Hemlock Class

Can’t believe that we have come to the end of the year.

This month was all about bugs, flowers, and gardening. Our April showers brought us beautiful May flowers all around our school.

In the beginning of the month, we finished up learning about butterflies, and moved on to other insects, their importance to us and the environment, and their role in the plant world. We still have our caterpillars in our classroom and it has been a wonderful learning opportunity to witness their metamorphosis. Each morning the children come in curious to see if a butterfly has hatched. The excitement was high when this finally started happening! The children learned some interesting facts about ladybugs , ants, worms and bees.

Besides insects the children learned about the life-cycle of a bean and they planted their own bean seeds took care of them took it home. We looked in-depth at flowers some got to dissect their own flowers to see the parts of a flower.

 It has been wonderful to see the children so engaged in our spring units. They clearly enjoy learning about nature and our natural world, and they love helping out in our vegetable garden! They were happy to plant seeds and plants in our garden, water them and see them grow. They also enjoy eating the lettuce leaves. We continued the message that was emphasized in April, especially around Earth Day, that we need to take care of nature and should be kind to all creatures that we share our planet with.

Bread cutting and orange squeezing are the hits of the classroom.

They have been enjoying sing along music, movement with rhythm sticks and yoga and practicing calm breathing.

Our children have converted into beautiful butterflies and are ready to make a season finale. Thanks for all the understanding and cooperation from your side to make this beautiful journey.

Buckeye Class

What a wonderful, warm turn the weather has taken this May! With all this warm weather, we have been spending more time outside. We have opened up outside for worktime where the children may take work outside and work at the outdoor tables or on the outdoor rugs.

We also started gardening! We pulled weeds and tilled the garden in the backyard, dug up hyacinth bulbs, and planted them along the edge of the garden. We also dug up and planted some potatoes. We planted seeds in egg cartons and have been growing seeds inside. This included: sweet pea flowers, sugar snap peas, lettuce, squash, pumpkin, spinach, tomato, cucumber, basil, carrot, and asparagus. Those have now been planted in our garden. One morning was dedicated to a gardening party! Half the children were planting seedlings in the garden and half the children were working outside folding laundry, eating snack, and working with other Montessori materials.

Ladybug larva arrived for us in the mail, and we have been observing the exciting change from larva to pupa to ladybug. We have also learned about the parts of a ladybug just as well as their lifecycle.

Some exciting materials that have been introduced in May were, pouring water for friends and “tea for two”. After the children serve each other, they wash, dry, and put away their dishes at the washing station.

At circle we have learned a little bit about daffodils by dissecting them and labeling each part. This has continued while the children play outside and find flowers and can name the parts. Another popular outside activity lately has been looking for bugs outside.