Sunnybrook Montessori School

There was a lot of energy this week so we spent a lot of time outside, where the children were so busy buzzing around with the bees.  They were digging a giant hole in the back end of the playground, biking all over, playing catch, watching the cable guys work on the lines, having pool noodle battles, playing in puddles, hunting for and collecting worms, slugs, snails, beetles, moths, and toads, building fortresses and forts and hideouts, picking flowers, creating collections of nature items, examining flowers and insects with magnifying glasses, and going on adventures.

The children worked with Michelle to plant flower seeds in the bollards out front.

The Seeds and Sunbeams students had their final session with Emily on Monday.  They picked dandelions and made dandelion chains and crowns and necklaces and bracelets.

We began work on end of year self portraits to compare with our beginning of the year self portraits (for those who did them).

We practiced our bee songs and started to finish up our projects for our Bee Presentation.

During sign language with Rose we practiced the alphabet and insect signs, then read the Piggie and Gerald story, I Am Invited to a Party!.  We wrapped up with the Five Little Butterflies song, and five different students had a turn to wear the wings and be butterflies.

We played an insect action game.  The children took turns rolling large dice, then turning over the corresponding number card and everyone did the insect action on the opposite side, such as flutter like a butterfly, pollinate like a bee, buzz like a fly, hop like a grasshopper, chirp like a cricket, etc.

We celebrated a fifth birthday. The birthday girl very, very, very slowly orbited the sun as we slowly listed the seasons and counted her birthdays. She shared tasty popsicles to celebrate and the children were excited to lick up a grape, tangerine, or cherry pop.  Happy Birthday, birthday girl!

Kindergarten students read a series of poems, then wrote their own, brainstorming about rhyming words to create rhyming poems.  They practiced identifying numbers into the hundreds, taking turns both guessing and writing them.  They chose their own math and/or literacy work, with many students choosing to create story books or reinforce their number learning.
During Friday science we explored our sense of touch.  We touched jars that were hot or cold to different areas of our skin to feel temperature, we lightly trailed our fingers up our arms, then gripped our forearms tightly to feel varied pressure, we felt texture that was rough or smooth, and we felt the soft rug and the hard floor.  We then pulled items from a feely bag, using our sense of touch to guess what they were. We discussed how we use our different senses to experience the world, and that through these experiences, we can use our other senses, such as sight, to identify “touch” senses without actually touching, such as hardness, temperature, and texture because our brains have learned what these “look” like through our experiences with wood, snow, sandpaper, etc.

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The temperatures this week were toasty! We spent the majority of our days outside dancing under the hose, filling buckets of water for the mud kitchen, building a teepee tent, riding bikes, having pool noodle battles, digging up plants, repotting them, and selling them in the Plant Shop, building a fortress, going to school to work on computers, and cooking up a variety of soups.

Rose warmed us up with the Fire Truck song, then we signed the alphabet double handed two times. We practiced our insect signs, including caterpillar, butterfly, bug, mosquito, and worm. Rose then read and signed The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Rose asked for volunteers to be butterflies, and we finished up by singing, signing, and acting out the Five Little Butterflies song.

Preparing for our end of year presentation on Bees, courtesy of the Bee Patrol, has been a full time job this week. The songs “The Bee Patrol Anthem,” “Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Legs,” “The Bees Go Buzzing,” and “Have You Ever Gone a Dancing in a Busy Beehive,” were all introduced and practiced over and over. Hopefully we will have them down in four weeks! The students have been researching to answer their questions about bees and working with Lyn to record what they will present. They have continued working on their visuals for their presentation as well. It has been a busy, buzzy week!

The children made bee badges, which we cut out and laminated for them to wear as members of the Bee Patrol. They also drew Bee pictures to share for the end of year art show.

We continued sharing observations about friends who were SAFE, KIND, RESPECTFUL, and RESPONSIBLE and adding to our chain. We read Even Superheroes Make Mistakes and talked about how important it is to take responsibility and own up to our errors and that they are opportunities to learn. We shared some big mistakes that people have made, such as when builders who were constructing a new building for Dartmouth college in Hanover and dug the cellar 10 feet too far in the wrong direction, but how they worked as a team to problem solve and determine how to move forward.

Kindergarten students have been working on recognizing numbers 0-100, solving addition and subtraction word problems, and determining whether it is an addition or subtraction problem, doing some writing, practicing reading, and working diligently on their bee projects.

During Friday science we read about and discussed the second of the five senses, hearing. We read The Magic School Bus In the Haunted House and discussed how sound travels through the air through vibrations. We learned that the higher the sound, the closer the sound waves are together, and the lower the sound, the further apart they are. We examined the model of the ear then took out the big drum and piled all the felt balls on top. The children took turns in small groups making quiet sounds and gradually getting louder and louder until all the balls were vibrated off.

We arrived at school to a lovely sign from one of the families expressing appreciation for the Sunnybrook teachers. Thank you so much for your thoughtfulness, Paschal family! This sign set of a slew of appreciation projects enthusiastically orchestrated by the children. Thank you for all the cards, flowers, gifts, and most of all the kind words and pictures. We are grateful to spend our days with your children and have you all as such amazingly supportive families. Thank you!

Children coated large newsprint paper with liquid cornstarch then placed a second piece over it. After smoothing the two pieces together they turned into ghosts as we placed it over their heads. They turned back into children, now wearing hats, when the edges were rolled up into brims. When their hats dried and stiffened some of the children added tissue paper to make them colorful.

We signed and sang the alphabet with Rose, learned several insect signs, including caterpillar, butterfly, and mosquito, read the Gerald and Piggie story and sang Tingalayo with a new verse about hunting and fishing.

The children worked together to make a list of all the things that we know about bees. They then listed all the questions that they wanted to answer about bees. We read quite a few books and watched a couple of videos to get our questions answered, and will continue researching and recording what we learn over the next few weeks.

Henrietta and Wolfgang visited. Henrietta shared some kind friend actions that Wolfgang and Tucker Turtle did that helped her feel included and valued, such as sharing with her, noticing and commenting about her drawing, and inviting her to play. The children then shared some kind friend acts that friends or siblings did both at school and home, and we recorded them on a slip of paper, rolled it into a loop, and started our paper chain of safe, kind, respectful, and responsible acts.

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Kindergarten students continued work tracing, coloring, and pin punching continents for their continent maps. They practiced counting by fives and did some nickel addition. Finally they got started on their research for the end of year presentation on bees, both deciding what information they wanted to learn and present, and how they would do that – with a poster, puppet, performance, song, 3D model, etc. They then began carefully working on their presentations.

During Friday science we discussed the five senses and learned about the eye and how it works. We played “I Spy with my little eye,” and the person to guess what the describer saw got to go next. We spied a colorful fish high in the sky, some golden daffodils, a pink barrette, a friend, and several other items in the classroom and out the windows.

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