Week of January 16th

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:

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:

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!

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!

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!

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

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!