Sunnybrook Montessori School

Montessori preschool & kindergarten in New Hampshire's North Country

Determination

sitting on a giant snowballA warm front briefly brought some spring-like weather.  We enjoyed building snowmen and giant snowballs.  On Wednesday it was warmer outside than in, so we took off jackets and got to work chopping out a channel to drain all the melted snow and ice.  The children loved scooping out slush, water, and ice chunks, and floating sticks down the flowing river.  The tunnel was filled with melted snow as well, and they had a great time scooping it out and dumping it down the fence, while attempting to stay dry. As cold weather returned the playground became quite slippery, so we carefully navigated our way around.making snowballssnowmen on the tablefloating down the channelsome snowman partshere comes a stickconstructing a snowmanthe crew working on the channela chunk of snowremoving the water from the tunnelthe big depositoryshovelsIce-landbeing carefulon the hill of iceTuesday was a rainy day, so we constructed an obstacle course, which went through a couple of changes.  The children had fun navigating all the obstacles, going up, over, under, and through. Hopping, jumping, balancing, and crawling. To end the indoor morning we took out the ribbons and did a little ribbon dancing.over the chairsunder the tablesover the river stonescross the tablejump from mat to matbalance on the bench and step through the ringsbalancingstay out of the hot lava!spinning in the BiliboFor art on Monday we introduced the Japanese art of suminagashi, aka paper marbling.  We showed examples of marbled paper, then got to work creating our own.  The children carefully squeezed drops of dye onto water, then swirled it around to create patterns.  They carefully set their papers on top of the dye, then slowly lifted them off when they had absorbed the ink.  They created some beautiful swirly patterns.marbled papersuminagashi paper makingswirling and droppingyellow and orangedrops of colorswirls of colorThe children painted a large US Postal collection box, then got busy mailing letters to all their friends.
painting the collection boxletter writingmailing a lettercounting out the cashWe read several stories about taking on challenges and introduced the term determination.  We read a true story about Emanuel Ofasu Yeboah, a man born in Ghana with only one working leg who would hop to school every day, until at 13 years old, he left home to earn money to support his family.  He eventually decided to bike across Ghana to raise awareness about disabilities.  We tried hopping all around the classroom on one leg and quickly realized how challenging it is! This link will take you to a 5 minute video of Emanuel sharing his story.  We also read about basketball player Michael Jordan, who at 9 years old decided that he wanted to someday play basketball in the Olympics, and how he worked to accomplish that dream.  We also read about a boy named Jabari, who wanted to climb up and dive off the diving board at the pool.  He was scared, but with his father’s support, he built up courage and finally did it.stories from the weekthe block bargemarble sortingcounting pegsGo Fishlarge animal observerswriting timerowing the pirate shipteen boardhundred boardreading with Tammycounting penniesanimals on raftsfabric matchingworking on the US states mapmitten matchingmorning mat workmetal insets, pin-punching, and number scrollsletter sound workfinishing up the US states puzzlethe binomial cubealphabet sound & symbol match1,2,3towersfarm animal puzzletracing 2counting and number match traybuildings & drumsboys drumminginstrumentsRED over BLACKcounting spindles100 board and teen boardputting the story in ordera hornet is fastletter writinga writer at workThe story of The Mitten was introduced last week, and the children loved performing it, so we continued performing it throughout the week, taking turns being Baba, Nicki, and the various animals who crawl into the mitten.acting out The Mittencrawling under the mittenall ready to beginthe hedgehog crawling into the mittenWe took some time to write thank you cards for postman Tim to thank him for taking time to give us a tour of the mailroom last week.Thank you letters for TimDear TimFor Spanish Zeanny played some color and size games with us.  We stood up very big “grande” and shrunk down very small “pequeña.”  We sang the color song and used our color vocabulary to match items to their color words.pequenagrandecolor matchingWe celebrated the most recent fifth birthday with pink and purple frosted chocolate cupcakes.  The birthday girl walked the globe around the sun while we all counted the years and listed the seasons as she grew from an infant to a five-year-old.  Happy fifth birthday!The birthday girl!blowing out her candleFor music Susan played high notes and low notes and notes in between while we moved up or down or in the middle to match the pitch of the notes.  When she played high notes, we stood up high.  When played low notes, we scrunched down low.  When she played middle notes, we crouched with our hands on our knees.  When she played the scale, we slowly moved up or down with the rising and falling of the notes.  She also played the notes slowly and quickly, and we attempted to move accordingly.up highOn Friday our science study of the states of matter continued.  We began to discuss liquids.  We became molecules in matter and moved far, far apart to become a gas, then moved closer together to become a liquid, then smooshed as closely together as we could to become a solid.  We then gathered together and watched as different liquids were poured into a tall glass cylinder.  We watched how they flowed and observed that some flowed much more slowly than others.  We poured the more dense liquids in first.  We observed that as we poured liquids that were less dense, they poured more quickly and seemed “lighter.”  The various liquids formed layers that floated on each other, rather than mixing together.light brown honey and yellow tinted corn syrupblue dish soapa layer of green wateradding rubbing alcoholdensity layersOn Tuesday afternoon we had a goodbye party for Tricia with some special treats and the children all gave her cards they made.  We said our official goodbyes throughout the week, and our final goodbye on Friday, her last day at Sunnybrook.  We will miss her dearly and wish her well on her new life adventures!chocolate cake and strawberry shortcakechocolate cake and whipped creama party for Tricia

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