how to put their material away, we will have a lesson later that day or by the following morning on how we need to help our new friends by gently reminding them to roll up their rug, rather than trying to get them in trouble. We don’t point the finger – rather, we find a way to approach the topic so that it benefits everyone. As many of you have heard before, we teach about how to better communicate with one another through role play and also through Powerpoint lessons custom made by the teachers. These Powerpoint lessons are filled with stock photography of people that serve as examples that capture the moment of whatever topics we need to cover.

Through these lessons, we see immediate results as our students are quick to practice what they just learned, using their words more gently as they work on better communicating with one another. It is rewarding for us teachers as we overhear our students using new words and expressions with each other, especially when we get to see some random aha moments where a child realizes that they just found an opportunity to use a new phrase, and that their peer had a positive response! Typically following lessons on communication, we notice many warm smiles across our students’ faces as they truly seem to be enjoying each other’s company by using “gentle words” with each other.

Feelings & Emotions

If your child has recently moved up from the twos class, you will see a huge difference in the way they are working through their emotions. They now have many words to express themselves, they can often offer reasoning for the way they feel, and you may also notice that they are showing more empathy. If you aren’t seeing much empathy yet, it will come in time and with practice. We give many lessons on acts of kindness, building awareness of our actions, showing compassion, and so on. We offer many words dealing with emotions and we discuss the meanings of the words to expand their vocabulary. Through our presentations, our goal is to help our students to build more awareness of their inner feelings and to notice the feelings of others. We discuss common challenges that children face each day, and we also talk about the feelings that their parents and other adults may be feeling. We talk about how our actions can cause different emotions to stir up, not just within ourselves, but for others as well, and these topics begin to open the doors up to empathy. During circle time, we encourage the children to participate by commenting on different expressions of images that they see and why someone might be feeling a certain way. We ask challenging questions to get them thinking about the impact that they can make on others by their body language, their word choices, the tone of their voice, and so on. Class discussions help children to realize that they have a role in the big picture, and we are happy to have such good listeners and participants!

Your children are learning many new vocabulary words that will help them to better express themselves, and we encourage you to get them talking about their feelings and to share your own feelings as well. And just a side note: keep in mind that they may still be grasping the definition of some words, and you may have to guide them with the right context. At home, we encourage you to help your child to work through their feelings and offer them different words to express themselves. We also encourage you to make light of minor situations that your child might seem to be dwelling on, so that they can quickly move on from negative emotions and get back on track to enjoying their day. The most common topic that children in this age group tend to get stuck on has to do with their social life, and you might hear something like, “‘so’ and ‘so’ didn’t want to play with me today.” I can promise you that in most cases, there may have been a brief moment in the day where a statement like that was accurate, but most likely it was a brief moment that has already been resolved. Children tend to get stuck on a single social moment in the day when in fact the day was filled with many activities and fun times with others, so try to keep that in mind, stay positive about the relationship with the other peer, and try to redirect the conversation by asking about other events of the day. If there is a true concern with the interaction of students at school, we would certainly reach out to you personally, but it is very normal for children to be working through little bumps along the way as they learn to better communicate with their peers.

Peaceful Moments throughout the Day

We encourage our students to find peaceful moments throughout their day to recenter, relax, practice mindfulness, use positive affirmations, and to work through their emotions. The cozy area continues to be a popular station where children come and go throughout the day. Our yoga area is also highly utilized, along with our latest peaceful music station. We are very proud of our students for their new self awareness and ability to take a moment to pause, think, use their imagination, and find peace within.

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Our Musical Environment

Coming from a musical background, I love to throw in some real lessons on how to exercise our voices and how to use music as an expressive outlet. Our students are often asking for music lessons, and they love to learn about the story behind a song. They carry the sweetest melody when they put their voices together for chorus class. We incorporate a mix of expressions, body language, along with some sign language to add to the fun.

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Music plays a big role in our studio as we have instrumental music on in the background during work cycles. In addition, children may make their own music at the music station and at the piano. In order to avoid distractions while others are working, we have rules to follow when playing these instruments. Our students have had lessons on some music fundamentals to keep in mind in order to help us keep our environment peaceful.

Language Update

Since we have a variety of ages in the Primary Studio, every child is working in different areas on language. At this time of year during the work cycle, the youngest ones are especially practicing to use their words through storytelling, taking turns with one another, and exploring imagery and word cards in our language section.

Our older students who have been with us for two or three years are working on communicating with peers as they teach simple lessons on materials. They are also working on tracing, writing, and word building. The entire classroom is exposed to beginning letter sounds on a regular basis as we offer weekly lessons to learn and review common letter sounds.

We never want to discourage our youngest children from trying language material that they may not be able to comprehend yet, since they can always gain something out of the exposure. For example, some of our little ones ask if they can have the writing pages that we offer to our older students, since they seem to be drawn to the imagery on the pages. We encourage our little ones to color the images within the lines, and eventually they start showing interest in tracing the letters on the page.

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Custom Made Activity Pages, Just for Indigo Primary Students!

For the children working on beginning letter sounds, you’ve probably noticed some unusual imagery and miscellaneous drawings with letters and words that have been sent home recently. Over the many years of working here, I have accumulated many binders that are full of my own language activity sheets as well as art activity sheets of imagery that is meant to be unfinished to encourage children to get creative and finish the picture themselves. The ideas keep coming, since our students are so responsive with imagery incorporated with language. Anisa and Addie are also picking up on this little hobby of mine, and I find that they too have started drawing activity sheets for children who have specific requests. Looks like my knack is contagious! Custom activity sheets have been a creative way for us to draw interest in the language area for many kids, and it has turned out to be a creative outlet for us teachers, too.

We have plenty of pre-requisite activities for writing such as Montessori’s pin-poking activities, sewing activities, handling small tongs in the practical life area, and the list goes on.

Montessori Approach to Teaching the Alphabet

If you are interested in teaching letters at home, it will be very helpful for you to know how we teach letters in a Montessori environment, since it is very different than the way many of us learned in traditional schools. For parents whose students are in the Primary Studio for the first year, I have a request if your child will be with us for at least another year: please stop focusing on uppercase letters of the alphabet and the names of letters! To learn why, I just recently wrote a post called Montessori Way of Teaching the Alphabet that you can read now or find later under the “Extra Extra” dropdown menu. Our approach is very effective and we highly recommend getting on board as this method will give your child a head start, no matter what type of school they go to next.

Practical Life Lessons

As many of you already know, we teach a variety of practical life lessons by offering material that is interesting and unusual in order draw the interest of our students over to the practical life area. We create works that are rotated bi-weekly to challenge the children in different ways by offering different objects to sort, scoop, pick up with tongs, and so forth. Building fine motor skills plays a big role of gaining independence to manage day to day practical life activities, and our practical life material helps children to strengthen their coordination, attention span, organizational skills, awareness of detail, and so much more. This area of our studio continues to be loved by all ages as they explore and discover on their own.

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Hands On Math Activities

Math in our classroom is found indirectly in many subject areas as children learn to count and sort material throughout the studio. We also have a special area for math that children love to practice alone and with each other. We recently added a lot of fun and colorful math sorting activities that have kept our students very busy. In a Montessori classroom, we have sensorial material that children can hold in their hands to feel the weight of the quantity in their hands, and they use their little fingers to count out pretty beads and tiny objects.

Our young ones are still practicing numbers one through ten as they begin to learn their sense of order. Similar to the way that we teach language, we do not correct them in the moment as they practice during work cycle as it could discourage them from their interest in learning math. Instead, when we notice numbers are not quite in order, we observe that the child is making an effort and we let them explore on their own. When a child comes to us and asks for help or when they are looking for something to do, we will invite a child to join us in small groups or one-to-one lesson to give them a chance to practice their sense of order with guidance. We also continue to give lessons to our students on the order of numbers as we match the quantities, and gradually their sense of order develops as they practice the material on their own.

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Geography and Beyond

We have given many lesson on the world which we live on, we’ve talked about gravity and the way that the earth orbits around the sun, and we’ve had lessons on other planets in the universe. We have also shared short video clips included in our lessons to help children better grasp the way that the planets orbit, and also to help them to grasp the concept of how big our earth is by zooming in towards the earth from outer space, and how small our planet looks in the universe once we zoom out. In Montessori, we have fun teaching big concepts in simple terms. Kids are visual learners, so we are always sure to have library books that teach about the world around them as well. Maria Montessori created some beautiful color coded mapping systems to get children learning about the world we live in. Our students are learning about different continents, countries, and cultures. Our geography section also tends to overlap with our nature and science areas, and some of our botany and zoology areas as well, since these subject areas all interconnect in many ways. As you can imagine, our students love spending time exploring the material in these areas.

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Sensorial Material

If your child has previously moved up into our studio from the Preprimary studio, you will notice that there are some familiar Montessori works that followed your child into the Primary Studio. In the Preprimary Studio, they have been practicing the basics on making order of geometric solid material, and now they are learning extensions on this material to challenge them in new ways. We offer many vocabulary words when teaching the sensorial material as we talk about grading material in size, weight, texture, color, and temperature. This material encourages children to be creative while working on their sense of order, motor skills, and problem solving skills. The brown stairs and the pink tower continue to be a Montessori staple on a universal level in Montessori schools. The following photos are just some of the examples of children engaged in the sensorial area.

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Favorite Work Since the New Year: Interior Decorating Tiny Rooms

We tend to get into the topic of interior decorating whenever we teach about keeping our environment beautiful and safe. Our students learn that everything in our studio has a special place, and they realize that when everything is neat and organized, we feel safe and comfortable. We link interior decorating when we talk about our emotions and feelings, since order and color choices in a room can create different moods. With our interior decorating model work, we encourage our students to think about spatial relationships with the tiny furniture, along with accents by using little blankets, rugs, and pillows in order to brighten up a room. They have so much fun laying out the furniture in different ways to create new settings and original designs.

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Needless to say, we encourage our students to care for their own home in the same way that we care for our environment at Indigo. We have had plenty of lessons on cleaning up after ourselves, helping out around the house, and taking care of our bedrooms – so don’t underestimate your child if they are acting like they don’t know how to clean up or help out! If you don’t enforce ground rules in the home, many of them will play along as if they don’t know better, so get on board with ground rules at home if you haven’t already!

Lucky Warm Winter Days

We hope everyone enjoyed this incredible burst of warm weather this past week before the cold front rolled in. The kids had a fun-filled Friday as we were able to get some lessons in outdoors during the early hours when the temperature was like a perfect spring day.

Morning Meditation & Hoop Dance Lesson

Random fact about me: I learned about hoop dancing at least 10 years ago, and it has been something that I have done in my own personal time which helped in getting rid of whiplash from a car accident that happened when I was younger. I have taught hoop dance off and on to adults and children on the side for years, and I have offered hoop dance lessons as an enrichment activity at Wonderland from time to time over the summers. Hoop dance is great for stretching in ways complimentary to yoga stretches, and it works as a tool to help us to find new ways to move and dance. If you’re curious to learn more about this type of unconventional hooping, feel free to look up my past instructors who are local to our community, Jonathan Baxter and Anne Humphreys.

When I told our students that we were going to “hoop dance,” one child said, “but I can’t make it go around me,” and I explained, “that’s okay, because there is so much more you can do with a hoop besides spinning it around your waist!” I gave them a number of exercises to explore with their hoop such as balancing the hoop, finding ways to move through the hoop, and isolating the hoop while our bodies are moving around.

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Exploring Nature 

In the early morning, we had an indoor lesson on noticing detail in nature as we discussed vocabulary words of the various textures found in one rock, twig, and leaf. Then, our students were sent out to observe these details with an activity sheet that we made for them to try to draw the details that they saw in nature. While we are located downtown in a city that is booming right now, we still managed to find some nature in the gravel garden. They used magnifying glasses to take a closer look at rocks and leaves and enjoyed working alongside each other as they documented what they observed.

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We Practice Peace, Not Violence!

Dear parents, we have spoken a bit about helper careers and I will continue to be giving some lessons in the upcoming days to shed positive light on “helper people” such as police officers, fire fighters, and doctors in order to discourage children to be tempted to play “guns” and “bad guys” on the playground. On the rare occasion, there have been some children coming to school and trying to encourage others to play these types of games on the playground at Wonderland, and this is absolutely something that we do not teach or allow, so please help to support us by explaining to your child about safe play at school. If you would like to learn more information about this topic, I have written a separate page on the Montessori approach to dealing with violence and this can be found under the Extra Extra dropdown menu. Please reach out to me personally if you have any thoughts or questions. Thank you in advance for your support!

Work Cycle and More Lessons

Below are some extra photos of students in the classroom. I do my best to go through the entire blog and check off to make sure everyone is seen at least 5 times. If you notice a child is seen more than another child, it is truly just because either they happened to be in the photo with another child I was tallying or because I wanted to show a specific work that a child happened to be doing. I like to mention this to new parents as sometimes it may feel like a search to find your own child in the photos, but I promise we have many more photos of your child to share at parent-teacher conferences. It is also beneficial for you to notice what other kids are doing in the classroom, and for your child to browse through these photos with you later, so that they can reflect on all of the works, their peers, and their activity in the studio. So to all of your kids who say they don’t remember what they did at school, this should be a good reminder. Your child should be able to tell you more about the material below, so here’s your chance to get them talking! We hope you enjoy the following photos and thank you as always for checking in.

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Last but not least, thank you all for thinking of us as we started the holidays back in December. It really meant a lot to us to receive all of the sweet notes and thoughtful gifts. We feel very appreciated as teachers, with lots of love and support from the Indigo families.

Have a wonderful week!