Sunnybrook Montessori

Sunnybrook blog has a new home

2011-05-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

The Sunnybrook blog has moved! Please visit us at our new web site to read all about our adventures. We'll keep this site around, but everything you read here also has been copied over to our new blog.

Thank you!

2011-04-19T07:03:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was an excellent work day with the Montessori materials. The children were very focused on their work.

We read “Monster Musical Chairs” by Stuart Murphy. This book was about subtraction. To reinforce the concept we played musical chairs. We also used 10 corks and each child would take one away then count how many were left. Then two would be taken away and we would count how many were left and so on until 10 were taken away from 10 to emphasize the concept of zero.

The children used chalk outside to color the tree stump and cement patio. One child blew on the chalk and made “chalk smoke” – good observation.

Tammy read “Utterly Otterly Day” by Mary Casanova.

Brigette brought in the shell of a coconut and shared pieces of coconut with all the children for taste and texture.

We listed to some great Celtic stories, one was about a huge oak tree and how the first harp and first flute were made (magically). One story was about how the birds got their colors. We then read an Aborigine story about their beliefs and how the birds got their colors – a very interesting contrast.

On Wednesday two Sunnybrook graduates joined us for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Cloe treated the children to a story… “Musicians of the Sun”, by Gerald McDermott.

Zeanny came on Thursday and gave a great Spanish lesson. She also gave the children a Spanish book naming the animals. Thanks Zeanny.

Tammy and Brigette gave all of us a wonderful scrumptious ice cream party. Thank you both.

We all engaged in a wonderful movement song called “Rattlin Bog”. The children were so enthused about this song.

Tammy read “Molasses Flood” by Blair Lent. It is a fictitious story but really based on a molasses tank exploding in a small part of the Boston Waterfront.

Today is my last day as substitute director and I want to thank all of you – children and parents for the marvelous opportunity of working with all of you. It has been a pleasure.

Thank you Tammy and Brigette – you were both so helpful and enthusiastic.

Cheer,

Gerry

Music and mud, a great week.

2011-04-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

What an exciting week. The week started off with Tala’s grandparents, namely Art and Marsha Hammon, bringing instruments to school, namely a cello, recorder, wooded flute and a silver flute. Thanks Art and Marsha. It was a great experience for the children.

Tammy introduced a lesson and art work regarding the life cycle of a frog. We are hoping to acquire some frogspawn in hopes that we will see it transform to tadpoles.

Brigette brought in her pet mice for the children to pet.

Thanks Brigette and Mariyah for the book present to Sunnybrook “Helpin’ Bugs” by Rosemary Longhorn.

Tammy read “Wiggling Worms at Work” by Wendy Pfeffer. We are now on the look out for worms.

Zeanny gave a great Spanish lesson to the children. Thanks again Zeanny.

“The William Tell Overture” by Rossini was a great hit. We read the story, listened to the music and acted out the story. Later in the day many of the children drew great pictures of their impression of the story.

Oh the wonderful mud. The children were so creative. They used the old tires as a dam, dug a trench in the mud for the water to flow down, which ended in a great big puddle (their lake). They floated pieces of wood and pine cones on the lake and built an ant bridge over the river of mud.

We checked out the circumference of a tree using a tape measure, then the diameter of a tree and finally we ended up with 10 children managing to fit on to the stump of the tree.

Thanks Tammy and Brigette for the great support this week.

Altogether a great fun week.

Thanks everyone,

Gerry.

Spring ?

2011-04-04T17:33:00.000-07:00

This week we have been focused on Spring – I wonder why? The books we have read… “Lets Look at the Seasons “Spring Time” by Ann Schweninger, “Spring goes Squish” by Marty Kelly, “Catching Sunlight” a book about leaves by Susan Blackalsy illustrated by Charlene DeLage and a wonderful book from Tala’s Mom entitled “The Curious Garden” by Peter Brown. Thanks Heather. In honor of spring we have also planted “Nasturtium” (Tom Thumbs) seeds. We are trying to introduce spring into the classroom.

On Thursday morning we had our Spanish class by Zeanny – the children are really enjoying it. Thanks Zeanny.

We have been talking about what it means to be an artist and have read “I am an Artist” and “The Art Lesson” by Tomie de Paola.

The favorite song this week is “This Land is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, accompanied by drums and rhythm instruments. This has been performed with great gusto.

A funny event this week was the hat throwing contest devised by the children. They decided to throw their hats on a tree…and they had to come up with ways to recover their hats… e.g. shaking the branches, throwing balls on the branches and finally using a huge stick to retrieve the hats.

The children have done lots of work this week, especially in the language area.

It has been a good fun week at school.

My thanks to Tammy and Brigette for all their patience and hard work.

Thank you,

Gerry

A Busy Week at Sunnybrook

2011-03-28T07:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks Lyn and Brigette for the small objects for our alphabet container.

Tammy’s experiment for stalagmites and stalactites is going well; check it out when you drop off your children. The children are amazed at the daily changes.

Lots of language work is going on in the class along with the sensorial and math areas.

We have lovely new labeled control maps for our geography area.

Gregory’s mom, Zeanny, came on Thursday morning and started giving Spanish lessons – Thanks Zeanny.

Brigette brought in a box of toothbrushes for the children with a CD telling the children about oral hygiene.

Books we have read this week – “Little Red Hen”, which we acted out. “Caps for Sale”, also acted out. “Eve and Smithy” by Michelle Edwards, “The Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch” by Ronda and David Armitage and “The Granddaughter Who Was Eaten by a Big Fish” a Cree Candian story.

Songs this week are “Sarasponda”, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “Kookaburra”, “Zum Gali Gali” and “I Love The Moutains”.

Brigette is re-doing much of our language materials and organizing draws and closets. Thank you Brigette.

Thanks Tammy for all your great ideas.

It was a good week; very busy and productive. You have great children.

Thank you,

Gerry

Dancing to an Irish Jig

2011-03-21T07:05:00.000-07:00

Our thanks to Lyn Schmucker for repairing the easel…Thank you Lyn.

It has been a very busy week working on lots of materials. We have been working a lot on language skills. Some of the children have been drawing and making books about their favorite stories.

Tammy has been conducting some great science experiments. By using baking soda, water and string we are watching for the growth of stalagmites and stalactites. We are recording the development of the experiment on a daily basis. Another experiment was freezing water and freezing water with sugar added. The experiment was in connection with sap in the maple tree.

Some of the books that we have been reading this week are “Toestomper and the Caterpillars” by Shaileen Collecott, “Sugarbush Spring” by Marsha Wilson Chall, “There’s an Alligator Under My Bed” by Mercer Mayer, “Coyote Walks on Two Legs” about Navajo myths and legends by Gerald Hausman and Floyd Cooper and “Daniel O’Rourke” by Gerald McDermott.

Songs we have sung are Looby Loo, She’ll be Comin Round the Mountain, Eye Winker, Little Arabella Miller and the daily request for The Allee – Allee – O …great favorite.

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this week we have had fiddle music of jigs and reels with the children dancing to the music. We listened to James Calway, the Irish flautist playing the most amazing music. The children made a “Shamrock Person” and Brigette brought in a green treat to share with everyone. Thanks Brigette

Last, but not least, please continue to dress the children in snow pants, boots, etc. Mud season is upon us and it looks like it will continue for many, many weeks.

I am so enjoying working with your children. They are full of energy and enthusiasm for learning. What a joy it is to work with them.

Gerry Tobin

Another Busy Week

2011-03-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

Did you see the great photos of the children sledding? Thank you Heather and Matt.

We have had a very busy week. Tammy helped celebrate Mardi Gras by having the children make feather masks and reading a book about the festival.

We have been really exploring many of the materials in school.

We have been making many letter books and alphabet books.

We have been singing many songs some of which are “Medicine Wheel Chant” accompanied by heavy duty percussion, “The Allee Allee O”, “Santa Maloney”, “Sally Go Round the Moon”, “Down by the Station”, “Eye Winker”, “On Top of Spaghetti”, etc. The drumming circle was great; oh how they love the African Drums.

Tammy read a book about the Iditarod and discussed the event which takes place in Alaska every March. We have read many books this week. “Ollie’s Ski Trip” by Elsa Beskow, was a favorite. Ask your children about “Mrs. Thaw”. Other favorites were “The Tomten” by Astrid Lindgren, “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds and we re-read “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud…a great reminder about being kind to each other.

Two of our children left for Nova Scotia, Robert will be returning from Poland next week. Charlie is leaving for Florida. Tala is heading off to Hawaii. I can’t wait to see their journals of their trips.

My thanks to Tammy and Brigette for all their help.

Great Week

Gerry

P.S. We welcome two new children this week; Gregory and Mariyah.

Snowy Fun in the Sun

2011-02-28T10:12:00.000-08:00

This is my first week back after a number of years. Let me say it is a pleasure to work with Tammy and Brigette. They are so caring and helpful. I am so enjoying your children.

This week we spent some time going over the basic rules of the class; how to carry a rug, how to walk, how to talk softly and how to say excuse me without bumping another person.

Tammy did a great unit on the solar system. We have been worked on singing, movement and differentiating between a minor and a major scale. We are working on matching pitches with the bells and identifying, at the moment, two composers, namely Bach and Beethoven.

We worked with many of the basic materials from the sensory area. We had a couple of beautiful sunny afternoons and the children really enjoyed the sun and snow. It was a great week. Please enjoy your vacation week and if you are traveling in different areas it would be great if your child could keep a little journal with drawings.

One request; if you know anyone who plays an instrument and has time to visit school we would truly appreciate it.

Thank you,

Gerry

2011-02-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

This week we enjoyed learning about birds. We read bird stories and learned that the Purple Finch is the state bird of NH. We also looked at pictures of other birds that may visit our bird feeders. The children enjoyed making their bird feeders and hopefully everyone is able to find a spot to hang them in your yard. Help your child identify any birds that come to your feeder and make sure you send in your bird sightings! Each child has a bird journal that they will be recording their bird sightings in by tracing the name of the bird or drawing a picture of it.

We continued exploring percussion instruments during music. We played different drums that we have in the classroom, listened to a drumming CD and identified/colored instruments on our percussion worksheet. On Thursday, February 17th, our afternoon students will be walking to the Congregational Church to see and learn about percussion instruments. Please see me if you have any concerns/questions.

2011-02-07T17:04:00.000-08:00

This week we read stories about Chinese New Year. We learned that the holiday celebrates the coming of spring and and is celebrated with family gatherings, gift giving and eating symbolic foods and plenty of festive decorations including Chinese lanterns.

We also learned that dragons are a popular symbol for Chinese New Year. The children were interested to learn that people dress up in dragon costumes and dance down the streets in parades and some of the dragons are 100 feet long! We then made our own Chinese New Year dragons:

Gung hay fat choy!

During music we discussed and read about percussion instruments. We learned that a percussion instrument vibrates and produces a sound when it is hit, shaken, rubbed, etc. We experimented with drums, triangles, maracas, rhythm sticks, tambourines, tone blocks and cymbals. Most children said the cymbals were their favorite although they were, "very loud!"

Last week we read, "Snowflake Bentley" and learned that no two snowflakes are exactly alike and saw some close up pictures of snowflakes. On Tuesday, our afternoon students examined some snowflakes with a magnifying glass and tried a snow melting experiment. We put snow in plastic bags and the children worked with a partner to try and melt it using their body. The children reported they were most successful when they squeezed the bag with their hands or stepped on it.

Our Friday students have been enjoying playing Sight Word Bingo and learning all about money! We are learning how to make change to one dollar.

Construction on bird feeders will begin this week. If you are able to hang your feeder at home make sure to send in your bird sightings!

Reminder: Valentine's Day card swap will take place on Tuesday, February 15th.

2011-01-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

"The wind it whooshed, the snow it whirled/ / Bare trees shook like chilly bones./ Children grumbled in their homes." Sound familiar? We had the cure for the winter blues though...On Tuesday Magda came to read a story called, "Sun Bread" about a baker who bakes sun-shaped loaves of bread to brighten up the town during the dreary winter. After the story, the children got to make their own sun bread. They kneaded and rolled out the dough and made some very beautiful and yummy looking sun bread. Thank you Magda! It was such a great experience for the children and the perfect activity for a winter day.

On Thursday we made butter from whipping cream. We placed some whipping cream in a jar and observed the change from cream to butter as we took turns shaking the jar. We sat in a circle and each child had two turns to shake the cream as we sang "The Butter Boogie"

Shake it up
Shake it down
Shake it, Shake it all around
Shake it high, Shake it low
Shake it, Shake it to and fro
Shake it over, Shake it under
Pretty soon we'll have butter!

And we did! Halfway through the process we opened the jar to see our progress and after a few more times around the circle we had delicious butter! We spread it on crackers and shared it at lunch and afternoon snack time.

Shaking, shaking...

Halfway done....

Butter!

Our back classroom is decorated with our beautiful Chinese lanterns and we're ready for Chinese New Year!

North Country Community Band Concert:
The North Country Community Band will hold it's 2011 winter concert on February 1st at 7 PM at the Lancaster Town Hall. Admission is free, donations are welcomed.

Week of January 16th

2011-01-25T09:03:00.000-08:00

We had a great week investigating the sense of touch. The students felt the different textures of feathers, sand, salt, rice, sandpaper, cotton balls and paper and then pasted them to make beautiful touch collages.

At circle we looked at "Vase with 12 Sunflowers" by Vincent Van Gogh and read a bit about the artist. After reading a bit about Van Gogh, and looking at some of his other paintings we set up the activity so they could draw their own sunflowers. They are looking beautiful! I'll try to post some of the children's drawings next week:

Our Friday friends enjoyed making footprint snowmen, reading "Harold and the Purple Crayon" and writing/drawing their own purple crayon adventure.

Other pictures from the week:

2011-01-17T18:07:00.000-08:00

Our first Show and Tell went great and it was neat to see the different objects the children selected to demonstrate the five senses. If your child did not bring anything on Thursday, they are still welcomed to bring in a "five senses item" to share at circle.

On Tuesday we did a tasting jar activity. We read a book about the sense of taste and learned about the four types of taste: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. Then we broke into two groups and did our tasting jar activity (or tasting cups in our case). The children tried spoonfuls of water with salt, water with sugar, water and lemon juice and water with coffee (decaffeinated, of course). We didn't tell them what was in the cups until the end, so they enjoyed trying to guess, as well as identify what type of taste it was. They did a great job of identifying each taste and decided that the sugar and water was, "yummy," but the salty, bitter and sour produced a lot of funny faces and exclamations of ,"Ew, gross!"

We were also busy making and decorating our classroom windows with beautiful paper snowflakes:

We enjoyed a new bubble making activity in Practical Life. To do this work, the child grates some soap and empties the grated soap into a pan of water and uses the whisk to create bubbles. Lots of fun!

We noticed the children had been looking for animal tracks in the snow outside so this week we made animal track books. We hung control cards on the wall and placed the booklets and worksheets on a table. The children were able to cut out the animal picture and match it to the track and paste it in their book. We discussed this at circle and tried to think of what type of animal tracks we may see in New Hampshire and which ones we probably wouldn't see around here.

The children were also busy with many other math, language, Practical Life and art activities.

Working with the Metal Insets:

Puzzle work:

2011-01-10T09:21:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year!

The children returned well-rested and eager to get back to work. We had many students busy building and writing words, working with the Bead Material, Chains, Sensorial Extensions, puzzles and Practical Life activities. We had been so busy practicing our Winter Celebration songs during December we didn't have much time for other music activities, so we were happy to get out our instruments this week and play along to a familiar song and do rhythm activities with the really big drum.

We've been talking about the five senses during circle time. We used a mystery bag with many different objects inside and observed these objects using our senses. We found out how they felt: rough, smooth, sticky, soft; if they made a sound or had a smell. The children also made many visual observations. As an art project we made paper flowers with lavender oil that they were able to smell, see and touch.

The wonderful thing about Montessori classrooms is that materials are introduced to the children through their senses. They feel and see the difference between long and short, smooth and rough, small and large. There are materials and activities to develop auditory, gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell) senses. Sensorial materials help refine the senses so that the child learns colors, sounds, tastes and texture. It increases their desire to explore and make sense of their world.

Show and Tell is back! On Thursday, January 13th please have your child bring in an item that demonstrates one (or more) of the five senses. For example, they may bring in something that makes a sound, has a smell, has a texture they could describe to the class, or maybe even has a taste! While making a selection, discuss with them what sense their item could demonstrate to the class.

Reminder: Parent/Teacher conferences will take place on January 14th. There will be no school that day. Please sign up for a conference time on the bulletin board in the back classroom. Thank you!

2010-12-20T11:56:00.000-08:00

We had a great week making a holiday gift for moms and dads, drinking hot chocolate and listening to the "Polar Express" and "Merry Christmas, Big Hungry Bear" in our pajamas and enjoying seasonal Practical Life activities.

Our Friday students enjoyed listening to some Christmas carols from a local recorder group and put the final touches on their paper mache dragons.

Thank you families, for all your help with the Winter Celebration Event. We appreciate all the goodies, picture taking and help cleaning up. The children were wonderful!

Happy Holidays!

2010-12-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

This week we continued reading snow and winter books. We enjoyed, "Snow", "Winter is the Warmest Season", "Snow Sounds" and Eric Carle's "Dream Snow." Besides reading about it, the children also had a great time playing outside in the snow! Much fun was had on the sleds. We also created beautiful snowflake art using black paper, white paint and a doily:

On Wednesday, the children made holiday cards for the residents of Country Village Nursing Home. We reproduced them on a color copier and will send them over this week for the residents to enjoy.

We are working on using kind words with others and thinking about how we can make other people feel good by the things we say and do. We read, "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" which is a great book that visually conveys the message of love and kindness for young childrren. The story says that everybody has an invisible bucket that needs to be filled up, but we need other people to fill our buckets by saying and doing kind things. When our bucket is full, we feel happy. You can also be a bucket dipper, if you use unkind words or actions and that makes others feel sad.

After we read the story we decorated our own paper buckets and thought of how we could be bucket fillers. The children were asked to finish the sentence, "I am a bucket filler when...." The responses were really sweet and thoughtful.

Our Friday students have begun to paint their dragons

Experimenting with hand bells

Math fun

An extension using the Cylinders and Brown Stairs

Reminders:

Thursday, December 16th is pajama day!

Friday, December 17th Winter Celebration Event
Lancaster Congregational Church @ 5 pm (please have children arrive between 4:30-4:45)

No School: December 21st-January 3rd
Happy Holidays!

2010-12-06T11:46:00.000-08:00

This week we enjoyed some stories about winter and snow. We read, "The Mitten", "The Three Snow Bears" (which is very similar to "Goldilocks and the Three Bears", except it features an Inuit child and three polar bears), and 'The Snow Child' which is a Russian folk-tale about a couple who makes a snow child and she magically comes to life. We are also doing a great job practicing our songs and poems for our Winter Celebration Event.

We've also been busy...

Using our seasonal threading cards and mitten/snowball numbers and counters

Working on our yoga poses

Playing the Bank Game

Washing windows

Doing puzzles

Painting snowflakes

On Friday we worked on a handwriting exercise, experimented with some hand bells, checked out the gingerbread houses at the library and began (again) our paper mache dragons!

Our Friday group has been reading, "Elmer and the Dragon" during circle and we've been working on creating our own paper mache dragons. With our first attempt we tried some paper pulp and water solution, but it didn't work out very well so we went back to the tried and true newspapers dipped in flour and water. Very messy, but a lot of fun! The children are eager to add wings, tails and eyes and paint them next week.

Stone Soup Pictures

2010-12-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

A big thank you to all our helpers! We had a great morning reciting our poem, reading a couple of our Stone Soup books and sharing delicious food!

2010-11-22T17:09:00.000-08:00

My apologizes for the late posting.

Happenings in the classroom last week:

*We finished reading all of our Stone Soup stories and also enjoyed, "Growing Vegetable Soup" and consider what type of vegetables we might bring for the soup. We are getting quite good at our Stone Soup poem!

*We painted Thankgiving sun catchers and thought about the people and things we were thankful for. Many children also enjoyed some Native American mazes/coloring sheets.

*On Thursday we had a visitor play piano for us and we had a great time singing and began practicing songs for our winter celebration event.

*We also enjoyed a great yoga lesson where we listened to "The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear" and made yoga poses to go along with the story.

Along with all the other activities the children were busy with their important work.

Square of Pythagoras
The child builds Pythagoras' square using careful discrimination of size, shape and colors. This helps eye-hand coordination, concentration, develop cognitive skills such as thinking, judging, associating and comparing. It is also preparation for advance math concepts such as multiplication and algebra.

Building words with vowel sound "e"

Working on a puzzle which allows the children to build different words

A grocery list according to Kindergartners: Apples, goldfish, grapes and bananas:)

Working with the Spindle Boxes and Teen Board

This week at circle we read "The Peace Rose" story. The Peace Rose is a symbol of working and talking together to solve a conflict. The Peace Rose story shares conflict situations which are very familiar to children (children wanting to paint at the same time, someone knocking over another ones work) and encourages them to communicate with one another using the peace rose to solve the problem peacefully. We did some role playing at circle with our Peace Rose, so the children became aware of situations in which it may be useful.

2010-11-15T11:37:00.000-08:00

This week we listened to, "Some Friends to Feed" which is a version of Stone Soup told and sung by Pete Seeger. The children love singing along, "Stone Soup is what you need, when you have some friends to feed. Step right up with what you got and add it all to the big soup pot!" We are comparing and contrasting all of our Stone Soup stories. We've had some good discussions about what is the same throughout all the stories and what is unique to each story.

We've been working on our Grace and Courtesy lessons at circle and in small groups. We are practicing how to greet one another, how to say "excuse me" when you need to move around someone and how to sit down and stand up quietly. We are also practicing walking around others work, pushing in chairs and rolling our work mats correctly.

"Grace and Courtesy lessons" is the term given to learning social skills in the Montessori environment. Maria Montessori believed that between the ages 2 1/2 -6, the child is in a sensitive period (when it is easy for a child to acquire a certain ability) for the learning of good manners. We present the lessons as role playing excercises in small groups or at circle. We may model how to carefully walk around another's work and then any child who would like to, is invited to try it themselves.

We also enjoyed making some art projects this week. On Tuesday we made food color paintings by blowing through straws to move the food coloring around and on Wednesday they made collages with dried rice, beans, corn and peas.

Stone Soup day is Novemeber 24th. Please remember to send in a vegetable that your child can help wash and prepare for the soup by Tuesday, November 23rd.

2010-11-08T12:28:00.001-08:00

This week we read two of our Stone Soup stories and began to memorize a rhyme from one of our Stone Soup books. We practice at circle and we hope to have it memorized by Stone Soup day:

"Heat some water in a pot, Add a stone you've scrubbed a lot.
Sprinkle pepper, salt and herbs,
Let it boil undisturbed.
Stir in milk to make it sweet.
Add potatoes for a treat.
Toss in carrots, onions too,
Let it bubble, let it brew.
Taste the soup and when it's done,
Share Stone Soup with everyone!"

To help us remember the story of Stone Soup we made story bracelets. The children were given a pipe cleaner and four green beads, two red beads, one yellow bead and three clear beads. The first three green beads represent the three soldiers, the first red bead represents the village/community that they arrived in, the yellow bead represents the idea to make Stone Soup and the pot, the three clear beads are the three Stones they put in, the other green bead represented the other ingredients of the soup and the last bead represented the change in the villagers and the idea of sharing and community. The hope was that the children could use their bracelets to retell the story to a friends or family member.

On Thursday the firemen visited the library and we were able to attend. The children enjoyed watching a demonstration of how a firemen dresses for a fire and were able to see (and climb in!) the fire truck. They also listened to a story about fire safety.

Thanks to the help of our students the Sunnybrook Giving Tree is up!

It has a list of volunteer opportunities for the month of November. I invite you to check it out at the beginning of each month to see if there is anything you would be available to help with. I will also list these needs in the newsletter.

2010-11-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

This week we perfected our "5 Little Pumpkins" rhyme/finger play and made some pumpkin props to perform with. We practiced each day at circle with our props and took turns being the first, second, third, fourth and fifth pumpkin. See if your child can share the rhyme with you!

We also worked on finishing our leaf project. I wrote about it in a previous post, but to recap: The children drew or traced their favorite leaf we found on a leaf hunt with a fine point ink pen. We photocopied their drawing until everyone had four copies of their leaf. They were then able to decorate their leaf with watercolor paints, colored pencils, oil pastels, markers or crayons. Some chose to do all one medium, and some chose to try different ones. Either way, they came out beautiful and it was a great way to experiment with the art materials. The completed project should be ready to go home sometime this week. Here are a couple done by the Friday students:

On Thursday we enjoyed painting pumpkins, apple stamping, making masks, making orange paint creations and sharing some goodies at the harvest fest. We were lucky to have beautiful weather.

The past few weeks we have been thinking and talking about leaves, pumpkins, and Autumn. Now that we move into November we will switch our focus to....Stone Soup! We started our first Stone Soup stories last week and read a Stone Soup rhyme. Stone Soup is wonderful for many reasons, but mostly because it gets us thinking/ learning about sharing and being a community and what that means.

2010-10-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

Updated with pictures!

We had lots of fun Tuesday making little apple pies. These came out so cute and the children had a great time making them. The children started off by mixing the dough and rolling it out with the rolling pin. Then they cut a circle in the dough using a drinking glass and placed it in their muffin tin as the bottom crust.

Then they washed an apple and had help cutting it into slices and with some (not so sharp) knives, they were able to chop their slices into little pieces. They put them on top of their bottom crust and sprinkled them with sugar and cinnamon and added the top crust.

In case you want to try this at home, we baked them for about 15-20 minutes at 425 degrees. They looked great when they came out, but due to an unfortunate incident of salt being mixed with our flour we used for rolling the dough out, they didn't taste as good as we had hoped. It's the process not product, right?
Final product picture...

Since we were in cooking mode, we made some orange, cinnamon spiced play dough on Tuesday afternoon. The children that helped had fun helping measure and add ingredients to the bowl. Of course, they all had to have a turn adding food coloring and stirring. The whole classroom has enjoyed using it.

Other happenings in the classroom included: working on our shape names and making triangles, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons (and so on...) with Popsicle sticks, learning "5 Little Pumpkins" poem and finger play at circle, and moving along with our "Carnival of Animals" CD and movement scarves. We've seen some great work in the classroom this week. Lots of exciting math, language and sensorial activities have been out, and beautiful paintings, drawings and clay creations were made.

On Thursday afternoon, the children enjoyed a visit from Iza who gave them a presentation on Poland. They located Poland on the globe, and talked a bit about the people and culture of Poland. Thank you Iza!

Our Friday friends were busy drawing equilateral, isosceles and scalene triangles, reading about Beethoven and making their own Beethoven Books, and recording facts about African animals in our Geography Journals.

Montessori Moment:
Montessori believes that all children are capable, and by allowing them to do things for themselves they will experience joy and develop confidence and self-esteem. In the morning, have your child show you how they take off their shoes, put on their slippers and hang up their belongings.

“Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence.” -Maria Montessori

Harvest fest is Thursday from 12pm-1pm for both morning and afternoon children. Morning children will be dismissed @ 1pm. The children will enjoy some snacks and autumn activities. Thank you to those who signed up to help or bring goodies.

2010-10-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

Lots of exciting work was out this week including: learning names of shapes with the shapes from the Geometry Cabinet, matching sounds with the Sound Cylinders, learning about quantity with the Number Rods, and building the maze with the Red Rods. The maze is a fun sensory extension that a child can do with the Red Rods. I didn't manage to take many pictures this week so, I used a picture below from last year so that you can see how one would construct it. After they build it, they enjoy carefully walking through it.

We enjoyed our second yoga lesson and learned some new poses. The children were very engaged and eager to participate. Hopefully, they were able to demonstrate for you at home.

We started listening to "Peter and the Wolf" during music. The children are doing a great job recognizing which instrument represents each animal. We also helped narrate the book, "The Empty Pot" with our instruments. This is a great listening excercise where each child is assigned a part to help narrate with an instrument. For example, every time the word "children" is read the children with the bells shake their bells or every time the word "seeds" is read the children with the sand blocks play the sand blocks and so on... It's a lot of fun, and helps work on listening skills and concentration.

We also spent plenty of time outside in the beautiful sunshine!

2010-10-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

This week we embarked on our first library trip of the year. We practiced our library manners, enjoyed a fall story hour and made leaf rubbing pictures. It was a great way to spend a rainy morning.

Popular activities this week included: using pumpkin spiced play dough and pumpkin cookie cutters, practicing letter sounds, counting, sorting, stringing beads, building words, doing geography puzzles and making numbers 11-19 with the Teen Board.

At circle we enjoyed stories about apple picking, made a "spiderweb" with some yarn and took turns being the spider crawling through the web. We also read "Our Peaceful Classroom" which is a book about attending a Montessori school. The illustrations are done by Montessori children from around the world. It's a beautiful book and we had fun seeing the similarities between our classroom and the classrooms in the illustrations.

The Friday students have been busy, busy! They have started making their own geography maps and we've been reading about South America together. So far, they've been interested in learning about the animals in South America so we've read about spectacled bears, anacondas, piranhas, jaguars, poison dart frogs and capybaras. We're practicing our handwriting and writing down important facts we find in "Geography Journals." They've also been enjoying the Bank Game.

The Bank Game:

"The Bank" (Bead Material)

Golden Beads are a great tool to introduce the children to the decimal system and understand unit quantities of ten, hundreds and thousands. A single bead equals one unit, ten beads strung on a wire indicates ten, one hundred is indicated by 10 bars side by side (which makes a square) and one thousand is ten one hundreds stacked on top of one another to make a cube. In our bank game the children go back and forth to the "bank" to exchange their quantities. For example if a child counts that they have 10 units, they may go to the bank to exchange them for 1 ten. If they count that they have 10 hundreds they may go to the bank to exchange them for a thousands cube. The Golden Beads and the small and large number cards allow the children to perform simple addition with really BIG numbers. Due to missing small number cards we used the large number cards in the pictures below.

Outdoor balance beam fun!
Forgot to post these a couple weeks ago.

2010-10-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

We had a great week thinking about Autumn, investigating seeds, learning yoga poses, doing exciting math exercises and making music!

We started the week by reading, "How Groundhogs Garden Grew" and "Growing Vegetable Soup." Then we looked at some seeds in the vegetables that Tammy had brought in from her garden and discussed the seed life cycle. We had some experienced gardeners who knew just what it takes to make great vegetable soup. This should come in handy during Stone Soup time.

On Wednesday one of our parents came in during Music/Movement time and did some yoga with the students! They learned a great song about practicing yoga and used their bodies and imaginations to become different animals.

We have two exciting art projects the children can choose to work on. Our first one is leaf art. We first went on a leaf hunt around the school grounds to collect leaves. Children studied the leaves and drew or traced their favorite with a fine point ink pen. Once everyone has completed this we are going to scan and print several copies for each child and then have them decorate the leaf copies with different materials: watercolor paints, tempera paints, markers, colored pencils, etc. We hope it will be a fun process and be useful in exposing them to different art mediums.

On Thursday, our afternoon children read, "To Be An Artist" and looked at a poster of "Castle and Sun" by Paul Klee.

We then discussed the different colors and shapes we saw and everyone agreed that "Castle and Sun" was a good name for the painting. They were then able to make their own version of "Castle and Sun" and they created some beautiful work! This activity will stay out over the next couple weeks and will be introduced to the morning students.

During music we talked about different ways we can make music. We thought of using our body: clapping, snapping, stomping feet and singing. We also thought of the different instruments we can use to make music. We had a great time experimenting with this by doing our clapping rhythm activities, singing songs, playing the really BIG drum and using our maracas, triangles and rhythm sticks.

2010-09-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe that we've already been in school for three weeks! The children are settling in nicely, and it's been sweet to see new friendships and interests develop. One of the favorite activities is in the Practical Life area: rock painting! This is done with water, two medium-sized rocks and various sized paint brushes. The purpose is to develop concentration and fine motor skills. The children get joy out of making the rock "beautiful" when it is shiny with water and can experiment with different sized brushes to see the brush strokes.

Other activities this week included: finishing nature collages, making "apples"
with cinnamon scented play dough, collecting leaves for our leaf books, reading Autumn stories and singing new and favorite songs from our "Rise Up Singing" book.

Working with the Color Tablets
The purpose of the Color Tablets is to assist the child in identifying color and to visually discriminate different shades of color. There are three different color boxes and the third box (below) is also a language lesson in understanding the concepts of "dark", "lighter", and "lightest".

Short Chains
The Short Chains are practice for linear and skip counting to 100. The Short Chains represent the squares of the number 1-10.

Drumming!

Matching lower and upper case letters

Working with the Sandpaper Letters

Pouring exercise

2010-09-20T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Rain, Rain, Go Away" was our motto last week. It seemed that every time we tried to go out to play we got rained on! Although, the children were quite eager to get out the rainy day activities. Hopefully everyone got a chance to enjoy the sunny weekend!

Despite the gloomy weather, the classroom was a busy, happy place all week. Along with lots of exciting math, language and practical life work, we had fun apple stamping with fall colors, moving like fish and birds with our Carnival of Animals CD (and movement scarves, of course), doing nature collages and performing puppet shows.

Working on numbers 11-19 with the Teen Board.

Apple Stamping and other art projects

Fun during Music/Movement time

Puppet Theater

Window Washing (Practical Life activity)

Investigating Shells

Working with Movable Alphabet to build words

First Week of School!

2010-09-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

Hello Sunnybrook families and friends,

I hope our new and returning families enjoy this blog. It will be updated weekly and will give you a peek into the happenings of the classroom.

We had a great first week of school. The returning children were excited to get to work and our new students have done a great job of exploring the classroom, meeting new friends and beginning to work with the materials.

We started the week by reading, "The Kissing Hand," which is a great story for the first day of school, and introduced our calender. We practice the months, days of the week and record the weather during morning circle. During music we did rhythm games, played our rhythm sticks, maracas and triangles along to "Play your Instruments" by Ella Jenkins, enjoyed "The Bear Hunt" CD/story and the movement activity to "We all Go Traveling By".

On Thursday we read "Mouse Paint" and did a color mixing activity at circle. Our Friday students enjoyed mixing paint and painting their own white mouses. Our Friday students also worked on leaf collection and identification for the Leaf Books they will be working on over the next few weeks. We also collected extra leaves and pressed them to use for a project with the whole class in the coming weeks.

All the children enjoyed the new rakes outside and building with the wood pieces donated by Garland Mill (thank you)! All in all, it was a great first week back!

2010-06-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

Three more days of school! Can you believe it?

The students have been very creative the past few weeks drawing, painting and making their own little booklets. This week we made props to go along with our spring pantomime that they hope to perform for families at the picnic on Thursday. The pantomime is a great movement excercise that also ties in with all the exciting things we observe in the spring: seeds sprouting, breezes, warm sunshine, gentle rain and of course butterflies.

Speaking of butterflies... we really enjoyed watching our fat caterpillars form a chrysalis and then hatch to become Painted Lady butterflies. There was much excitement when they finally hatched from their chrysalis and we were able to release them.

We are perfecting our folk dances and have finished making some beautiful posters to go along with them:

With the weather being so nice we've been trying to do some lessons outside. On Friday the students learned about the parts of the tree and made tree puppets out of brown bags. We then used our puppets to sing "The Green Grass Grows All Around." We also determined how many friends we needed to complete a circle around the tree.

Other pictures from the week:

School picnic is Thursday, June 10th at noon. See you then!

2010-05-24T12:07:00.001-07:00

We had a busy week working on our end of the year art project. The children are creating self-portrait collages and they are turning out great.

We've also been practicing our folk dances and a spring pantomime to share with our families at the end of the year picnic. On Friday, our students began making posters for each of our folk dances to show the countries the dances originate from. We have beautiful France, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and United States posters in the works. They used the geography maps to punch out the country shape, colored flags and added illustrations to show more about each dance.

We've also been acting out "The Grouchy Lady Bug" story. The children enjoy taking turns pretending to be the different animals. It was a highly requested activity this week and I think we all have the story memorized by now.

We have added a tray with cards to the play dough activity, that has everyone's name and the children are able to select their name or a friends name to make out of play dough. It's been a fun and popular activity.

Other pictures from this week:

Multiplication Board

Journal Writing

Stringing Beads

Enjoying the sunshine!

Sleds have many uses at Sunnybrook :)

Dandelions!

***Show and Tell: Wednesday, May 26th

2010-05-10T19:55:00.001-07:00

This week we began our last unit on plants. We sang about being little seeds that are about to sprout and enjoyed many wonderful books on gardens, flowers and seeds. We revisited a favorite music activity with reading, "The Empty Pot" and using musical instruments to help narrate the story.

We enjoyed making pots from newspaper and planting our own sunflower seeds to bring home for Mother's Day! The children also enjoyed making butterfly hand prints.

Our caterpillars keep growing longer and fatter. They seem to be getting very sleepy...

Other happenings in the classroom:

Spindle Boxes

Short Chains

Bank Game

Ten Board

It was a great week filled with lots of art projects, reading, math materials, singing and dancing!

2010-05-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

Happy May!

Stone Pizza pictures:

The preparation...

Ready for the oven!

Mmmm...pizza!

Thank you to everyone for contributing your favorite pizza topping. The children had a great time washing, cutting, shredding and preparing the pizza together.

Over April vacation I took my girls to Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory & Gardens in Deerfield, MA (which I highly recommend if you are ever in the area) and was able to bring back a Painted Lady butterfly kit so we can watch the butterfly life cycle. We have 5 caterpillars that we are observing. The observation at the end of the week was that they were definitely "fatter." Hopefully we can observe the transformation to butterflies by the end of the school year.

With caterpillars on the brain we enjoyed the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle and talked about the collage art technique that is used in many of our favorite Eric Carle books. We experimented with some collage art of our own:

Our Folk Dances are coming along nicely and we hope to be able to share them with you before the end of the school year. It was a great Sunnybrook week!

(Our "Sandpiper Dance")

2010-04-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

We had a great week singing, practicing some new folk dances and learning more about food. On Tuesday we enjoyed a story called, "Stone Pizza" which was similar to Stone Soup, except it features a coyote and other desert animals. We had a discussion about the differences and similarities in the Stone Soup story and the Stone Pizza story. We thought about our favorite pizza toppings and created our own paper plate pizzas. After vacation we ask that everyone bring in their favorite non-meat pizza topping, so we can work together and make our own Stone Pizza. It will be an fun (and yummy) way to end our food unit.

During circle on Thursday we made our own food pyramid out of cardboard boxes. We then took turns sorting pictures of food into the pyramid. Some of our friends then enjoyed making a food collage with the pictures.

As always, we have been busy with our work! Some things we have been working on...

The Stamp Game is used for static (no exchanging or carrying) addition. It is more abstract than using the bead material for addition but the child is still manipulating the material to reinforce the concrete addition process.

The Multiplication Board introduces the child to the concept of multiplication in a hands on way.

Working on fine motor skills by scooping beans.

Geography puzzle work.

Butterfly tracing!

2010-04-05T10:27:00.000-07:00

This week we spent time thinking about Spring. We considered the signs of Spring we have begun to see: robins, rain, warmer days, snow melting, and of course, mud. We read books and sang some songs about the Spring weather. We've been reading some short, seasonal poems at circle and the children have been practicing writing the poem (with the words dotted out). It's been a great way to incorporate poetry and work on our handwriting.

We've are still working on folk dances at music time. Our Danish Dance of Greeting has gotten quite good and we've added some new ones. We are also using it as an opportunity to learn a bit about the countries that the dances originate from.

Work time is still busy, busy! The older children enjoyed a lesson on time and decided to make "Time Books." Geography maps, math and sensory materials have been chosen quite a bit lately.
It's been great to see the excitement over their work and so much learning taking place.

2010-03-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Happy Spring! The children were busy with their work this week. Geography puzzles, working on Alphabet and phonogram books and our new hammering activity kept them busy. Our hammering activity allows them to make different pictures by hammering shapes into a cork board. It has been a lot of fun and is great for fine motor skill development.

During music the children paired up and worked on a rhythm stick combination with their partner and as a group we learned the Danish dance of greeting.

Parents of beginning readers: I will be sending home a photocopy of the book your child has been reading at school that week they may want to read this book at home with you. Most of our readers are working through the Primary phonics series. Many of the children love reading their books and drawing pictures about what they have read or practicing writing words from the book.

2010-03-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Early in the week we were scientists and inspected different fruits. With our observations we were able to answer some question like:
"Where are the seeds located in the fruit, on the outside or inside?"
"How big are the seeds?"
"How do the seeds look/feel?"
"How and where does this fruit grow?"
This experiment came with the added bonus of an extra snack time. We also enjoyed an amusing story called "Showdown at the Food Pyramid" about achieving the right balance of healthy foods.

During music we enjoyed rhythm clapping activities using the names of our favorite foods. We had a Sunnybrook student share their musical talent by playing us a a couple songs on the piano and another student brought in a guitar which gave us the opportunity to examine and learn the names of the different parts of the instrument.

The children were delighted by the spring-like weather and enjoyed the time in the sunshine running, playing and doing some "yard work" by helping pick up the sticks off the lawn.

Show and Tell: Wednesday, March 24th

2010-03-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

Although it is time to take bird feeders down, please continue to send in your bird sightings from around your house, around town, etc. Our bird chart is filling up, with many chickadees and crows spotted. We've also had sightings of a cardinal, junco, and some bluejays and wild turkeys. It will be interesting to see if our Sunnybrook friends can see some other birds as the weather becomes warmer.

This week we began talking about our new unit...food! We sorted foods into food groups at circle time and learned the names and colors of some nutritious food. The food sorting activity is now on our shelves for the children to work with. We also examined our snacks and tried to decide which food group category they would belong to.

The children enjoyed a visit from The Cat in the Hat this week, who brought some wonderful books with him. Their observation was that he was, "very tall".

As always, we were busy working away. The children enjoyed some new materials, such as the Sound Cylinders and the new control maps to help with the geography puzzles. The older students got to use new phonogram Sandpaper letters to create "sh" and "ch" books.

2010-03-06T17:37:00.000-08:00

We started this week learning about our last animal class...arthropods! We played a game with animal cards where we sorted insects into one category and all other arthropods into another category. We learned how to identify an insect by looking for 3 body parts and 6 legs.

We read some great books about other arthropods like spiders and lobsters. The children were surprised to learn that lobsters shed their skin (and eat it!) and if they lose a leg they can grow another one.

During music we've been learning about the instruments of the orchestra. We enjoyed a matching game with our instrument cards and talked about what family the instruments belong to. Our Friday group enjoyed the story, 'Meet the Orchestra'. On Thursday, we got out our favorite books with music CD's and revisited, 'Stone Soup', 'Victor Vito', 'Puff the Magic Dragon' and moved around as different vehicles to 'We All Go Traveling By'.

Our friends have also been busy with their work. Lots of math materials have been out this week from the Sandpaper Numerals and the Number Rods to the Long Chains and the Stamp Game.

2010-02-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

Magda was back this week with the sourdough bread they made from the wild yeast starter and the regular bread made from the store bought yeast. They got to try both types and see if they could taste the difference. What a great (and yummy) project!

We learned more about owls, hawks, eagles, blue jays, robins and chickadees this week. The Friday group read a story called, "Mud City" about flamingos. What makes a flamingo pink? Are they pink when they first hatch? Ask one of our Friday students to find out!

Our bird chart will be up on Tuesday, so don't forget to bring in your bird sightings!

During music we've been enjoying playing our instruments along with our Ella Jenkins CD, listening to Jambo, The Mexican Handclapping Song and learning a Maori chant.

working on a Cylinder extension

An almost complete geography map!

working with the Red Rods

birdseed collages!

transferring water with a dropper

2010-02-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

The students have been busy with their work this week! Since pictures speak louder than words:

Robert is working on a pre-reading activity.

Claire is transferring water with a dropper, an activity that develops fine motor skills. George is sculpting a reptile (dinosaur?) from play dough.

Emma is working with the Addition Strip Board. The Addition Strip Board is one method used by students to assist them in their abstract and concrete understanding of addition.

Victoria is pin punching around the continents to make her own geography map. A great hands on way to learn about geography.

Emma Mae is using counters to complete an addition worksheet.

Kieran and Tommy have completed a Color Tablet extension. A sensory and language lesson teaching about light, lighter, lightest and dark, darker, darkest.

George is building words out of the Sandpaper Letters from the book "The Tin Man". (FYI: teacher, not student, responsible for Sandpaper Letters all over floor...desperate search for letter 't')

Charlie is working with the triangle shape box.

Jon admiring his bird feeder.

And of course, lots of beautiful artwork was created:

Thank you to Tammy for taking these beautiful pictures on Thursday afternoon! While our morning students missed the "photo shoot" rest assured, they have been very busy as well!

We had a lot of fun making bird feeders and listening to different bird calls. We read about different birds of North America and discussed which birds might visit our bird feeders. The friday students read a story about migration and we learned how birds find their way south (without a map!) and discovered how far some birds travel every year.

We've also been busy singing away. Favorites this week include: On Top of Spaghetti, 5 Little Ducks, Bee Hive fingerplay and Skidamarink.

2010-02-01T11:16:00.001-08:00

The children enjoyed a presentation from Tammy about recycling. We sorted some "trash" and discussed which items can get recycled. We identified the trash bins in our classroom that are for recycled items and discussed what food items from our lunches are able to be put in the compost.

We started another science experiment to see how flowers drink water through the ground from their roots. We placed a white carnation in a vase with some water and blue food coloring and then placed another white carnation in a vase with regular water. The Friday students were able to see that the carnation in the vase with the food coloring has started to turn blue. We'll see how it is looking on Tuesday and make some observations.

We've talked quite a bit about mammals and reptiles. This week we will begin our discussion on birds! The milk jugs will become bird feeders that the children may bring home and hang outside. We hope you and your child will watch your bird feeder and try to identify the types of birds that visit. If you are able to identify any, please bring this information to school. We will be making a chart to keep track of all the birds our Sunnybrook friends have seen at their feeders. We will continue this until the end of the school year, so feel free to keep bringing in your bird sightings!

2010-01-25T05:59:00.000-08:00

This week Magda visited with a special lesson about bread. The children learned how bread is made and what ingredients are included. We learned that yeast feeds on sugar and releases carbon dioxide so the bread will rise.
Then we helped perform two experiments with yeast! The first one included putting warm water, sugar and yeast in a bottle with a balloon pulled over the bottle opening. As the yeast began to eat the sugar and release gas, the balloon slowly began to inflate.
We are still in the middle of observing of our second experiment with yeast. We made a bread mixture in a glass jar and the children were able to observe it slowly begin to rise and see the bubbles the yeast was creating. We are eager to see how much it has risen over the weekend!

We talked and read about reptiles this week complete with some dinosaur math and multiple request for the 'Dinosaur Stomp' book and song. We also enjoyed a new music activity that included playing instruments along with "The Empty Pot" book. What a great week!

2010-01-17T17:08:00.000-08:00

"Believe In Books" was back this week with Clifford the big, red dog! The children were delighted with the Clifford stories that were shared and the Clifford books they were given. Clifford received lots of hugs and high fives.

We talked about some characteristic of mammals this week. We learned that all mammals have hair or fur at some point during their life, that female mammals produce milk for their babies and that all mammals are warm blooded. Interesting stuff!

On Thursday we read a book on Martin Luther King, Jr. which was written very nicely for young children. It talked about the idea of love, peace and acceptance and sparked a good conversation about being kind and fair to others.

During music we listened to an audio book about jazz and played some rhythm games.

Beyond that, we have been busy with our work!

2010-01-09T17:55:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

We are continuing with our study of the animal classes. We are reading through a series of “Guess Who” books about animals. The books give hints about an animal on each page, and once the children have all the information, they try and guess the animal. We’ve read about snakes, owls, bats, sharks and more. We’ve also read “Stella Luna” a book about a fruit bat who learns about friendship, family and acceptance and enjoyed listening and moving to a song about goldfish.

Lots of exciting and important work has been happening in the classroom. Our youngest children have been busy pouring, scooping, stringing beads, working with the Red Rods and practicing sounds with the Sandpaper Letters. Many older students practiced their numbers 11-19 with the Ten Board and some did the Short Chains and the Addition/Subtraction Boards. Others traced, colored and labeled their own continent maps, learned the parts of the frog and fish by tracing our nomenclature cards and many made “oo”, “a” and “i” books. It was a busy week!

2009-12-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

The children have been very busy with their work! Some new activities out on the shelves this week:

Snowball Counters, which is a seasonal variation on our Numbers and Counters. To do this work the children put the mittens (which all have a numeral printed on them) on the mat in the correct order from 1-10. They then place the snowballs (cotton balls) under the corresponding mitten. For example the mitten with the "1" would have one snowball placed under it. The control of error is that there are 55 snowballs and if the child ends up with some left over or they do not have enough, then they know to go back and re-check their work.

Other seasonal variations on favorite activities include our winter lacing cards:

and our holiday tree at the cutting station. This has been a group effort over the last couple weeks with most everyone contributing to the decorating. This started as a basic, pencil outline of a tree and the children were provided with construction paper, scissors and glue and made a festive creation!

There has been a lot of interest in our math material lately. The Bank Game with the Golden Beads and the Golden Bead addition has been popular among our older students. For those who are not familiar (or need a refresher!) the Golden Beads are a great tool to introduce the children to the decimal system and understand unit quantities of ten, hundreds and thousands. A single bead equals one unit, ten beads strung on a wire indicates ten, one hundred is indicated by 10 bars side by side (which makes a square) and one thousand is ten one hundreds stacked on top of one another to make a cube. In our bank game the children go back and forth to the "bank" to exchange their quantities. For example if a child counts that they have 10 units, they may go to the bank to exchange them for 1 ten. If they count that they have 10 hundreds they may go to the bank to exchange them for a thousands cube. The Golden Beads and the small and large number cards allow the children to perform simple addition with really BIG numbers.

We've also been busy working with Mystery Words, making letter books, building words, doing puzzles and working with Sandpaper Letters.

During group time we've been talking and reading about different animals and which class they belong in. On Tuesday we made booklets about the life cycle of a frog and discussed that it belonged to the amphibian class and on Thursday we brainstormed a list of animals that are considered mammals. We hope to do more with animal classes after break as there seems to be a lot of interest in the subject.

We've been busy practicing for our Winter Celebration event! It will be held on Thursday, December 17th at 4pm at the Lancaster Congregational Church. The children are very excited to share the songs they have been working on.

And a few more happenings in the classroom:
(Yes, I went a little picture crazy this week)

Finally...Snow!

2009-12-12T17:10:00.001-08:00

2009-12-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

What a great first week in December!

We started talking about the different animal classes this week. We learned that there are six important animal classes: mammals, reptiles, fish, birds, amphibians and arthropods and we considered the different animals that belong to each class. We also learned about the parts of a fish and parts of a frog. Very interesting! We are excited to continue this in the coming weeks.

We were also very busy with stories about everyone's favorite subject: snow! We read about Snowflake Bentley who photographed snowflakes and enjoyed the story "Snow Sounds: An Onomatopoeic Story". The children had great fun making the "clank, crash, bang" sound of the plow, the "hush" sound of the snow and the "beep, beep, beep" of the school bus. We also enjoyed listening to our CD of the Polar Express.

During music we've been practicing our seasonal songs for our Winter Celebration event. On Wednesday and Thursday we were able to practice our songs with some live music! We had two special guests come in to play guitar and piano.

The children were also very busy with their work. Many children did the bank game and addition with Golden Bead material, worked with the Sandpaper Letters and Numerals, worked on building and writing words, sewed holiday buttons, used the winter/holiday lacing cards and made beautiful snowflakes with white paint against black paper.

Stone Soup

2009-11-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

We had a nice couple days filled with Thanksgiving music, stories, projects and of course, Stone Soup! The children enjoyed cutting and washing their vegetables on Tuesday and finishing up their Thanksgiving turkey project. The children were very excited about Stone Soup on Wednesday morning, when they smelled it cooking. It turned out to be very delicious, although some children preferred eating the cheese, breads and crackers. It has been a great process this month reading through the different versions of the story, talking about sharing and community, preparing our vegetables and finally sharing Stone Soup together. Thanks to the volunteers who brought yummy food and helped serve and clean up.

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving!

2009-11-23T18:48:00.000-08:00

Our big accomplishment this week was reading every Stone Soup story we have. While we saw the differences in them, the same lesson of sharing and community was apparent in all of the stories. We read, 'Growing Vegetable Soup' and that sparked discussion about what vegetables would go into our soup and how they would prepare them by washing and cutting.

We discussed the Thanksgiving story and read some more books about the pilgrims and the Native Americans. We've continued singing our 'Over the River and Through the Woods' song during music and we were able to read the original version of the book as well.

We've begun a new project! The Gatelys have given us a map so that we can track Tommy's dad on his ship. We made a tiny ship that we placed on our map and when we get updates from the Gatelys we read them to the children and move our ship to the new position. We were surprised to learn that the ship travels at 13.8-18.9 MPH...as one of our Kindergartners said, "That's not so fast." The children were also excited to learn that there were 300 pick-up trucks on board and helicopters land on the flight deck.

On Thursday morning the children were treated to a science experiment by Iza and began making a Thanksgiving craft with Tammy. Along with everything else, the children have been busy doing their important work!

2009-11-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

We started talking about Thanksgiving this week by sharing some stories about the pilgrims and the native people of North America. We also read a sillier Thanksgiving story called "Over the River: A Turkey's Tale". That sparked an interest in singing, you guessed it..."Over the river and through the woods to grandmothers house we go..."

We've also been reading our Stone Soup stories. The children very much enjoy singing along to, "Some Friends to Feed" a version of Stone Soup done by Pete Seeger.

In continuing with our study of the Rainforest we made colorful rain sticks (which the children quickly re-named Rainforest sticks) which we used to make the sound of rain while we sang our Rainforest song. They turned out to work better as music shakers anyway.

On Thursday we made Rainforest friendship butterflies. The children traced their hands and then cut them out to make butterfly wings. Then they traded one of their wings with a friend and kept one for themselves. They glued them together and decorated them. Beautiful butterflies were made and the older children were so thoughtful about helping the younger ones with the tracing and cutting.

Thanks to Iza we now have a copy of, "This Land is your Land" on CD and they have enjoyed singing along with great enthusiasm during music. We also finished listening to 'Peter and the Wolf' and continued our discussion about instruments in the orchestra.

We've also been busy working with our materials. It was a great Sunnybrook week!

2009-11-09T08:39:00.000-08:00

It is Stone Soup season! We read our first two Stone Soup stories this week and the older children explained the tradition of Stone Soup at Sunnybrook to our younger and new students (I learned a bit as well). What a great story of community and sharing. I think we will enjoy reading all our different Stone Soup versions throughout the month.

We continued our study of the Rainforest with a great new book (thank you Randalls!) called "The Rainforest Grew All Around". The book offered us some interesting Rainforest facts and allowed us to sing a new Rainforest song (sung to the tune of 'The Green Grass Grows All Around').

As a group, during circle, we have begun to explore our different phonetic sounds...starting with 'A'. We review how to write the letter (upper and lower case) , the sound it makes, we use sign language to sign it and we brainstorm different words that start with that particular letter. It has been a nice supplement to our Montessori language materials.

We have been listening to "Peter and the Wolf" during Music & Movement time. In "Peter and the Wolf" each character is represented by a different instrument of the orchestra. The children each hold an instrument card and when they hear their character they hold the card up high so we all know what instrument we are hearing. Of course it does get a bit scary when the wolf comes around.

During work time, we had a lot of math materials out. Number rods, The Tens Board, addition and subtraction activities were all popular this week. The children also worked with watercolors, letter painting/stamping and performed some puppet shows.

Sunnybrook Montessori is looking for a BIG cardboard box we can make a puppet theater out of. When the children choose to do a puppet show we pull out the couch, but another school shared a great way to make a theater from a box, fabric and paint. Let me know if you think you have something that might work.

2009-11-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween! What a fun and festive week we had at Sunnybrook! We read some Halloween stories such as, "Los Gatos Black on Halloween" and visited the library for a special pumpkin-themed story hour. On Thursday the children enjoyed a special fall celebration. They painted pumpkins, did some apple stamping, played some games and enjoyed yummy snacks. Many, many thanks to the parents who were able to help set up, facilitate activites, clean up and send in goodies.

We wrapped up our George Washington studies and reviewed all of our facts we learned throughout the month. Our Friday group said goodbye to George Washington by doing some cherry tree math. Three cherries on one tree and two cherries on the other...how many if we put the cherries together? We also changed the "Noble Duke of York" song to "Brave George Washington" and sang about how he marched his men up and down and up again!

New to the shelves this week: Mystery Words! This was quite a hit with our beginning readers. The Mystery Word bowl contains tiny envelopes that correspond with our beginning reader books (also known as the blue, green, purple and red books)
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A child places the bowl and the books on a mat and then chooses an envelope. Inside the envelopes are "mystery words", words from the book a child may not have been introduced to yet. Once the child has mastered all the mystery words they are ready to read the book. Learning the words from the book before actually reading the book ensures success, builds confidence and a love of language within the child.

Fall celebration photos:

2009-10-25T17:01:00.000-07:00

We continued our study of the rainforest this week by reading some great books. We've read about toucans, sloths and jaguars and discovered that the "roof" of the rainforest is called the canopy. We've talked mostly about tropical rainforests , but our Friday group read about a temperate rainforest in, "A North American Rainforest Scrapbook". There were lots of different and interesting species in the North American rainforest book. The picture of the banana slug was a big hit.

We also continued our study on George Washington. We know so many facts about George Washington now, we had to get out another piece of big paper so we could keep listing more. The children also enjoyed coloring the picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River.

The cutting station has been added near the painting area. Cutting is great work for improving fine motor skills. It has been enjoyed by our younger and older students alike. The younger ones work on their cutting and pasting skills and our older ones have been busy desiging and cutting out their own creations such as hearts, apples, cats and dinosaurs.

Some of our students worked on a pin-punching activity this week. They traced around our geography maps and then pin-punched the countries/continents out. It required a lot of attention to detail and fine motor skills, not to mention patience! What a great hands-on way for children to learn geography.

Many made color and letter books this week. The letter books consist of a child choosing a letter and practicing writing different words that start with that letter and drawing a picture of the item. For example, an "A" book might picture an apple, astronaut and ant. A color book has pictures of blank color tablets and to do this work, the child takes a blank book and the colored pencils and uses one color per page to color the blank color tablet.

We enjoyed some quality outdoor time in the warmer air this week. We played with the parachute and sang the "Under my Umbrella" song, played bean bag toss and bubbles. We also collected the leaves and pine needles on the ground to make great fall collages with contact paper.

2009-10-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

We learned a lot about fire safety this week. We had our first fire drill and a visit from the local firefighters! The firefighters had a fire safety discussion, showed the children how a firefighter looks dressed in his equipment ("you look like an alien...or a bumblebee") and invited us to tour the fire truck. Of course everyone was given a fire chief hat as well. The fire visit was a great way to conclude our family/community unit and we were able to move onto our next unit: The Rainforest! We started the unit by splitting into groups and drawing everything we knew about the rainforests. We have some very colorful wall hangings that include many rainforest flowers, trees, and animals. We enjoyed reading "Take a Step Inside the Rainforest" and "The Parrot Tico Tango".

We also continued in our Spanish lessons. The children are learning a great Spanish song about El Cuerpo (the body). They have also been working on the days of the week in Spanish. Zeanny does a wonderful job engaging them in the Spanish songs and finger plays and we are so grateful she is willing to volunteer her time.

Our Friday group read, "Zin, Zin, Zin a Violin!" and learned about the different instruments that make up an orchestra. We took some time looking at pictures of the instruments and listening to a music selection of each instrument.

Beyond that, work time has been busy. Number Rod addition was especially popular this week. As was the art area, the Practical Life pouring and stringing activities and the Color Tablet extensions.

A word about worksheets: you may notice some language and math worksheets coming home with your child this school year. As with all our materials, the children are invited, not forced, to complete worksheets. Sometimes the worksheets will be done with one of our Montessori materials (such as the Number Rod addition) and others are completed with a teacher or as a group. While worksheets are not the main focus of our curriculum, they still play an important part. My main goal with worksheets is to encourage fine motor skills. A child may understand a math concept or know how to spell a word with the movable alphabet, but they still need to be practicing writing the letters and numbers. We also want to familiarize the children with worksheets as they will probably be a part of their future education. Most importantly, the children really enjoy doing them. So, hang them on the refrigerator with pride!

Some pictures from previous weeks that haven't been shared yet:

Wish list

2009-10-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

Sunnybrook Montessori now has a wish list you can view at amazon.com

10/09/09

2009-10-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

We started our week off with some new books and new facts about George Washington. We are beginning to learn quite a bit. Why did George Washington wear a wig? Ask one of the students from the Friday group! We had quite the discussion about it on Friday.
Our Sunnybrook friends have been enjoying some new activities we have added to the Practical Life area. One is a clothes line where they practice hanging towels and take them down to fold them again. I've never seen such delight in folding laundry. You may want to keep that in mind next time you have a big laundry basket of clothes to put away. You could probably enlist a very willing helper.

We have also been busy stringing beads and sewing buttons onto fabric...not an easy task, but some children have been quite successful at it. In other areas, we've been working with the Number Rods, the Short Chains, tracing the geography puzzles and doing some Sight Word Bingo. The Friday group enjoyed exploring some "less than" and "greater than" concepts by trying to decide which number would fill up the alligator the most. We used some really big numbers because he was quite hungry.

Our highlight of the week was a very special visitor from Believe in Books...Corduroy! The children enjoyed a Corduroy Halloween story and received a special book. What a great program!

9/2/09

2009-10-02T17:28:00.000-07:00

Happy October!

Thank you for contributing your photos to our family tree projects. Construction is well underway and they should be ready to go home next week. The children were very proud to show off their photos and tell us about the special people in their lives.

Wednesday morning was muy especial because we started our Spanish lessons. It was great to see the big smiles on the children's faces as they learned new Spanish phrases and songs.

We've been very busy working on extensions with our sensory materials. We've been looking at pictures of suggested extensions and have been able to create our own by following the pictures. Favorites include: the maze with the Red Rods, the sunburst with the Color Tablets, and the fun structures with the Pink Tower and Brown Stairs. The Movable Alphabet, the Number Rods and the puzzles have also been quite popular this week.

We've started studying our first "historical person of the month". October's historical person will be George Washington. We made a list at circle about all the facts we know about George Washington. Turns out we know quite a bit already! We were able to add some new ones to our list thanks to a story about George Washington and the Revolutionary War and a helpful classmate who brought in a Quarter to share with us. The children were excited to see that George Washington was on the Dollar Bill and the Quarter! I expect our "what we know" list to get much longer as the month goes on.

The Kindergartners and the Friday group had a lesson about nouns and adjectives. We found nouns around the room: blocks, clock, table, glue stick. Then we added in a discussion about adjectives. Our noun was dog and we tried to think of different ways to describe our dog. Some ideas were: fuzzy dog, purple dog, little dog, overweight dog, hot dog :)

During Music/Movement we listened to "August's Rhapsody" and drew pictures about how the music made us feel. It was really amazing to see how the children interpreted this. Some made squiggle shapes (fast and slow depending on what the music was doing), others drew the instruments they heard, others drew music notes, trees, animals, happy and sad faces. It was a great exercise.

Some of our Sunnybrook friends with their work:

September 26th

2009-09-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

Another busy week at Sunnybrook! We continued our discussion on family and community. The children considered the types of places they see in their community. Some thoughts were: schools, stores, the library, the post office, the fire station and churches. On Thursday we embarked on our first outing to the library! The children enjoyed story time and got a lesson on the proper treatment of books. Then they participated in a special project and got to check out some of the fun activities in the children's library section.

We continued our science experiments this week by testing objects to see if they were magnetic or not. Our Friday group did a measuring activity where we learned how to measure in inches and that 12 inches=a foot.

Some of the more exciting news of the week-the art easel is back! It must have been greatly missed because the children have been busy creating beautiful art work. I hope the paint stains are washing out of the clothes. The art smocks only do so much...

We checked out some nature sounds at music/movement time and did a little yoga and stretching.

It's "Take a Child Outside" week! Read more about it here: www.takeachildoutside.org

9/18/09

2009-09-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

I guess it really is time to say goodbye to summer weather. The children (bundled in fleece jackets and sweaters) enjoyed playing out in the September sunshine and autumn air this week. Inside the classroom we were quite the scientists. With help from a science project book we talked about tightrope walkers at the circus and the center of gravity. Our experiment consisted of having our Sunnybrook friends stand with their backs against a wall and then lean over to pick up an object. They discovered that it was impossible to do so without falling over. We then tried it in open space and it was much easier. We concluded that your center of gravity really is necessary to pick an object up off the floor...or to be a circus performer.

The beautiful food coloring paintings you may have seen were the results of a science discussion/experiment about air turned art project. They really did come out nicely.

Our Friday students did an experiment in which we tested different objects to see if they sank or floated in water. We hypothesized which objects would float and which would sink. Most of the time we were right but there were a few surprises (the plastic glove floated but the plastic cheetah did not). We also got out the microscope and viewed a few slides. Very interesting and hopefully an activity we will repeat with different slides in the near future.

We enjoyed the "Dinothesaurus" book which has some great poems and facts about Dinosaurs. We heard about some of our favorites (Tyrannosaurus Rex and Triceratops) and learned about some new ones. We also tried hard to pronounce Micropachycephalosaurus.

Our community and family theme lead us to talk about different jobs and people in a community such as, the librarian, the postal worker, the fireman, the doctor, etc. We even have a great song about the people in the community (sung to the 'Wheels on the Bus' tune).

We've had some colorful music activities this week with the movement scarves and Hap Palmer's color song. The children have also enjoyed singing and moving to 'London Bridge' (and eagerly wait to get '"locked up" by the bridge) and the kangaroo song.

First week of school!

2009-09-11T16:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy first week at Sunnybrook. The returning children eased back into their routine and the new students had a great time exploring their new classroom and materials. This week we started our first theme of "Families and Community". We listened to a Spanish song about 'la familia' and talked about our own family members.

Some of the older children have been enjoying an activity called "popcorn words". They pick a "kernel" (scrunched up paper with word written on it) out of the basket and practice reading and writing the word with a small group. It's been fun reading and writing but I think the real enjoyment comes from making the popcorn popping noises.

One of our students shared a great book about the moon, planets and stars. We learned some interesting facts and enjoyed dramatizing the solar system. We had the Earth, the Sun and the moon and the other children took turns being far away and nearby planets.

We had a great discussion at circle about how the Earth is made up of dirt, water and air. We had a surprise visitor when we were investigating the dirt cup- a worm! After the children said hello we returned him to his outside home.

We've also been busy making many art projects. Come on in and peek at our apple tree! The play yard has been a busy place with our new jump ropes, sand, balls and an imaginary game of "picnic with T-Rex". Great first week!

Back to school

2009-09-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new blog for Sunnybrook Montessori. The blog will be updated weekly to give families and friends a glimpse into the classroom and keep you updated on the activities, themes, stories, songs etc. the children explore throughout the year.

So glad to see so many of you at the Welcome Back picnic and cleaning night. Your support is really appreciated.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend and we will see you Tuesday morning!