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Classroom Review

Hemlock Class:

This month we started teaching peace as we began the peace curriculum where we talked about what inner peace means and ways to find that inner peace. We call it a love light. The children were shown different breathing techniques to calm themselves down. The virtue of class peace bottles was discussed, which involve Red- truth, orange- personal best, yellow- peace, green – friendship, blue- kind words, purple-joy. We keep reminding children about these virtues. February was also all about celebrating: the Chinese and Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day, and President’s Day. The children learned about the meaning of these celebrations and were able to fine-tune their art skills by creating different arts and crafts. Valentine’s Day is always a highlight for the children, and they enjoyed decorating their own Valentine’s bags to hold the cards that their fellow students brought to give out. Distributing the cards into the bags of each child is something the kids always look forward to. We also had a simple snack of watermelon, cantaloupe, and muskmelon cut in heart shape and cherry tomatoes filled with cream cheese and spring onion (put together to look like a tulip flower). We continue to work on how to treat each other with respect, try to be helpful to each other, and enjoy doing things as a group.

We are starting our next unit about birds. Soon your child will be sharing some fun facts about birds.

Buckeye Class:

We started February off by talking about safety at circle. This included understanding that firefighters are not scary and that people should trust them. We learned about what smoke detectors do, and not to touch hot things. Lastly, we discussed how to walk safely in parking lots, streets, driveways and neighborhoods. We also had guest night. This is one of our favorite and most popular events at our school. There were many children who brought their guests and showed them what they do at school. For Valentine’s Day we decorated bags for our valentines, then made cards for our parents. We learned about what love is and where Valentine’s Day came from. On Valentine’s Day, the children passed out their valentines and ate a small plate of fruits. We also introduced land and water forms. We learned about peninsula/gulf, strait/isthmus, cape/bay, archipelago/system of lakes, and island/lake. The children have had the opportunity to pour water into our land and water form models and place objects like fish, trees, people, bridges, and animals around them. Another holiday we learned about is Carnival. Carnival is a fun festival of merrymaking; people dress up in costumes, participate in parades, and decorate floats. There is music everywhere, which makes people dance and sing in the streets, young and old alike. It is pre-dominantly a Roman Catholic festival, the last “hurrah” before the beginning of the season of lent (a period of fasting and reflection) which ends on Easter. Ms. Ross showed pictures of popular Carnival destinations around the world: the famous carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans, elaborate costumes and masks in Venice, Italy, and of her home town in Maastricht, the Netherlands, where people celebrate for three days and even most stores, schools, and businesses are closed during this time. On our nature walks, we are beginning to see a few early signs of spring including trees budding! We will wrap up the month with talking about the presidents on our coins and a few other presidents.

creativemontessorischool_mz5i3rClassroom Review