Sunnybrook Montessori School

Using black pastels and blue, purple, orange, and yellow liquid watercolors, Monday students created beautiful sunset pictures on mat board.

We read through the story the Sunnybrook students wrote, titled Woodland Stone Soup, and each child chose a page to illustrate. They worked so carefully drawing the animals and coloring them just the right colors. We are excited to send a copy home with each child next week. It is such a fantastically beautiful book!

The story This is the Jacket I Wear In The Snow served as an introduction to dressing for winter weather. We talked about all the layers the child in the story wore, and all the layers we are wearing to keep ourselves warm.

During sign language with Rose all the girls in the class were given or chose name signs. Many of the name signs are the letter of the first name formed by the chin, where the sign for girl is made. Some students share a first letter with others, so they chose different ways to sign their names. We practiced the teacher’s signs and boy’s signs, then sang and signed the alphabet songs.

We had fun playing Simon Dice (Simon Says) again in Spanish. Zeanny tried really hard to trick us, and we tried really hard to listen and only do the actions when she said Simon Dice, but she was really good at catching us move when she didn’t say it. She read the story Mortimer, about a boy who goes to bed and is supposed to be quiet, but keeps singing very loudly. We chose colored egg shakers, naming the color in Spanish, then used them to make some music and rhythms, following Zeanny’s lead.

Kindergarteners had fun celebrating the 50th day of school playing lots of fun games. They skip counted by fives and tens to fifty while playing musical stumps, count and freeze, and red light, green light. They worked on their letter books and illustrated their pages from Woodland Stone Soup using their new individual desks.

Friday students continued to study liquids by combining water with solids to see if they would create a solution, where the solid dissolved in the liquid, or a mixture, where they mixed but did not dissolve. They tested out baking soda, cocoa, flour, cream of tartar, cinnamon, salt, sugar, pepper, and corn starch. They easily identified the three solids that dissolved to create a solution. See if you can tell which ones dissolved from the photo below.

With the approach of winter the sun has been setting earlier and earlier and rising later, bringing longer nights and shorter days. After care students have been enjoying some gorgeous sunsets on the playground. We talked about this seasonal change and read some stories about the dark on Monday, including Orion and the Dark by Emma Yarlett and The Dark by Lemony Snicket, both about children who are afraid of the dark and what might be in it. Dark paper and pastels were introduced and the students created some beautiful nighttime artwork, featuring a variety of creatures and nighttime adventures.

We continued to read versions of Stone Soup and discuss the characters, plot, setting, conflict, and resolution as we wrote our own version of the story. As we have been studying trees and our world around us, we decided to write a Woodland Stone Soup story featuring three hungry raccoons and the many animals of the forest. The kindergarten group and a few interested preschoolers brainstormed and dictated a wonderfully colorful story. They decided immediately that they did not want the animals to be selfish at first, as the villagers in the Stone Soup stories we read are, but to generously share what they have right away, using the ingredients to make soup and a cake for everyone to share. Next week the children will illustrate the story.

Wolfgang and Henrietta visited to talk about fair and equal. We discussed how equal means we get the same thing, but because we don’t all need or want the same thing, that is not the same as fair, which is when everyone gets what they need. We reread Henrietta’s story Friends by Helme Heine about three friends, Fat Percy the pig, Johnny Mouse, and Charlie Rooster, who do everything together, including sailing a boat, where they each do different jobs suited to them. They stop for a snack of cherries, getting different amounts according to how much they eat, and giving all the cherry stones to Charlie Rooster, who is the only one who eats and enjoys them. We demonstrated equal when Wolfgang gave large adult T-shirts to Lyn and a student to wear. It fit Lyn well, but was much too big for the student, so Wolfgang gave child size t-shirts to them, and it fit the student well but was much too small for Lyn. So it was equal, but not fair. When the student received the child size t-shirt, and Lyn received the adult size t-shirt, that was fair.

During Spanish with Zeanny we did some singing with the triste (sad), feliz (happy), enojado (angry), and preocupado (preocupied) faces and dancing with cabeza, hombros, piernes, pies, (Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes) and the Cha, Cha, Cha body music song. She introduced Simon dice (Simon says) and tried to trick the children in their movements. Zeanny read El Loro Tico Tango about a loro (parrot) who steals colorful fruits from all the other animals of the rainforest, but in the end drops them all. We then chose colorful egg shakers to shake rapido, lento, abajo, and arriba.

Friday students continued their study of water. We began an evaporation experiment by filling two jars with blue water. One we capped and the other we left open so we can compare any level changes in the water. We sang Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Row Your Pirate Ship then read Mr. Gumpy’s Outing about a man and some children and animals who go out in a boat on the pond, and eventually tip over when they all begin to move and squabble. Everyone was then given a piece of clay and tub of water and tasked with making the piece of clay float. At first, the children tried lots of different shapes of clay trying to make it float. Eventually we discussed and brought out a small metal bowl, which was the only metal object that floated in our float/sink supplies, and observed how it was shaped. The children observed and considered how it was shaped and tried out some curved shapes. They continued to sink, so we observed the thinness of the bowl. Many children were then successful making their clay float by shaping it into thin, curved boats.

On Monday we read Swatch, the Girl Who Loved Color before using lots of bright paints to fill in our black circle outlines in the style of Wassily Kandinsky. They are truly beautiful works of art!

The cold temperatures brought our first snowfall that stuck and the children had a glorious time making angels, snow piles, snowballs, roads and pathways, and having snowball battles. We reviewed the expectations for snowball throwing with those who wanted to throw snow: 1. always ask before throwing snow at someone and wait for their response, 2. if they say yes to a snowball battle, they get to throw snow back at you, and 3. we aim for the legs and body. The children did well following the expectations when they knew what they were. The snow only lasted a couple of days before the temperatures moved up into the 60’s and we had some unseasonably warm T-shirt weather, which we took full advantage of!

In an effort to teach a bit about social distancing to avoid spreading germs, Susan introduced a game of germ ball. Everyone got a “germ” ball, and we stood at our stumps. When she said sneeze or cough, we handed our germs to the person on the left. We then moved out into a bigger circle, where the people next to us were too far away to reach, so we tossed the germs to the next person. Only some of the people caught the germs. We then made our circle even bigger, and only 1 or 2 people caught the germs.

We introduced the story of Stone Soup, a story of giving, gratitude, and community, which is an annual Sunnybrook tradition during the month of November. We first read the version by Marcia Brown from 1948 about three hungry soldiers coming home from war who enter a small town searching for food and lodging. All the peasants say they have no food to share, so the soldiers go about making stone soup to share with the community, and in their curiosity, the peasants offer ingredients for the soup until it is fit for a king. The villagers and soldiers then dine together, enjoying the food and company, before the villagers invite them into their homes for the night. We read a few other versions, including Some Friends to Feed by Pete Seeger, and the version by Jon J. Muth about three monks who visit a village and they demonstrate how happiness comes from kindness, generosity, and spending time together. We discussed the elements of a story, including setting, characters, emotions, challenges, and resolution. We began writing our own stone soup story. The setting will be the forest, and the characters woodland creatures. We will develop more details and get ready to finalize it next week so we can illustrate it the following week.

During sign language with Rose we continued to practice our letters, the signs we have learned so far, and signing the alphabet songs and Skidamarink. Rose signed the letters and when the first letter in someone’s name was signed, those children stood up. We reviewed the teacher name signs, then all the boys in the class were given name signs. Each of their signs is formed by using the first letter of their first name to make the “boy” sign, so if the child’s name starts with T, his name sign is the letter T up by the side of the forehead. In two weeks, the girls will get their name signs.

Kindergarten students continued to practice building numbers using Cuisenaire rods, finding counting patterns, and working with letter sounds.

We celebrated a golden birthday with our newest 6 year old. As she walked the globe around the sun 6 times, we listed the seasons and counted the years until she turned 6. We read a beautiful book that she donated to the school about a girl who’s mother makes her a dress, and the girl and the dress do everything together. One day after they have traveled across the ocean on a big ship, they are separated and the dress travels on, locked in a trunk, “looking” for the girl and meeting many new people in the process. Many years later, when the girl is a mother to her own daughter, she spots the dress in a shop window and they are reunited.

For Friday science we continued our study of the water cycle and liquids. We read Rivers of Sunlight: How the Sun Moves Water Around the Earth by Molly Bang. We then discussed how liquids vary in their density, how closely their molecules are packed. We can see this with how they move. Liquids with a higher density flow much more slowly, and those that are less dense slosh and splash and move much more quickly. We watched and compared several different liquids to see which were slower, more dense, and faster, less dense. We ordered them, then poured them into a cylinder in layers, creating a stack of liquids that float on each other. In watching them move in their containers, we decided honey was the most dense, so we poured that in first. We then added corn syrup, which we colored purple, then vegetable glycerin that we colored green, blue dish soap, red water, orange oil, and finally isopropyl alcohol.

Some students have been curious about shadows, so students who were interested selected a small object and taped it to a piece of paper, then traced its’ shadow. They traced the shadow at 9:15, then each hour following, observing how the position, size, and direction changed as the sun moved. We noticed that the shadows moved from left to right and became shorter as the time approached noon, then lengthened again as the time passed noon.

The abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky is probably most well known for his painting Squares with Concentric Circles, which along with his Several Circles inspired our art for the week. The children used various sized circles dipped in black paint to begin their own circle themed art, which they will finish next week when they paint in and around their circles.

In our further exploration of our earth, made up of land, air, and water, we began to learn about the water cycle. We sang our water cycle song about precipitation, evaporation, and condensation. It goes like this:

When the water comes down it’s precipitation, precipitation, precipitation. When the water comes down it’s precipitation. Precipitation comes down. When the water goes up it’s evaporation, evaporation, evaporation. When the water goes up it’s evaporation. Evaporation goes up. When the water comes together it’s condensation, condensation, condensation. When the water comes together it’s condensation. Condensation makes a cloud.

We did an experiment to show that when water heats up it turns into tiny droplets, evaporating up into the sky. Then as the tiny droplets cool and gather together, condensing, they become too heavy and fall back down, precipitate.

We celebrated a sixth birthday! The birthday girl donated a fun story about going on a leaf hunt and finding leaves from different trees, which we enjoyed reading. Our birthday girl is an old pro at the birthday ritual, so she quickly informed us that she was born in the fall and that the earth has gone around the sun 6 times since she was born. We named the seasons and counted the years as she orbited the big sun ball with the globe.

We began to discuss emotions and recognizing them on people’s faces and in their body language. The children would guess what emotions Lyn was expressing and we discussed how to help calm and handle those emotions. We used the suggested strategies in the song “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” adding in get a hug when you are sad, walk away when you are angry, and take some breaths when you are frustrated.

During sign Language with Rose we learned about name signs. Rose old us that in the deaf community, people are given or create their own name sign, typically using the first letter of their first name and something that reflects something about that person. For example, Rose’s name sign is the letter R and the sign for flower. She told us that we would each get a name sign, but this week the children would be helping to give the three teachers name signs. She showed us the signs for teacher, power, and heart, and they gave the teacher’s name signs using their first initial and the sign for heart. She then taught us the signs for our Five Little Pumpkins sitting on a Gate chant, which was a lot of fun!

We had tortoise and hare visit and chat with us a little. They acted out the story of their first race and how hare tired out from running so fast, so he stopped to take a nap and tortoise won the race because he continued on at a slow, steady pace. We discussed times when it is good to go fast, and times when it is good to slow down. The children had lots of ideas about when and where to change their body speed. We also talked about slowing down our speech to be more clear and understandable, and slowing down our responses to questions and thinking about them before answering.

Zeanny introduced the greeting song and how we might respond. She showed some faces expressing different emotions, and we learned that triste is sad, feliz is happy, enojado is angry, and preocupado is preocupied. She tried to trick us by changing the faces to see if we could identify the emotion, changing her expression and voice to match the emotion. We sang the songs about the body, then did colors and tempo with the egg shakers. Finally she began reading El Loro Tico Tango, which we will finish up next week.

Kindergarten students had another busy week counting and finding counting patterns, building numbers with their Cuisenaire rods and rods and balls, and working on their letters and letter sounds by coloring and cutting out pictures of items beginning with the letter sounds they are working on.

Friday students furthered their study of water by exploring objects that sink and float. The children took turns picking an item, describing what it was made of, and making a prediction about whether it would sink or float before testing their hypothesis. We learned pretty quickly that things made of wood or plastic typically float, and items made of clay, glass and metal sink. With further exploration we will likely discover that shape plays a factor as well.