Hemlock Building:
A warm New year’s welcome from the Hemlock teachers. January is the month of transition and doorway to new beginnings and also a month of past reflections and new resolutions and hopes. Children learned the specialty of January and why it got the name. We revisited our classroom rules and older children made a skit on our rules.
The core fundamental philosophy of the Montessori curriculum is peace. Children learned about inner peace, classroom peace, family, and community peace. They realized the importance of learning and respecting the difference among cultures. We talked about Martin Luther King Junior day and his contribution to equal rights and peace in our country. Their curiosity about the colored bottles in our classroom is solved by getting the explanation of each bottle’s meaning, like friendship, love, peace, joy, kind words. They also came to know that peace helps us to achieve self-confidence and courage.
We took a space voyage and excited to visit the exact moment of our universe’s birth, called the big bang, and visualized its expansion. We also traveled to our solar system and looked at our celestial bodies and took a deep dive into Earth’s layers. After our safe return to Earth’s surface, we admired the beauty of the landforms of our Earth.
Children were excited to make snowflakes, winter caps, and a snowman. We celebrated Leon’s 4th birthday on the very first day of our school. Happy birthday, Leon. We also welcomed two children, Kaya our returning student of the past year, and Owen to our Creative family. Welcome, Kaya and Owen.
Buckeye Building:
Welcome back to school. We are glad everyone had a safe and relaxing winter break. All the children have settled back into their usual routines quite nicely and with very few reminders.
At circle, our class has been learning about peace and how to calm ourselves when we get upset. We talked about how filling our lungs with oxygen helps us to think clearly and let our love shine. Sitting up and straightening our spinal cord helps our bodies receive messages from our brain and send them out to our body more efficiently. We are now discussing the peace bottles each day. Red represents truth, orange represents personal best, yellow represents peace, green represents friendship, blue represents kind words, and purple represents joy. Next month we will begin our unit on Earth and space.
We appreciate everyone doing their part in flattening the curve of Covid-19 by social distancing, staying home when necessary, and taking all other health precautions; thank you! As a reminder, some children’s masks get very wet or dirty throughout the day, so it is not a bad idea to send them with an extra clean mask in their backpack.