Sunnybrook Montessori School

We were excited to have so much snow on our playground after our first big snow dump of the season!  We worked as a team to make a huge pile in the center of the playground for sledding, which Friday students were able to enjoy after the rain and freeze.  It was so much fun sledding down individually and in pairs.  We started to learn and practice how to be safe and respectful when sledding.Dental care was introduced through some stories about teeth brushing and care.  We demonstrated how to brush our teeth for two minutes until the timer ran through, going in a circular motion and cleaning each section for a count of ten.  A tooth-brushing activity was put out in practical life, the play dough dental set was added, and toothbrush painting was available at the art table.Mr. Bond helped us attach the second side of our tool boxes this week. We donned our safety glasses and carefully pounded in the three nails to secure the wood together.Officer Lucas from Fish and Game, and his intern, Brandon, visited on Wednesday to teach us about New Hampshire mammals and adaptation.  He brought pelts for us to examine and learn about.  We observed the shape, size, color, and the thickness and length of the fur to help us determine which animal each pelt was from.  We compared a pine marten pelt, which had longer, thicker fur for cooler temperatures and higher elevations to a mink pelt, which is sleeker and adapted to being in the water.  We observed identifying characteristics of several pelts to help us name them, including white stripes on a black skunk, and tail rings and black mask on a raccoon.  We also identified a coyote, beaver, fisher, gray fox, red fox, and muskrat.  To conclude we discussed adaptation and how animals adapt to survive.  Snowshoe hare and ermine are both animals that change from darker summer fur to white in the winter.  Officer Lucas asked why the animals change, and the children said so they would blend in with their surroundings, adapting to stay safe from predators. Each child then worked with a partner to read an animal name, then identify and place it on the matching pelt.Our very short week concluded with a Friday science lesson on the third of the five senses we have explored – the sense of smell.  We read about how scent molecules travel into the nose, where they are trapped in the nerve endings, which bring the information to the brain, where it is interpreted and we determine what the scent is.  We then did some smelling.  We attempted to close our eyes and use our sense of smell to determine what items we were sniffing.  We smelled and identified a banana, honey, glue, mustard, paint, and an onion.  We found that we preferred to use our sense of sight to help identify the items we were scenting.

The sleds were joined by a new friend this week, which made everyone so excited, so thank you to the anonymous sled donor!  All the sleds were quite busy and put to good use.  They pulled, pushed, carried, and carted snow, friends, vehicles, and ice.  We tried to move around to stay warm on these cold winter days.We spent a couple days inside with below 5ᵒ temperatures.  We had fun with indoor activities that only come out on indoor recess days or during after care, so we were excited for the change.  We had a lot of energy left over in the afternoons, though, so we played duck, duck, goose and long jump one day, and made an upside-down chair obstacle course to challenge our maneuvering skills another day.Monday students used salt to create snowy pictures.  First they drew a winter scene with pastels, then painted over it with watercolor paints.  They then sprinkled salt over the watery paint, which pushed the paint out to create snowflakes in the sky.
Susan returned this week and we were so happy to see her.  She is such an integral part of our class and we missed her while she had to be away.

We covered some heavy topics this week, but the children dealt with them well.  We observed them and listened to their comments and questions to be sure they felt positively about the information and powerful to take action toward positive change.

We continued to talk about plastics and sorting out waste that can be composted, burned, or recycled.  We watched some moving videos about plastic pollution around the earth.  We viewed a brief video of the Pasig River in Manilla, Philippines.  The video shows a river full of trash running through the city.  We discussed how fortunate we are to have trash collection and landfills where our trash can be taken so our rivers can stay clean and clear of waste.  We discussed how all this trash flows down the river and into the ocean, where it is mistaken for food by sea birds and ocean animals.  We then watched a video of a manta ray ingesting plastic, thinking it is food.  We watched the beginning of a National Geographic video called How We Can Keep Plastic Out of Our Oceans.  Finally, we watched a video about a landfill and how trash can be managed and recycled.  We discussed, as pointed out in the two longer videos, that everyone has a role to play.  Each of us in our classroom has a job, and our job is to pay attention to what we throw away and what we recycle and reuse. The BBC has an enlightening and heartbreaking video (which we did not show the children) about the impact of plastic pollution on the planet and how microplastics are infiltrating the environment and creating a serious health risk to animals and humans across the planet.  I would highly encourage you to watch it.  It can be accessed by clicking here: BBC Drowning in Plastic.  We sorted through some of the waste we have collected and a couple children worked with Susan to create signs to hang over our waste area to indicate what can be recycled, burned, or composted, and what must go in the trash.  There are items we are working on researching still, and we have been surprised by some of the things that we can recycle, including juice pouches.  We will purchase a box from a company called Terracycle, where we can mail granola, chip, and energy bar wrappers to be recycled.  We are determining what items can be burned in Lyn’s furnace and kept out of the landfill.  And we are making sure all of our food waste goes into the compost instead of the trash.Wednesday, the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, we read and learned all about him.  We started by reading and discussing My Brother Martin, written by his sister, Christine King Farris. We learned the terms segregation and discrimination and talked about unfair laws that prohibited people from doing things because of the color of their skin, such as sitting where they want on a bus, eating in certain restaurants, drinking out of some water fountains, and attending particular schools. We learned how Martin Luther King Jr. worked to change these laws and how this dream began as a child when his friends with white skin were no longer allowed to play with him.  We learned that skin color is determined by how much melanin is in our skin, making it lighter or darker, and that the closer our ancestors lived to the equator, the darker their skin.  We talked about kindness and equality and how all humans are the same because we all have feelings and thoughts and bodies, but we are also all different because we have different colored hair, eyes, and skin, and are different shapes and sizes and we have different feelings and thoughts about different things.Mr. Bond worked with the children to attach the bottom of their tool boxes to the first side.  They opened the clamp, then secured the side, before attaching the bottom.  Each child hammered in three nails, starting with one in the middle, then the two on the ends. As always, thank you so much to Mr. Bond who so generously volunteers his time, skills, and resources!We talked about our community and Susan taught us several songs about community workers, community, and friends.  We discussed what we might see on our walk around town (which we are hoping to do on Tuesday, weather permitting).  The children named several buildings that we would need to spot and include on our community map, including the library, post office, and bank.

We put out washing bins for the children to wash out all the recyclables.  They enjoyed scrubbing them and rinsing them clean, then putting them in a bin to dry.Thursday during group gathering we sorted through and charted what we had collected in our recycling bin.  We took out our trash bag for the week and observed that with our sorting of waste, making sure as many burnable, compostable, and recyclable items were kept out of the trash as possible, we made less than ½ bag of trash in a week.  We discussed how much of what ended up in the trash could have gone in other bins, so we will be more careful in the future about where we put our waste in an effort to recycle, compost, and keep as much as possible out of the landfill.  We sorted, counted, and charted our recyclables.  We found that granola bar wrappers and yogurt lids and containers were the highest numbers, at about 14 each.The children had fun taking turns performing the story of Tacky the Penguin with flannel characters.Friday students continued their study of the 5 senses.  This week we focused on the sense of hearing. We listened to some animal sounds and identified them.  Some were very easy, but a couple were quite hard.  We watched a video about how the ear works, stopping to discuss and expound on what was said.  We also watched a video about sound waves and how different frequencies make different patterns.  Some of them were very cool, and the children started moving to the music as it played.  We read a book about sound and how it works, then we listened as lyn moved various items and tried to identify them.  Some were very challenging, and some we got right away, such as a jar being opened, a brush sweeping, a box of crackers being opened, and tape being pulled off a dispenser.  Finally we took out the big drum with the felt balls and vibrated them right off as we played different drumming patterns and played slowly then quickly.

Snowflakes fell in all their six-sided glory to layer our play yard in mounds of fabulous, fluffy, sparkling whiteness.  We captured and studied some flakes on our mittens before they melted away, and we ate, shoveled, scooped up, and slid over the other billion.Monday students made art by blowing through straws to push liquid water color across paper, spreading into branches as it moved.Before heading to the library while visitors came for the monthly play date, they constructed and painted a mushroom fairy house for the new dramatic play forest area.  The bear den and fairy house were joined by a tree house and a tent (on loan from the Kelly family – thank you!).  The Sunnybrook forest animals were busy storing up food for winter, hibernating, building camp fires, and visiting among the various abodes.Our study of trash and recycling continued as we read the stories Don’t Throw That Away!, which taught us about which items we can recycle, and My Little Plastic Bag about what happens to a trash bag thrown out along the roadside.  The bag was chopped up by a mower, then washed into a stream.  It made its’ way to the ocean where it was eaten by a fish, who was caught by a fisherman and sold for food, so the chemicals from the bag were ingested by the family who ate the fish.We listened to and performed The Mitten by Jan Brett.  The children selected animal headband masks and acted out the story as they listened to the telling, burrowing into the “mitten” then falling out all over the ground when the meadow mouse burrowed in, making the bear sneeze.  They had a lot of fun both watching and performing.We read several books about winter animals and hibernation.  We learned that many animals hibernate – some go into true hibernation where they do not wake until spring, and others go into a sleep state where they may be disturbed and awaken to eat and move, including bears.We took out the parachute and played some fun parachute games.  First we sang Ring Around the Rosy, then shook, shook, shook the parachute to shake off Henrietta the hen.  Next we played a name finding game.  When our names were called, we ran under the parachute, grabbed our own name tags, and ran back out.  We then switched it up.  We listened to two names called, then ran under the parachute when we heard our name and grabbed the name tag for the other name called.  Finally we played great white shark, taking turns being the shark who swims under the parachute and nibbles the toes of a friend, who then crawls under the parachute to become the next shark.Friday students continued their study of the five senses.  We reviewed what the five senses are, then proceeded to learn more in depth about the sense of sight.  We looked at a model drawing of an eyeball cross section and located the optic nerve, cornea, iris, pupil, lens, and retina.  We looked in a mirror to see what color our irises are.  We turned out the lights then looked at a partners pupils.  We observed that their pupils were quite large.  We turned the lights back on and looked at our partners pupils again, and saw that they had become very small. We determined that they shrink to keep light out when it is bright, and open to let light in when it is dark. We then watched two short videos about how our eyes work (How Your Eyes Work & A Journey Through the Human Eye).  We looked through a magnifying glass and binoculars to see how things that are small can look larger, or far away can look close and clear. Finally we played some games. We started with I Spy With My Little Eye. The children listened to the clues and walked to stand near something in the classroom that fit the visual descriptors of the item until there was no mistaking what it was and everyone stood together.  We then played a letter finding game.  The nametags were spread around the rug, and when shown and given the name of a letter, the children had to find and stand on a name that had that letter in it.  To finish up, we pulled out some colored flashlights and did some dancing!As it was too cold for outside play on Friday, the children helped to create an obstacle  course, which they then proceeded to do over, and over, and over, and over . . .

Winter is officially here. We had fun slipping and sliding on sheets of ice that dotted the yard.  We ran and slid across the ice like baseball players sliding into home plate. Many of our toys were trapped in ice due to the melting and freezing over break, so we had to be resourceful and work on our negotiating, compromising, and turn taking.We celebrated two fifth birthdays this week.  The birthday girl let us choose either a confetti cupcake with chocolate frosting and pink sprinkles or a chocolate cupcake with white frosting and star sprinkles.  She very happily and slowly orbited the sun with the globe as we named the seasons and counted the years since her birth.The birthday boy brought containers of blueberries or strawberries and raspberries to choose from.  After distributing the tasty treats he held the globe as he walked around the candle five times while we counted his birthdays.  After the Happy Birthday song he blew out the candle and everyone munched up their berries.Happy Birthday newest 5 year olds!

We read the story Winter Dance about a fox that is trying to figure out what he does in the winter.  He encounters several animals who encourage him to do what they do, including a woolly bear caterpillar who creates a cocoon, a turtle who dives down to burrow in the mud, a bat who hangs from its’ feet in a cave and goes to sleep, geese who fly south, a snowshoe hare who turns white to blend in with the snow, and a bear who snuggles into a den in the ground and sleeps.  As the children recalled what the different animals did, we learned the terms hibernation, migration, and adaption.  We pretended to be migrating geese flying south, hibernating turtles burrowing down, and adapting hares losing our brown hair and growing in thicker white hair.  We discussed how animals stay warm in the winter and read a story about a bear and his fox friend, who misses him while he goes to sleep.  Before finding a den to cuddle up in, the bear got fat by eating and storing up lots of food.  We talked about how this creates an extra layer of fat, which provides insulation.  The children took turns holding ice cubes on their bare skin, with a wool mitten, and with a blubber mitten and compared how much cold was felt with each.Mr. Bond started a new project this week. Each child will get to build their own tool carry box. They started out by drilling a hole with the hand drill for the handle to go into. Each child rotated the handle around and around while Mr. Bond held the top until they had gone down 1/4 inch.We read the story Where Does Our Garbage Go? and learned about where all our waste ends up when we throw it away.  We introduced the idea of recycling glass, plastic, aluminum, and paper into something new. We also talked about composting our food, which becomes soil for new plants to grow and be healthy.  We introduced the recycling triangle and the numbers we might see in them, then we took turns sorting waste into the appropriate containers.  We put food waste in the compost, paper in the paper trash, which is burned in Lyn’s furnace, recyclable plastic, metal, and glass in the recycling bin, and waste in the trash can.  Next week we will start to save, wash, sort, and document the waste we produce at school.We watched three videos of street drummers who use buckets, pots and pans, and other materials instead of just drums to make music – Gordo, Dario Rossi, and the London Eye Drummer.  The children couldn’t help but move their bodies – heads were nodding, toes were tapping, and torsos were wiggling.  Finally they got up to dance to the three different styles of drumming before we attempted our own drumming.  We discovered that everyone drumming with just one drum at the same time was just too loud and lacking rhythm, so one student demonstrated how to play our buckets, pots, and pans in a rhythmic (and quieter) way.  The bucket drums were taken out again by individuals to practice their own rhythms and music making independently.For Friday science we were introduced to the five senses.  First we used our eyes to observe a photograph of a fox in a snowy field.  We tried to use descriptive words to discuss what we saw, such as colors, shapes, sizes, and structures.  We closed our eyes to do some listening, touching, tasting, and smelling.  We tried to find descriptive words and to identify the different items that we heard, felt, tasted, and smelled.  We listened to an Andean Chac-cha and identified that it was like a maraca and was made of wood.  We listened to scissors opening and closing and tried to figure out what they were.  We touched some silly putty and said it was hard but soft, smooth, and stretchy.  Some children said slimy, but we discussed that slimy is wet and gooey, while this was dry and smooth.  We tasted some cherries – some were sweet and some were tart. We smelled grapefruit, and there were lots of close guesses – limes, oranges, and lemons. We also smelled the herb sage, which was new to almost everyone.  Everyone then once again closed their eyes while we listened to, smelled, touched, then saw and tasted clementines, trying to describe and guess what we were each holding in our hands. Over the next five weeks we will focus more in depth on each sense, more fully isolating and exploring each.