Sunnybrook Montessori School

February 14-17th

emily — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:47:44 +0000

On Tuesday we celebrated Valentine’s Day with a card swap and yummy cupcakes. The children also enjoyed making “Love Bugs” and heart shaped crayons. The heart shaped crayons were a huge hit. The children LOVED this activity and they came out great. Each one was unique and beautiful.

Directions for activity if you want to try at home:

Peel/break up old crayons

Place in silicone baking tray (6-8 crayons each)

Cook in oven @ 230 degrees for about 15 minutes (or until crayons have completely melted)

Let cool (we put ours outside to speed this process up) and the crayons will easily pop out!

This week we enjoyed singing “Skidamarink” and “Tony Chestnut”. We also had a lot of fun listening to the William Tell story/music on Thursday, retelling it with the felt board and acting it out.

Stories we enjoyed this week included: Ten Little Ducks, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, The Very Quiet Cricket, Puff the Magic Dragon, The Art Lesson and Owl Moon. We are getting very good at identifying what an author does and what an illustrator does. Ask your child and see if they can remember! Also when your reading with them have them show you where the title page is in their books.

Work time was very busy this week! Many of our younger children worked on identifying and writing their names. We have been busy counting 1-10 and working on longest/shortest with the Red Rods and the Number Rods. We’ve also been working on rhyming, phonetic sounds, geometric shapes, pouring, scooping, sorting and making beautiful play dough creations.

Kindergarten has been busy reading, building/writing words, playing the Bank Game with the bead material, doing the Long Chains, working on telling time and making a class graph of our favorite Goldfish crackers. We had every child (and teacher!) sample regular flavor, rainbow and pizza flavored Goldfish. We tallied up the votes and made a graph. I believe pizza flavor was the winner, although it was close!

February 7th-10th

emily — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:22:22 +0000

What a busy week we had at Sunnybrook!

On Tuesday we enjoyed a Spanish lesson with Zeanny. The children really enjoyed singing, “Cinco Patitos” using the ducks on the felt board. We also played a game to learn the Spanish names for some of our musical instruments.

We enjoyed reading a few of Mo Willems books this week including, The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog and Knuffle Bunny. Our afternoon students have been learning about fables and Tammy has been reading some of Aesop Fables at afternoon circle. On Thursday we enjoyed reading The Rabbit and the Turtle: Aesop Fables by Eric Carle.

On Wednesday many of our students enjoyed sharing their books, stuffed toys and music CD’s to tell us about their favorite story character. Each child took a turn standing up in front of the classroom and telling us what they brought, one special thing about it and then they got to answer two questions from their friends.

On Thursday we welcomed Winnie the Pooh from Believe in Books. They shared a story with us and gave each child a story to bring home. It was a great time!

We’ve also been very busy with our work! We enjoyed a variety of Valentine’s Day inspired activities and many of the children were busy working on math, language and sensorial activities.

Our Friday students made beautiful Arctic animal dioramas, worked on telling time to the hour and did a great job reading, Dinah Dinosaur and Monkey Trouble and then writing their own Dinah Dinosaur story.

Pin-punching hearts

Stringing beads onto pipe cleaner to make Valentine’s Day bracelets

Brown Bear, Brown Bear felt board

Bead Material with cards

Slowly, but surely we are making progress on our igloo. We still need a few more jugs…keep bringing them in!

Reminder:

Tuesday, February 14th we will have a Valentine’s Day celebration/card swap during morning circle. Check your email for student’s names.

Week of January 31st -February 3rd

emily — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:38:21 +0000

This week we learned that an author writes books and an illustrator creates the artwork in books. We found the front and back cover on our books and learned to recognize the title page. We discussed fiction and non-fiction and enjoyed many stories such as: The Mitten, The Mixed-Up Chameleon, The Very Busy Spider, How Groundhog’s Garden Grew, All About Turtles, The Musician’s of the Sun and The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

We talked about Groundhog’s Day and some of the children colored and cut out a groundhog, painted cups brown and cut a hole in the bottom. We glued a Popsicle stick to the groundhog and they were able to “pop” out of their hole.

On Wednesday Tammy helped the afternoon children make an Native American talking stick. The rule was that only the person who had the stick was allowed to speak. We practiced it Thursday morning at circle. The child holding the stick said one thing they liked about themselves and then said one thing they like about the child sitting next to them. It was great practice in taking turns speaking and it was sweet to hear the children compliment one another. My favorite was, “I like you because I just love you!”

During music we enjoyed moving to a couple of Hap Palmer songs, singing “We’re Going to Kentucky”, “BINGO” and many other requests.

Our Kindergarten is working on graphs. We are keeping track of the weather each day (that we are in school) during the month of February so that we can make a weather graph. So far the have made graph’s showing the class preference between walruses and polar bears and counted groundhogs with and without shadows on a groundhog day worksheet.

On Friday we enjoyed listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and making Beethoven booklets. We also had a lot of fun sledding on the hill at Colonel town.

Thank you families, for the sled donations and for remembering to bring in your milk jugs!

Reminders:

Milk Jugs! Keep them coming…the igloo has been started.

Show and Tell on Wednesday, February 8th. Please have your child bring in a favorite story book character item (a book, figurine, poster, plush toy, etc)

Thursday, February 9th: Believe in Books in visiting with Winnie the Pooh!

Gung hay fat choy!

emily — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:17:47 +0000

This week we had a great time learning about Chinese New Year!

We read The Runaway Wok which the children really enjoyed. We learned that Chinese New Year is a celebration of spring and and is celebrated with family gatherings, gift giving and eating symbolic foods and plenty of festive decorations. We enjoyed making paper Chinese lanterns on Wednesday and many of the children made Chinese New Year books with dragons, lanterns, fireworks. Many of them pin punched China from the geography map and we helped our younger students trace it into their booklets.

Since it is the year of the dragon, our afternoon students worked together to decorate their own Chinese New Year dragon. It is ready for the festivities with plenty of color, glitter, feather, ribbons and even a few bells!

On Tuesday we had a great Spanish lesson and enjoyed using the felt board with our Very Hungry Caterpillar felt pieces during circle.

At music we’ve been talking about percussion instruments. We listened to a drumming CD and enjoyed playing different beats on our African drums. We also experimented with maracas, rhythm sticks and triangles.

Do you play an instrument? We are hoping to learn about different instruments and instrument families over the next couple months. If you play an instrument we invite you in to share your talent with the students.

emily — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:13:05 +0000

This week we enjoyed reading “Over in the Arctic” and acting like our favorite arctic animals. The book mimics the song “Over in the Meadow” and the children enjoyed howling like arctic wolves, hopping like arctic hares, growling like wolverines and so on. We read a story about an Inuit child and her mother “Mama Do You Love Me?” and our afternoon students enjoyed two Inuit legends, “A Promise is a Promise” and “Ka-Ha-Si & The Loon.” We are also working on a poem/fingerplay called “5 Little Inuit.”

On Tuesday morning we used white paint and glue to make puffy snow pictures. They came out great!

During music we did the cross-over dance. We put different colored stickers on oppositte hands and feet and the children had to reach down and cross over their body to match up the colors. This helps the children work on crossing mid-line, which is a developmental skill. It was also a great way to get moving (and anything that involves stickers is met with enthusiasm).

We also revisited some favorites such as, the “Mexican Hat Dance” and “The Rattlin Bog.”

We enjoyed a great Spanish lesson on Tuesday and on Thursday our older children worked on spelling out animal names in Spanish with our Movable Alphabet.

Lots of great work has been going on in the class! Our 3 year olds are naming/matching colors, shapes and numbers. We are working on our phonetic sounds and matching items to letters. Our older children were very busy this week! We had one child complete a geography map and another make a paper mache dragon. On Thursday we learned about static electricity and enjoyed using balloons to pick up sand, shredded paper and our hair!

Many of the children are enjoying our Metal Inset work. The Metal Insets are a wonderful excercise that are used for direct prepartation for handwriting.

The first step is simply tracing the shape of the inset and learning to hold a pencil. Over time, the children begin to master the movements to make a continuous solid line around the inset. Then, variations can be added, such as adding lines or designs inside the shape. Many of our children choose to pin punch out the shape after, which is more great fine motor work. This attention to detail helps your child develop those precise, intricate movements needed for handwriting. It’s also one of the most enjoyed activities in the classroom.

“My children thus perfect themselves in writing without writing.” Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

We are still collecting milk jugs! Please keep sending them in!

emily — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:30:19 +0000

This week we learned some Brain Gym activities and other exercises to help regulate our engines when they feel to high or low. We made a corner in the classroom where the students can go to sit quietly, perform yoga or Brain Gym poses and read stories. We enjoyed reading, “I Want It!” and learning what to do if we want to use something someone else is working with. We also enjoyed, The I’m Not Scared Book, and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day.

On Thursday we talked about the Arctic and the Inuit people. We enjoyed looking at a book on Igloos and reading about how they are built. The children were interested in learning how snow and ice can keep people warm. We found the North and South Pole on the globe and read about Emperor Penguins in the book The Emperor’s Egg.

We are enjoying a fun sensory activity using Arctic animals and ice cubes. To do this work the children request some “icebergs” from a teacher and the ice is placed onto the blue tray which represents the ocean. They can then use the small animals and figurines to act out arctic scenes.

Our Friday students traced, cut and painted beautiful Emperor Penguins.

We’ve started construction on our igloo. We need LOTS of milk jugs. Keep bringing them in!

An outdoor igloo More snow may be needed.

First Week in January

emily — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 02:49:12 +0000

Happy New Year!

The students returned rested and ready to work. We had a great week talking about feelings/emotions. We practiced our happy, sad, scared, angry and silly faces and sang, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” We enjoyed reading the books, My Many Colored Days, Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen and When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry. We also had Impulsive Puppy puppet and Timid Tiger puppet join us at circle to talk about how our “engines” can feel high, low or just right. We thought of some things we could do if we were feeling too high (overly excited, not being safe) or too low (shy, sleepy) to turn our engines to “just right.” The children really enjoyed the lesson and connected with the feelings. We learned how to give a thumbs up for feeling too high, a thumbs down for feeling low and a thumb in the middle for feeling just right. Many students shared with me “Miss Emily I’m feeling just right!” throughout the week.

The children have been very busy with their work this week. The younger children have been busy matching, working on phonetic sounds and numbers, shape and color recognition. Our 3- year- olds enjoyed playing a game with the Geometric Solids on Tuesday morning. We learned the names of cylinder, sphere and cone and then we hide one under a napkin and they had to guess which one it was by feeling. There was also a lot of great fine motor work: stringing beads, scooping, pouring, lacing cards, cutting with scissors, Metal Inset shapes. Busy, busy!

Our older children are working on recognizing numbers up to 100 with the Ten board, the Short Chains and the Hundred Board. We also worked on writing our numbers correctly with a wet sponge on a chalkboard, followed by a piece of chalk. They very much enjoyed this activity and it helped them when they did their next handwriting worksheet.

A few of our older students have begun to work on their Geography Maps. The students pin punch around the continents to make their own world map. It’s a great hands on way to learn about geography. We are also reading lots and lots! Everyone is making great progress. Please continue to read with your child at home.

Holiday Event

emily — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 02:04:45 +0000

A big thank you to all our Sunnybrook family and friends for coming to our Holiday Event. The children did a great job and it was so nice to see everyone. We appreciate the help setting/cleaning up and providing snacks!

Also, thank you to everyone who brought in a non-perishable good for the food pantry. I brought the donations over the week before Christmas.

Holiday Event pictures coming soon! If you have any to share please email them to me!

December 6th-9th

emily — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:52:10 +0000

We had a busy week! This week we traveled to Costa Rica, Mexico and Germany to study their Christmas traditions. During Spanish on Tuesday Zeanny explained how her family in Costa Rica has a tradition of making and eating tamales during the holidays. On Wednesday we found Mexico on our world map and read about Christmas traditions in Mexico. We learned that the poinsettia flower is a symbol of Christmas in Mexico. The children were then able to make their own poinsettia flowers.

On Thursday we read a book about Christmas in Germany and learned that advent wreaths and Christmas trees are an important Christmas symbols in Germany. Our afternoon children enjoyed painting their own Christmas trees and the morning children will get a chance to this week. We found it interesting that children in Mexico and Germany leave their shoes out for Santa Claus instead of stockings. We are also enjoying noting the different names children have for Santa Claus around the world. The children have also been eager to share their own Christmas traditions at circle.

We enjoyed learning a little bit about the 5 senses on Tuesday afternoon. We talked about the sense of touch and the children took turns walking over sticky contact paper without their slippers on. It was lots of fun to watch their reaction. We then did some sensory play with shaving cream, which the morning students also took part in on Wednesday morning.

Some of our students made dinosaur “fossils” with air dry clay and pasta. We added them to the sand table with brushes and magnifying glasses. Everyone has enjoyed playing paleontologist this week.

During music/movement time we’ve been working on yoga poses and practicing for our Holiday Event. The children are doing a great job learning the songs and seem excited about sharing them on Friday!

The older children have been very engaged learning about the Nutcracker story this week. We read through all of our versions and have been listening to the CD. Favorite tracks include, “March”, “Waltz of the Snowflakes” and “The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy.” On Friday we learned about Tchaikovsky, made some nutcrackers out of paper towel rolls (although some of them turned in Santa Claus) and went to the library to watch The Nutcracker video which was a big hit.

Reminders for the week:

We will be walking to the library on Thursday @ 10:30 for rehearsal. Thursday is also Pajama Day!

Holiday Event: Friday, December 16th @ 5 pm. Please have children arrive by 4:45 pm.

November 29th-December 2nd

emily — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 02:34:30 +0000

We had a great week talking about the sun and stars. On Wednesday we read a book about stars and talked about constellations and galaxies. We learned the definition of a galaxy, learned the 3 different shapes of a galaxy and learned that our galaxy is called the Milky Way. The children experimented with hole punching “stars” into a paper and shining a flashlight into a box so they could see their constellation on the back of the box. We also used glue and glitter to make our own galaxies.

On Thursday we learned more about our star…the sun! We sang, “Mister Sun” and “Burning, Burning, Bright Orange Sun.” Some of our afternoon students used the circle and ellipse Metal Insets to make a sun with the Earth orbiting around it.

We had lots of fun at music this week. On Wednesday, my husband Jon came in to play guitar and we practiced singing “Jingle Bells”, “Old MacDonald”, “ABC” and “Twinkle, Twinkle”. We’ve also been working on songs for our Holiday Event. We had a great time singing and dancing to “Feliz Navidad” with Zeanny and we are working with Sue on signing a couple holiday songs as well.

Our Friday students worked on making paper mache planets. Big mess, but lots of fun! Kindergaten is working on writing upper case letters correctly and spent this week working on center starting, corner starting and frog jump capitals.

All of our students are doing such a great job getting on their outdoor clothing all by themselves! Almost everyone has mastered the “jacket flip trick.” If you still assist your child in putting on their jacket ask them if they can show you the trick. It’s very important to count 1, 2, 3….flip!

Paper mache planets

Fun with play dough

Making dinosaur fossils

**Due to a scheduling conflict with the church, the date of the Holiday Event will be changed to Friday, December 16th @ 5 pm at the Lancaster Congregational Church

“Such experiences is not just play…. It is work he must do in order to grow up.”

~Maria Montessori