You can't dampen these spirits!

Although these girls are clearly happy to be back, the rainy days were a fitting start to the school year that came on the heel of a sudden change in our administration. After a frantic August dealing with business related surprises, with the help of devoted parents and friends, the school days, now, are sunny, inside and outside.

Mrs. T used the opportunity to introduce cloud types to the class. This is a good site for planning a lesson on cloud types.

We've reviewed materials with each child and introduced new ones. The class hums with activity from morning until afternoon. We love working toward milestones with words, shapes, numbers, movement and our inter personal relationships, but we also can't forget one of our favorite holidays.

cicadas ?!

Two lovely but deceased creatures captured everyone's attention and sparked the school year's first book making project. Examining the cicadas with a magnifying glass, each part of the insect is colored and pasted into the book with its matching name.

Science lessons in the classroom are meaningful and vibrant when they grow from daily experiences. After a while, children look forward to each day with anticipation, wondering what new discovery will be made or what question will be answered.

Back to School

I'm always amazed how the first day of school always brings the appropriate weather. Suddenly the mornings are crispy, the afternoons are sunny and warm and the darkness of the evening creeps in earlier each day. As you can see, the children are already preparing for the fall apples. Not shown here, but shown in one of last year's posts, is Mrs. T's apple matching activity for several varieties. Many of the children already know the names of at least 5 different apples. Drying prints of apples cut both crosswise and lengthwise cover every horizontal space in the art corner.

Halloween Parade

Today the children came to school dressed in their Halloween costumes. There were princesses, heroes, friendly creatures and witches and even a helicopter. The children gathered inside their classrooms as their parents gathered outside with cameras in hand. It is always such a sweet surprise for the children, as they emerge from the school onto the porch, to see the paparazzi that awaits.
Lucky for us that we had a sunny day to parade around the park. Back inside, we read stories, created art, sang songs, practiced French and shared treats. The children work so hard every day. This was a well-deserved break.

Just 4 of the adorable jack-o-lantern bags made by the children for their Halloween treats.

Because skeletons are one of the Halloween icons, we've been learning about the bones in our bodies. You'll soon see cut and pasted skeletons and painted skeletons coming home. Since one of our students recently broke a bone, this lesson is especially meaningful.

It's the season for apples. Mrs. T. made this apple matching exercise, then helped the children peel and cut their apples to be cooked for applesauce. As it cooked, the whole school enjoyed the scent. All agreed that the applesauce tasted delicious.

I wasn't quick enough to get a shot of anyone peeling their apples. Here is the aftermath. We showed the children how to hold the apple and peel away from themselves and their fingers. Then Mrs. T. or I washed and cut their apples in half, cored them and watched as each child cut the halves into quarters, keeping hands and fingers always on top of the little knife. Again, I couldn't get a picture. As you could imagine, all my attention was focused.

We are pleased that everyone now has the habit of turning off the bathroom light and closing the door when finished. However, determining if the bathroom was occupied or unoccupied was difficult. Clever Mrs. T. solved the problem. When the switch is lowered, the light is off, therefor the bathroom is empty, or open. When the switch is up, the light is on because someone is occupying the room, and so we say it is closed.

From caterpillars to the leaves they eat ~

Here are some of the caterpillars the children made from the egg cartons. They're creeping up our walls! But enough about bugs. Now we're examining leaves! We are using some of the zillion maple leaves covering the playground to make leaf rubbings and prints.

The children made little Parts of Leaves books, labeling a leaf's veins, petiole, midrib, margin and blade. Last week we took advantage of the beautiful weather to hike over to the park in search of specimens for leaf books.
Here they are at the base of an oak tree, discovering the acorns hanging above and even more on the ground around it.
Upon returning to the classroom the leaves were pressed in books. Today we worked together to identify, label, create covers and bind them. The finished products brought many sweet smiles.

crickets, grasshoppers and woolly bear caterpillars

Showing the class a Woolly Bear caterpillar. We could see its little pro-legs and its true-legs.
With great concern, these children spent part of their playground time searching for food to nourish our classroom guest.
Then R.D. found this young cricket. All who came to look at it saw the long delicate antennae that distinguish crickets from grasshoppers, who have short thick antennae.

The Seguin boards

This is Seguin Board I. With this, a child learns that our teen numbers are made up of a ten and a number of units. It helps children in writing these numbers and in understanding our base ten system. E.C. caught onto this quickly and had a good time with the task.

This is the Seguin Board II. A.N. is matching the correct number of ten bars and a one to nine bead bar to a two digit number. Through this Seguin Board children gain a better understanding of two digit numbers to 99.

getting buggy on insects

Thank you so much for all the egg cartons that were sent in for our class. The children are still busy making their own insects with 6 legs, 2 wings, 2 eyes and 2 antenna, of course. Here is E.W. and J.K. painting their creations.

hanging around on the playground

H.K., A.T., T.K., L.Z. (not yet in our class), M.L. and A.N having a blast on a beautiful day.

Division

Solving division problems with the Division Board is usually a popular activity. With this material a child can divide one and two digit dividends by up to nine divisors. Skittles are used for the divisors and beads are used for the dividends. It is easy and entertaining for a child to see when the beads are shared equally among the skittles and when there is a remainder. We often are besieged with two or three children happily pleading "I want to do division".

Please enjoy this article reprinted with the permission of The Montessori Initiative:

Compassion and Peace
Despite its global nature and the fact that Montessori is continuing to add schools and students on almost every continent, not every month brings us items that qualify as "News". However, there is still plenty of information that we can share with you.

On his recent visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama spoke at the University of Indiana to a filled basketball stadium. "We must teach our children with compassion," he said. "As a child, I learned more from the teachers that taught me with compassion and a smile than I ever did from those that taught with a frown." He went on to stress, "Through that example, our children will learn compassion and they will learn to apply compassion when dealing with others. With compassion, we can learn to understand one another and appreciate our differences rather than become afraid of them. Compassion is the first step towards 'internal disarmament'. When we can disarm ourselves, we can learn to concentrate on disarming the world we live in. It is too late for our generation. Our generation's responsibility is to the children. We must teach the children with compassion so that they will learn compassion. With compassion, they will work to solve the problems that we cannot. With compassion they will work on the problems that are manmade. They will care about global warming and they will work to turn the tide. They will care about human suffering and they will work to turn the tide. With compassion they will understand that we all have a shared responsibility to one another. Eventually, when enough have learned compassion, we will have peace." [We have edited his comments in summary].
The Dalai Lama could have been a Montessori teacher. Maria Montessori made it clear in her writing that through education of the child comes peace. That is why compassion and a global understanding of our world is such an important part of every Montessori students learning. Dr. Montessori wrote the first "Rights of the Child" for UNESCO. Those rights are all based on compassion. As Montessorians, we continue to teach with compassion to our students. As adults, we must remember it when we deal with one another.

Crazy for Cursive

A lot of our older boys and girls have got the cursive bug. They've been hammering us with daily requests since September to teach them this and that letter in cursive. It's wonderful to see so many children independently and enthusiastically directing their education. the skill of forming the letters correctly isn't always easily mastered. But these children practice willingly and on their own. They forge ahead, writing spelling words, rhyming and singular and plural exercises in cursive even though it isn't required. Every day is a treat.

Snacks, a Fire Truck and Paper Mache

For starters, a big "thank you" to all of you parents for sending in good, healthy snacks for the class. We've had fruit, cheese, crackers, carrots with dip and and a great snack mix made by one of the boys. His mother sent in cups for serving it, all the ingredients, the recipe and a big bowl. Her son loved mixing the pretzels, cereal, raisins and M&Ms (it's o.k. to cheat once in a while) for his classmates.

Yesterday, our Deputy Fire Chief, a Fire Marshall and a real fireman brought a pumper truck to the school for a great demonstration of the gear and equipment used to fight fires. Unknowingly, the camera card in my camera was full. So I didn't get any pictures. Darn.

But the class loved the demo and showed quite a degree of knowledge about smoke detectors and the "stop, drop and roll" rule. One even correctly identified the huge tool that's used to cut open cars in emergencies. Then they made their own pictures of the big red fire truck.

Since our class has been discussing the earth, inside and out, many of the children chose to make a paper mache model of it. We talked about its inner core, outer core, mantle, crust and plates. We saw pictures of volcanoes forming mountains and how millions of years ago, the continents were joined. From here we'll explore the periods of dinosours, then the separate continents and more land and water forms.

We used clean plastic dome tops saved from a summer of smoothies and iced teas to paper mache for each earth half. The children are happy to put recyclables (paper, plastic, cardboard) in the bins and re-use some nonrecyclables in projects.

Here is one of our girls using the beads to complete some addition problems. Also pictured is one of our classmembers punching out a bay after finishing the lake and the island. There is always so much going on. We certainly won't run out of pictures.

This morning while working with one of the teachers, an astute young boy said,

"Look at my blisters. They're from climbing.

My Grandma said, 'This one popped'. But I didn't even hear it!"

"I could do this all day long."

Yes, that was said by one of our class's many lively boys. He had just been shown the Bank Game and was happily taking turns with a classmate being the banker, then a customer.

A few days later on the playground, one of our boys announced "There's a tarantula over there!". Considering that our school is in the Northeast, one of our teachers investigated. Just as thrilling to the children was the fact that the little creature was a daddy-long-legs.

sewing buttons?

As usual, the day passes quickly. Another lovely birthday celebration with muffins and 5 trips around our "sun" in the center of the circle of children.

There's quite an interest in learning to sew a button onto fabric. It's become popular to use that skill to decorate one's own shirt, jumper or shorts with some of the many buttons in our button bowl. I love the children's creative ideas for the buttons!

They are also having fun using the hundreds, thousands, tens and units bead material, punching out land and water forms, making words and practicing reading skills.

Our First Day

On Tuesday, 22 eager little people brought our classroom to life.
Returning students excitedly met up with old friends then happily met our new classmates. New students began absorbing the casual yet structured atmosphere of a Montessori classroom. Children explored the shelves for new and familiar materials. The class was busy. We're off to a good year.