Sunnybrook Montessori School

May 8th-11th

emily — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:13:31 +0000

Happy belated Mother’s Day to all our wonderful moms and grandmas! I hope you enjoyed the flowerpots and butterflies that the children decorated for you. They were so proud of them and they came out beautiful! Many of the Friday students worked on acrostic poems for their moms and/or decorated cards. We had fun thinking of adjectives to describe moms for the acrostic poems. A few from the list: marvelous, musical, outstanding, talkative, energetic, happy, and hairy

On Tuesday we had fun celebrating Cinco de Mayo with Zeanny. She read a story about the history of Cinco de Mayo (that she had illustrated and written!) and then we danced to Spanish music and ate tortillas. It was lots of fun. Thanks Zeanny!

We’ve been enjoyed stories and songs about insects as well. We learned how to identify what makes an insect: 6 legs, three body parts and antennas. See if your student can remember the 3 parts of the insect’s body. We enjoyed reading What Makes An Insect? Pattern Bugs and Gotta Go, Gotta Go!

The rainy days kept us indoors most of the week, so we played many parachutes games, enjoyed the rainy day activities and books with tapes/CD’s. Dinosaur Stomp was the song and book of the week for sure.

We are starting our last theme for the year…oceans! If your child has anything (book, CD, shells, etc) that could help us learn about the oceans or ocean animals please have them bring it in to share.

Our last day of school is Thursday, June 7th. At noon we invite you to an end of year family picnic. We ask that you bring a dish to share. At this time the children will be singing songs about numbers and will have art projects on display and Kindergarten will have their science projects on display. More details to come as we get closer!

First week in May

emily — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:16:52 +0000

We had a great week at Sunnybrook!

On Tuesday morning we enjoyed visiting with some bunnies that one of our students brought in. The children had a great time observing them and feeding them lots (and lots) of carrots. They may of sneaked in a few carrots from lunchboxes as well.

We painted and glued our butterfly life cycles. These turned out great! The children really enjoyed the process. Our real caterpillars are busy eating and growing. We are eagerly waiting for them to make their chrysalis and turn into butterflies. This week we enjoyed reading Moth or Butterfly, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Gotta Go! Gotta Go! We enjoyed acting out the The Very Grouchy Ladybug with each child playing a different insect/animal.

Kindergarten is working on money and they are doing great! We learned the value of a penny, nickle, dime and quarter and worked on adding them and going to the “store” to buy items. They have also been very busy with their independent science projects. They are coming along! We will have them on display for the last day of school. I am also so proud of all of our big kids who are becoming GREAT readers. It’s been so exciting this year to watch their reading skills develop. Please continue to have them read to you at home and encourage them to track (follow along with their finger) and ask them questions about the story to encourage reading comprehension.

THANK YOU to all our you that have contributed to our giving tree needs. We really appreciate it.

Don’t forget to drop off your yard sale items Thursday and Friday afternoon and come to the Sunnybrook yard sale this Saturday, May 12th 9am-12!

Registration Day

sbboard — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:30:23 +0000

Sunnybrook’s Fall 2012 Registration Day is on Monday, May 14th from 2 to 5:30 PM. Please call 603.788.3884 or email Emily Robarts, the Center Director at emily@sunnybrookmontessori.org to schedule an appointment to register, or for a tour before that date.

Sunnybrook Yard Sale Fundraiser

sbboard — Wed, 02 May 2012 14:26:44 +0000

Sunnybrook is hosting a yard sale fundraiser on Saturday, May 12, 9 am – noon. Come by the school for great deals on clothes, furniture, books, kitchen items, plants, plenty of children’s items, and more. Baked goods by Polish Princess Bakery and authentic Costa Rican coffee by Zeanny Egea will also be available for sale. All proceeds will benefit the preschool and kindergarten program.

Week of April 24th-27th

emily — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:07:09 +0000

This week at Sunnybrook we had lots of artistic endeavors going on. Many of our students made paper sunflowers by tracing their hands on yellow paper then cutting them out to be the petals, painting paper towel rolls green for the stem and gluing sunflower seeds in the middle. These came out great and the children really enjoyed making them.

We also learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. We read Are You A Butterfly? and made a butterfly life cycle out of clay and next week we’ll be painting them. We talked about how caterpillars hatch from eggs, how they eat until their skins splits so they can grow, and we learned that moths hatch from cocoons and butterflies hatch from chrysalis. We’ll get to observe this over the next few weeks as we have five caterpillars we are watching that will (hopefully!) become painted lady butterflies.

Our afternoon students began working with Zeanny on Cinco de Mayo masks. They used brightly colored tissue paper and flour/water/glue to paper mache. When they are finished they are sure to be very festive!

At music we have been singing lots of songs about numbers such as, “This Old Man”, “28 Scoops of Ice Cream” and “10 Green and Speckled Frogs”.

Kindergarten/Friday students are working on independent science projects. They’ve been very busy finding out information about their subject, writing interesting facts they find, drawing pictures, making life cycles and clay models. We are in need of shoe boxes for dioramas and science boards if anyone would like to donate!

Thank you for the donations of sidewalk chalk, bubbles, sand toys and sand! We had a great time outside this week.

Workshop: Literacy in the Montessori Classroom

sbboard — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:01:26 +0000

You’re invited to a special Montessori workshop by Gerry Tobin to be held at Sunnybrook Montessori School on Monday, April 30th at 7 PM.

This workshop will focus on the Montessori approach to language instruction. The workshop is open to the public. Parents considering a preschool or kindergarten placement for next school year are highly encouraged to see this critical part of the Montessori method in action.

Refreshments courtesy of the Polish Princess Bakery. Free babysitting during the workshop is available with advance sign-up. Please send an to e-mail Lyn.Schmucker@gmail.com to arrange.

The school is located at 129 Main Street in Lancaster (across the street from the library).

Welcome Spring with us: Sat., April 28

sbboard — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:03:21 +0000

April 22 to 28 is Week of the Young Child, a time when we can reach out in our communities to help young children. Sunnybrook Montessori School is celebrating this special week with a Welcome Spring event on Saturday, April 28th from 10 AM to Noon. It will be held at the school on 129 Main Street in Lancaster. There will be music by Katie Rose, storytime with Ronnie Zajac, treats provided by Polish Princess Bakery, and lots of fun games and activities for young children in our community. There will be guided tours of the school too, for any parents interested in learning more about Sunnybrook’s unique curriculum for preschool and kindergarten.

For more information, call Sunnybrook Montessori School at 788-3884

April 3rd-6th

emily — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:34:58 +0000

We’ve been learning about the parts of the tree and talking about maple sugaring. Many children made beautiful tree books, cutting out pictures of the tree and matching labels to the shaded portion: leaves, branches, roots and trunk. We learned that cold nights and warm days make sap run, that about 40 gallons of sap equal 1 gallon of maple syrup and that you can’t tap a tree that is too old or too young. We learned that sap keeps the trees from freezing in the winter and did an experiment freezing plain water and sugared water to see what happens. See if your child remembers the difference in freezing between the plain water and the water with sugar.

We’ve also talked about Spring and enjoyed reading books about hatching ducks and planting sunflowers. We learned about the life cycle of a sunflower and on Thursday everyone got the chance to plant their own sunflower seed. Hopefully they will sprout and we can watch them begin to grow!

The children were excited about Easter and enjoyed some Easter practical life activities. We put different beans, beads and grains in plastic Easter eggs and matched them by sound, we enjoyed Easter play dough cutters and a Easter bunny peg board to practice fine motor skills.

On Wednesday we blew through straws and experimented with how much force was needed to move different objects. We realized it was easy to move feathers, beads, cotton balls or anything light but it was much harder to move heavier objects. The children realized if they had a partner (or two, or three) they were able to move the heavier objects when they blew through their straws together.

We then used our straws to blow around food coloring on some paper eggs and made the most beautiful Easter eggs!

During music we’ve been singing, performing a Spring pantomime, going on “A Bear Hunt” and working on some folk dancing!

emily — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:27:32 +0000

We welcomed Spring this week with beautiful weather! We spent lots of time playing out in the sun!

On Tuesday we made touch collages. The children were given materials of different textures such as sandpaper, feathers, yarn, rice, foam and they were able to glue them to their paper to make beautiful creations. We also read a book on the sense of touch.

We enjoyed reading Little Cloud, When Springtime Comes, poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends and A River Ran Wild. During music we sang a few spring songs such as, “I’m a Little Black Seed”, “Mr. Sun”, “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and “The Bumblebee Song.”

The afternoon students made two paper mache volcanoes. On Thursday morning we combined baking soda, vingegar, dish soap and red food coloring and watched them erupt.

Lots of great work has been happening in the classroom. Our younger students are becoming very self-directed and staying very busy during work time. Many worked on colors, geometric shapes, letter sounds with the sand tray and sandpaper letters, the touch tablets feeling the difference between rough and smooth, and many math exercises.

Kindergarten has been using the bead material to solve word problems. We played a game with division to introduce this. I told them I had so much money and I wanted to divide it among my friends (we did this 3 at a time). I put 6 thousand cubes, 6 hundred squares, 3 tens and 3 units of the bead material on a tray and ask them how I could divide it equally. They responded with, “Give one to each of us!” starting with the thousands cubes, then the hundreds squares, the tens and the units. When we had divided it equally on their trays, we counted it up and used the number cards to see what 6633 was divided by 3. Then we pushed it back together and added 2211 +2211+ 2211, which also gave us the opportunity to talk about multiplication. They were very excited to see they could easily solve word problems and do division using the bead material. They were so engaged we’ve been putting up a new math word problems every day.

Week of March 13th-15th

emily — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:48:32 +0000

Wow! We had a busy week at Sunnybrook.

On Tuesday we explored our sense of taste with tasting jars. We read a book about the sense of taste and learned about the four types of taste: sweet, sour, bitter and salty. 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. I wish I had taken pictures of this activity to capture the funny faces. The sugar and water was the only one that they requested more of!

The afternoon students enjoyed tossing and throwing a ball to one another to learn about the importance of our sense of sight. We tossed the ball easily to one another at first and then they each took a turn wearing a blindfold and trying to catch the ball. We realized it is much more difficult to do it when you have a blindfold on and how much we rely on our sense of sight to help us do all sorts of things.

On Wednesday we enjoyed a visit from Herb and his brass instruments. He showed the students how long a trumpet, french horn and tuba would be if they were uncoiled. He also gave a musical demonstration of each. Thanks Herb! It was a great experience for the students to see and hear the instruments.

We also enjoyed seeing our 5 sense show and tell items! The children brought a variety of things to share. We touched soft stuffed animals, tasted yummy maple syrup/candies and sour lime juice, heard musical instruments and smelled some pine tree needles/branches. Thanks for the great shares! The children enjoyed talking about their items and answering questions from their friends.

On Thursday our friends from Believe in Books were back with The Cat in the Hat. It’s always so much fun when they visit. We enjoyed listening to a story and choosing a book to take home.

Kindergarten made beautiful 100 posters! 100 jewels, cornflakes, pennies, ribbons and numbers!