Sunnybrook Montessori School

Our exploration of habitats continued. For art Monday students created habitats in shoeboxes using natural items such as dirt, moss, sticks, rocks, leaves, etc.  Students got very creative with their materials and ideas. They each chose one animal to create a habitat for.  There were snake, bird, wild cat, bull, bunny, and many other animal habitats. Throughout the week students continued to make habitats in buckets and around the yard using items they collected. They temporarily adopted some worms as class pets and created bucket habitats before releasing them back into the wild.

We continued singing our Halloween themed songs, and the children helped by holding the ghost of John by his various bones, including his philanges, femurs, pelvis, ribs, and skull. They also enjoyed being the pumpkins sitting on a fence and chanting out their portions of the song.

We introduced living and non living. We learned that living things grow and have needs.  They need air, water, nutrients or food, and sunlight to live. Plants and animals are living things. Non living things do not have needs, nor do they grow.  The children sorted objects by whether they represented living or non living things.

 

We celebrated a fifth birthday. The birthday boy held the globe and orbited the big cardboard sun while we counted the five times the earth has gone around the sun since he was born. He donated a “make a choice” story about a boy named Danny who has the power to choose how he will respond to various situations and a fun red cape that Danny wears in the story.  The children voted each time Danny had to make a choice.  They mostly chose to do the less kind/safe options and read about the negative consequences when Danny made the negative choices. We also had fun looking at the birthday boy’s poster with photos of him and his family. Happy birthday newest five year old!

During sign language with Rose we reviewed the letters and signs we now know.   We sang the alphabet song several times through, grouping the letters together and trying to sign them a bit more quickly. As a finale, Rose and her granddaughter sang and signed “God Bless America” then we pointed out signs from the song that were new to us and practiced signing them.

Henrietta and Wolfgang came to share another story, called Charlotte and the Quiet Place about a little girl who just wants a quiet peaceful place to sit, and finally finds it in the park in a grove of trees. She sits and breathes for a long time until she discovers that she has a peaceful quiet place within herself that she can visit any time she is in need.  Henrietta and Wolfgang talked to us a bit about introverts, like Wolfgang, who recharge by spending time alone, and extroverts, like Henrietta, who recharge while spending time with others.

During Spanish Zeanny introduced la caja magica (the magic box), which held a libre (book) and some colored huevos (eggs). We reviewed the body parts and colors with some songs and activities.  She read Oso En UN Cuadrado (Bear in the Square) and children took turns pointing to and counting the different shapes. We made some music shaking the colored huevos lento (slowly) and rapido (quickly) before racing off to find an item of the same color as our huevo, then we counted the colored items that were collected.

We read and acted out the story of The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. As she walked through the woods, she encountered a pair of shoes that go clomp, clomp, some pants that go wiggle, wiggle, a shirt that goes shake, shake, a pair of gloves that clap, clap and a hat that goes nod, nod, and finally a big scary pumpkin head that says, “Boo! Boo!” She runs all the way home and they follow her. When she tells them she is not afraid of them, she gives them an idea of how they can be helpful, and the next morning they are scaring all the crows from her garden.

Kindergarten students had a very productive week. They continued to work on their counting and grouping numbers, and began to incorporate some literacy and writing activities. They each started a letter book, where they are practicing sounding out words, identifying beginning sounds and finding items with beginning letter sounds, and practicing the proper written formation of letters. They were so busy and engaged working in small groups in the classroom each morning.

For Friday science we continued our study of land, air, and water (solid, gas, and liquid). First we sorted animals and vehicles by where they live/travel – air, land, or water. We then delved further into air/gas/wind. We wondered whether air takes up space. We saw an empty glove and agreed that there was nothing in it, so Lyn put her solid hand in the glove. We then tried to fill it with air by waving it around and trying to catch come air in it. It didn’t work! Finally Lyn blew into it and puffed it full of air. She then blew up an orange balloon until the children told her to stop, but they never said stop, and finally Lyn couldn’t blow it up anymore and if flew off and away, the air flowing out and pushing it around. Finally we did one more test to see if air takes up space.  We pushed an “empty” jar, open mouth down, into a second jar with water in it. The air in the jar pushed the water down until it could no longer fit in the container and overflowed over the side. We read about wind, which is created when the sun warms air, causing it to rise. Cold air then rushes in to fill it’s place, creating a movement of air call wind. Wind can be big or small, and we briefly discussed tornados and hurricanes and practiced a quick drop, cover, hold drill. Afterwards, several children chose to decorate and fold paper airplanes to fly around in the air. 

Missing Monday made this week feel extra short!

Halloween is on the way, so we have been singing some Halloween themed songs and chants. We are enjoying “5 Little Pumpkins,” “Stirring our Brew,” and “The Ghost of John” (who is a silly, cold skeleton with no skin on).

Rain kept us in most of the day Tuesday and Friday, though we did get out for a mid day energy release. We are finding that we love our indoor days, but miss the opportunity to run and move whenever we want.

We began exploring where we live by introducing the universe and our place in it with the story Oliver Jeffers wrote for his child, Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth. We also used the universe nesting boxes to visit the Milky Way Galaxy, our solar system, planet earth, North America, The United States, New Hampshire, Lancaster, Sunnybrook, the child, and the atom, the energy inside each of us. We introduced land, air, and water and what makes up our environment. We used the sandpaper globe to identify land and water on our earth and the land, air, water mat to place animals according to where they travel/live/spend their time.

During sign language with Rose we finished learning the alphabet. We learned u-z, then practiced while identifying whose names start with which letters. We then sang and signed the ABC song and a second alphabet song Rose knows.

We read the story The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes about a girl named Beatrice who always did everything perfectly, and was hesitant to do anything that might result in a mistake. One day she is performing a juggling act in the talent show and makes a big mistake. She wonders, should she cry? Should she run off stage? But Beatrice started to laugh, then the audience laughed, and from then on she had fun making mistakes with everyone else. We talked about how we ALL make mistakes every day and that making mistakes is okay. We learn from our mistakes, and we can just brush them off and try again. We also discussed how Beatrice must have made mistakes, because to get so good at something like juggling, one would have to practice, and practice, and practice, which involves making lots of mistakes.

Thursday was our first Spanish class with Zeanny. We were introduced to counting, colors, body parts, frio (cold), calido (warm), arriba (up), and abajo (down) through songs, chants, and movement. Zeanny also read a story about Rubia and the Three Osos, which introduced the spanish words for house (casa), soup (sopa), plate (plato), bear (oso), and chair (silla).

Kindergarteners continued to work with cuisinaire rods to build 10. They counted up and built the days up to 23. They created the letter Gg out of grapevines, and Hh out of things in our habitat, such as grass, sticks, rocks, and moss.

During Friday science we continued with the theme of land, air, water and read about solids, liquids, and gasses. We compared three balloons – one with liquid water, one with solid water, and one with air. We read about how matter can exist in different forms, such as water as a liquid, solid ice, and water vapor. We poured some water from one container to another and observed how it changed shape. Then we pretended to be molecules in gas form, moving around really far apart, then in liquid form, closer together, then in solid form, packed in tight.

The artist Andy Goldsworthy creates art in and from nature. Using leaves, icicles, sticks, stones, water, etc. he forms structures and patterns of symmetry and beauty. The students collected natural items or used some already gathered items and created their own natural works of art in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. The Andy Goldsworthy documentary Rivers and Tides is a beautifully peaceful exploration of Andy at work and is available from some streaming services for free.

We read The Giving Tree and Once There Was a Tree and discussed what trees give us and how they are necessary for life and the children shared many valuable resources that trees provide. They created quite a comprehensive list, including oxygen, shade, shelter, food, paper, books, houses, tables, shelves, chairs, flooring, tree houses, homes for animals, food for animals, pencils, doors, toys, fire, etc. We examined tree cookies and discussed how to determine the age of a tree. We counted the rings on a tree cookie and learned that it was over 20 years old.

The children worked on raking leaves into piles for jumping and tossing. We were surprised to find a giant pile in the middle of the yard on Wednesday morning, and everyone had a glorious time throwing them up, burrowing down, and raking them back into a pile all over again. Everyone was thoroughly littered with leaf debris by the end of the day! When we were done we began raking and dumping them over the fence so they can decompose into soil.

During Sign Language with Rose we reviewed the letters a-n and learned o-t. We also reviewed our times of day signs, I, you, and learned how, fine, am/is/are and the phrases “How are you?” and “I am fine” and sang and signed the Good Morning song.

We had special visitors on Thursday. Wolfgang the wolf and Henrietta the hen are good friends, and they came to talk to us about friendship. They shared some of their favorite stories, Friends by Helme Heine and Same, Same but Different and talked about how to make friends, how friends don’t always agree but will compromise and take turns, how we are the same in some ways, and different in others, and how some of us are outgoing and friendly, like Henrietta, but others of us are shy and reserved, like Wolfgang. Henrietta chatted with an old friend from last year, and Wolfgang made a new friend.

Kindergarten students have continued their number pattern work on the fence and with Cuisenaire rods. They began counting by 10’s and got all the way up to 50 (even though we just passed day 20)! They created Ees out of evergreens and Ffs out of ferns and flowers to go with their apple Aas, bark Bbs, cone Ccs, and dirt Dds.

Friday students read The Life of a Log and examined some dead logs, including one that had decomposed into a rich, dark soil. They created a compost pot to watch in the classroom by adding soil, water, leaves, and food scraps to a large jar. They checked out the big fallen log in the back corner of the play area that crashed to the ground many years ago and this year began breaking down into smaller pieces. We noticed that it is quite soft and spongy and is riddled with insect trails. We tipped over two rotting stumps to see the bottoms, where lots of decomposition is taking place thanks to fungi, insects, and worms, which we found hiding underneath. The students also discovered a tiny cold toad resting in the dark, damp space, which we released to an area where it could burrow back down safely.

We began to build an outdoor compost bin by screwing together some donated wooden pieces for a frame. We will continue to work on this project next week before placing it outside our fence to collect our leaf litter and food scraps.

The students decided to help the logs along on their decomposition journey by kicking and hammering away to tear them into smaller pieces, which they collected for a bonfire =). They had a glorious time and were so patient and thoughtful allowing friends to take nice long turns while encouraging and observing them.

Monday students were introduced to the artist Frida Khalo, who is famous for the many self portraits she painted. We observed several of her tamer self portraits and noticed that she painted herself realistically, and we discussed how we could do the same. The children selected eye and hair colors that matched their own, and mixed the colors espresso, cocoa, mocha, toffee, caramel, peaches, honey, and milk until they created a matching skin tone.

Tuesday brought our first walking field trip. We read The Hike and Finding Wild before the children shared all the safety rules for our walking adventure. The children were paired up with a partner and matched to an adult then we headed off to visit a new outdoor environment. We walked to Colonel Town, where we took some time to play on the playground then explored the top of the hill along the fence, searching for natural items. We collected leaves, cones, seeds, needles from evergreens, seed pods, broken sticks with insect markings, lichen, and bark, and any other plant parts we discovered.

Tammy started an experiment with us, and the children made some guesses about what they thought would happen. She had collected several sugar maple leaves, which can be identified as such due to the U curve between the top point and those on the sides. She placed some in a dish that will be left as they are as a control, and some in a second dish that she covered with vegetable glycerin. We will observe them over the next week to see how the leaves in the glycerin change or stay the same compared to those not in glycerin. Some of the guesses where that they would change color, they would explode, they would crinkle up, they would all be green, and they wouldn’t crinkle up.

We finally got some much needed rain to wet down our dusty playground! It sent us inside for some indoor classroom time, which was a first for many of our new students, and a nice change in environment. The students took advantage of the block area, dramatic play, the art table, the math and literacy materials, and unlimited access to the bathroom.

During sign language with Rose we learned 7 more letters of the alphabet, h-n, and reviewed then practiced the time of day signs we learned last week while singing the song Skidamarink. We began combining signs to sign phrases. We learned how to sign good morning, good night, one day, all day, and all night.

Kindergarten students have continued finding patterns in numbers as they recorded the 18th day of school. They are tracking multiples of 2, 3, 4, and 5 now. They are beginning to explore base 10. Using Cuisinaire rods they made some observations about the longest, shortest, and which rods go together in groups of 2 to match the longest. They explored the letter Dd by creating Dd’s out of DIRT.

We learned about leaves and the jobs of the leaf. Leaves provide shade from the heat of the sun, produce oxygen for us to breath, and are the food makers. Henry the elephant had a little chat with a green plant and the chlorophyll inside the leaves. They discussed how the leaves use the green chlorophyll inside them to mix with water, carbon dioxide, and the energy from the sun to create food for the plant. The food that the plants produce makes them the primary producers. They feed not only themselves, but us humans and animals as well. We also learned that the green chlorophyll turns the leaves green, masking the true color of the leaves which we are only able to see in the fall as the leaves stop making cholorphyll to prepare for winter.

We played a leaf finding game. The children would run and find a leaf that matched the description given, such as smooth edge, toothed edge, bigger than your hand, smooth surface, and green leaf.

Friday students read about the life cycle of a tree and the parts of a tree. They shared what all the parts of the tree do; the bark protects it, like our skin, the leaves produce food, the roots drink up the water and keep the tree anchored to the ground, and the trunk keeps it sturdy and brings the water up and food down. We examined some plant roots to see how some are bigger, but others are as fine as hairs. We did an experiment to see how plants drink water and bring it up to the leaves by placing leafy celery stalks in colored water and observing how they drew the colored water up into the leaves.