Sunnybrook Montessori School

The children found great amusement sliding down the former snow hill turned ice hill like penguins on their bellies and bottoms, and slipping around on the ice at the bottom.  We were grateful for a much needed sunshiny day mid week, which helped to brighten up our dreary winter weather.The dramatic play area was transformed into a theater, where a variety of entertainers have been performing for rapt audience members.  This week we saw ballet dancers, rock and rollers, and shadow puppet shows.Monday art students read some stories about shadows and discussed how shadows are made.  They then created shadow puppets by cutting out shadow outlines of dinosaurs or princesses, or drawing and cutting out their own.  They then used them with the already existing shadow puppets and backgrounds in the shadow puppet theater.
We celebrated a third birthday and first day of school on Tuesday.  The birthday girl orbited the candle sun with the globe three times before blowing it out.  She brought super tasty black bean cookies to share, which the children gobbled up quite quickly.  Happy 3rd birthday newest Sunnybrooker!Actors took to the stage to rehearse and record performances of Mr. Gumpy’s Outing and The Little Red Hen to view on the big screen during our Rialto Theater field trip.  The children wrote their own version of the Little Red Hen, making the setting a seaside farm with a rat, shark, turtle, and crocodile.We continued work on our community map by gluing photos of Lancaster businesses and buildings onto blocks to use with our floor map of Main Street, Lancaster, which we are in the process of outlining and painting.Mr. Bond returned to continue woodworking Wednesday.  Each student selected four nails and used them to add an end to the bottom and sides of their tool boxes.  It looks like there is only one side and the handle left to attach before they are fully assembled.Thursday was the day of the big screen!  We walked to the Rialto Theater on Main Street.  The children shared the safety precautions for our walk to the theater and reviewed the respectful ways to conduct ourselves when visiting.  Everyone had a partner to walk with and we were careful to stay together and walk safely down the sidewalk.  Dave welcomed us and gave a tour of the theater.  First we saw the box office, where tickets are sometimes sold, then we visited the small theater at the front and witnessed the magic of the screen coming down, blocking our view of the sidewalk and street.  We saw a trailer of the new release How To Train Your Dragon 3, which will be at the theater this coming week.  Most students were quite excited, while some found it a bit loud and maybe a bit scary or overwhelming.  We then got to see the projection room for the little theater, which is directly behind the theater.  Before heading into the big theater, we checked out the concession stand.  To end our visit, we each found a seat to watch our performances of The Little Red Hen and Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, as well as a short clip of some Rock N Rollers dancing.  We were sure to thank Dave before heading back to school.The students created Thank You cards for Dave in gratitude for his time and energy preparing for, hosting us, setting up, and showing our performances on the big screen, then likely cleaning up after our departure.  Most of us were quite excited about and grateful for our visit.Friday students continued their building work.  We created a chart to list the things we KNOW about building with toothpicks, marshmallows, apples, cranberries, and chickpeas.  We then recorded WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW – our questions that will take us further in our experimenting.  We watched a video story of Roberto, the Insect Architect and read Rosie Revere, Engineer.  We discussed how things were challenging for both Rosie and Roberto, but they didn’t give up.  They persevered, and even when they failed, they continued to try again, using their failures as learning experiences.  We then got to work building.  Last week our challenge was to get as high as we could, and this week was to create a structure that was sturdy and stable.  Last week we discovered that our marshmallow creations toppled down, so we mostly opted to use potato pieces and cranberries to stick our toothpicks in.  We had some failures, which was heartbreaking, but after determining what caused the failure, we tried again, fixing our errors, and finding success!  At the end of the morning we listed what we LEARNED, and this prompted more questions which we were excited to examine and experiment with later.

Gray winter skies brought snow and wind.  The children shoveled off ice patches for boot skating, created paths for sledding and driving, climbed up and slid down the hill on sleds and bottoms, filled buckets with snow to feed dinosaurs and build snow castles, and cleared off the tables and benches.Monday students read about animal tracks, then created paint pictures by dipping various items in paint, then rolling them around on their papers to make different types of colorful “tracks.”We trekked to the Post Office on Tuesday for our tour with Tim the Post Man.  He took us to the mail room where we saw the loading dock where mail is delivered to the Post Office from big trucks and loaded back onto mail trucks to be delivered to homes and business by the postal carriers.  We saw postal workers sorting and preparing mail for delivery and saw where the slots are for some of the students’ mail. We got to see the back of the post office (PO) boxes, the counter where stamps are purchased and packages are mailed, and the post master’s office. We even had our passport photo taken with the special passport camera. After our tour with Tim, we purchased stamps and adhered them to our letters to our families then sent them through the slot to be mailed home.  Most letters should have arrived by now.  Postman Tim gave each child a coloring book, and everyone was so excited to get their book and color in it.  First, everyone wrote thank you letters to him to show our gratitude for giving us a tour and the thoughtful gift.We celebrated a fourth birthday with blueberry and apple strudel bites, a favorite snack of the birthday boy.  The children enjoyed this new treat after helping the newest four year old count the years as he orbited the sun with the earth and singing Happy Birthday.  Happy 4th birthday!Our short Wednesday passed quickly.  We shared and decided on a new Dramatic Play theme.  We will be creating a theater for performing plays, dances, musical numbers, and puppet shows.  The children had many suggestions for needed materials and what we could create for the area.Thursday was Valentine’s Day, and the excitement was palpable.  The children took turns distributing their Valentine cards & goodies into the bags, then all waited anxiously to go home and scope out their special Valentines.  Children played beanbag toss on the alphabet letters, sight word search and color, word search, roll the dice and color the hearts, valentine making, and letter writing.  Two typewriters were brought out, and the children took turns typing up letters on the typewriters.  We played “Valentine Says (Simon Says)” and those attentive kids were hard to trick!Friday students read the book How to Be a Building and pretended to be columns, walls, and roofs of buildings, pushing down into the ground with their feet.  The children then experimented with their own engineering project.  They were tasked with building the tallest, sturdiest structure possible with toothpicks, using mini marshmallows, apple pieces, cranberries, and/or chickpeas.  Most children went directly to marshmallows, because MARSHMALLOWS!  But they quickly discovered that this was not a good choice for a sturdy and stable structure.  Most of the children recognized that using apples or cranberries worked best, as they are much more solid and able to support and hold the structures sturdy and straight.

Warmer days made outside play lots of fun.  The snow was perfect for snowballs and snowmen and building up our sledding hill.  The hill was busy with sledders and penguins taking turns slipping down to the bottom then running around to do it again.Monday students had a busy morning.  They decorated their Valentine mailbags, wrote Valentine letters to their families, painted their paper mache balloons, and had a health lesson with Zeanny then enjoyed a special dairy treat of yogurt with granola and frozen fruit before heading to the library with Tammy.Valentine’s Day, the day of love and friendship, was introduced.  We read some Valentine stories and the children began to prepare for our party next week by making Valentine mailbags.  We continued to sing our Valentine songs, including Skidamarink, You Are My Sunshine, A Tisket A Tasket, and Mail Myself to You.We introduced letter writing and the Post Office.  We read The Jolly Postman and each child wrote a letter home to one, two, or all of their family members for Valentine’s Day.  They will mail their letters when we take our tour of the US Post Office next Tuesday.We continued to chart our recyclables and trash usage.  We discussed how many recyclables we have been saving from the landfill, and introduced the idea of reducing waste, which we will delve into more in depth next week.Me on the Map was read again, and we introduced the floor map that we are creating of the town of Lancaster.  Susan drew an outline of the central roads and the river, and the children began painting the road gray and river blue.  Next week we will continue to add more detail.Friday students explored their fifth sense, the sense of taste, with a tasting party.  We read about our sense of taste and looked at our taste buds in a mirror.  We learned that there are five categories of taste – sour, sweet, salty, bitter, and umami (meat).  We then washed up, sat at the snack table, and tasted some different foods to determine what they were, and if they would be categorized as sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or umami.  Some of them were pretty difficult to categorize, and we didn’t always agree, but we had fun tasting different flavors.We celebrated a fifth birthday.  The birthday girl told us she was born in the winter, in the month of February, five years ago, so she speedily orbited the earth around the sun while we counted out her age.  After she blew out the candle we enjoyed tasty cupcakes with cashew maple frosting.

We had so much fun sledding on our mini hill.  It was hard to wait for turns, remember to walk up the backside of the hill, and stay out of the way of sledders, but we are making progress.  We had a couple of inside days due to low temperatures, so we made the best of it with some inside activities.Indoor recess fun:Monday students did some paper mache work.  They were given the option to do a paper mache bowl or balloon – of course everyone chose to do a balloon, because – BALLOONS!!  We had to play with them a bit before covering them with the strips of paper dipped in the flour and water paste.  Unfortunately, due to the messiness of our hands, no photo documentation was acquired.

We read stories and sang songs about trees.  We read I Am A Tree, A Tree is Nice, Be a Friend to Trees and From Tree to Paper.  Susan taught us several tree songs, including Yippee, Hooray, I am a Sprout, This Bark on Me, and Branching Out.  We read about and discussed the many ways that we depend on trees.  They breath out oxygen and in Carbon Dioxide, the opposite of us, and they clean the air.  They provide food, shade, and shelter.  They provide homes for many animals.  They provide wood for houses, paper, boxes, magazines, books, paper towels, toilet paper, tables, chairs, floors, etc.Students sorted the recycling, then we counted and charted our recycling as a group.  We had 6 fewer items the second week than the first week (the second week was also much shorter due to MLK day and snow days).  We also weighed our trash from the past two weeks.  In two weeks we accumulated 3.6 lbs of trash – less than 1/2 bag.  We also weighed our paper towels.  The first week we used 2.58 lbs of paper towels, and the second we used 1.7 lb.  We began to talk about reducing our waste this week, specifically about making sure we took only 1 or 2 paper towels to dry our hands to help reduce waste and save trees.Mr. Bond guided us in sanding the bottom and sides of our tool boxes.We revisited the story Jabari Jumps, about the first time Jabari dives off the diving board, and some strategies he uses to take on that challenge.  He takes deep breaths to help calm and focus his brain, and he uses a mantra to tell himself he can do it.  We read Katy and the Big Snow, about a snow plow who works through a big snow storm, plowing out the whole city of Geopolis, even when she gets tired.  We discussed how fun challenges can be, and the children shared some experiences they have had or their family members have had when they took on a challenge and worked through it.Katie from Believe in Books brought Pooh and A.O. for a visit.  A.O. read about the time Pooh took a balloon and rolled in the mud, then floated up and pretended to be a rain cloud so he could get the honey from the tree, but those bees were not fooled by Pooh’s disguise.  Everyone got to wave to or hug Pooh before picking their very own book to take home.Friday students explored their fourth sense, touch, this week.  We discussed the features of an item that we can determine based on touch, such as temperature, size, shape, texture, softness/hardness, and wetness or dryness.  We identified color, scent, and the noise it makes as things we could not identify based on touch.  Everyone had a chance to reach into the feely bag and select an item to identify using our sense of touch.We talked a bit about groundhog day, then some of the children made groundhogs who pop up to spot their shadows then scurry back to their burrows to sleep until spring.