Sunnybrook Montessori School

This Thanksgiving week truly does resemble the Thanksgiving song “Over the River and Through the Woods,” unlike any others I can remember.  The children have certainly been enjoying their time outside in the white stuff, pulling friends in sleds, having snowball fights, and attempting to drive the large trucks around.We continued to practice our songs for our performance, working in small groups with Susan to practice on the instruments, and in the large group all together.We continued to read stone soup stories and watched a couple more stone soup storytelling videos and listened to Pete Seeger’s telling of Some Friends to Feed.  We also read several books about Thanksgiving and being grateful.  We shared things each day that we are thankful for – the most common being family, and the second being school.  It was so joyous to listen to all the things that the children shared, and to feel that they truly were thoughtful about their gratitude.  We created a Thankful tree, where children wrote or dictated things that they are thankful for on a leaf, bird, or star, and hung them on the thankful tree.Stone soup preparation began on Monday and continued through our short week.  The children each had a turn washing, peeling, and chopping up vegetables.  They carefully held their vegetable and peeled away from themselves as shown, and diligently sliced them into pieces, sawing back and forth until they finally separated.  It was hard work and took a lot of careful concentration and attention, but everyone stuck with it until they had completed their task.On Wednesday morning the children shook, and shook, and shook up jars of cream until they finally (almost 2 hours later) turned into butter, which we enjoyed with our bread and crackers during our stone soup feast.Everyone was so excited to welcome families to join us for soup.  There was a choice of a creamy carrot & potato soup, or a vegetables in broth soup.  Some children had several bowls, trying both types, and some selected one or the other.  It was fun to sit together as a community to eat and enjoy friendly conversation.
We hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families and we look forward to our Winter Celebration in a few weeks!

Snowy weather made for a short, cold week!  The wind kept us inside on Wednesday, but we made it out to enjoy the snow Thursday and Friday (though there is minimal photo documentation of this).  The children had fun throwing snowballs, making snow angels, playing freeze tag, and finally using the sleds to pull things around in the snow. We were excited to see lots of birds enjoying the food in the feeders and finding their tracks all over the snowy ground.We read several versions of the stone soup story and discussed the overarching themes of caring for others, kindness, generosity, and building community and relationships through sharing meals and good conversation.  We talked about sharing with those in need and showed the children where the food donation box is sitting on the filing cabinet.We read the story Mouse Was Mad about a mouse and how he handles his anger.  He hops, he stomps, he screams, he rolls around in a ball, and finally he stands perfectly still and breathes.  Other animals show him how to hop, stomp, scream, and roll around, but they are all in awe of his stillness. We practiced being still and breathing to calm ourselves just as mouse did.  We pretended to be angry and noticed that our shoulders raised, our muscles tensed, our faces scrunched, and our breathing got fast.  We practiced breathing to help everything relax and discussed appropriate ways to calm ourselves when we are angry.  We made a model of the brain with our fists and discussed the parts of the brain that control different things.  We learned that the frontal cortex is where we do all our thinking and problem solving, and the brain stem is the area that controls our emotions and fight or flight.  When we get angry we flip our lid – the brain stem & limbic area take over, and we are no longer able to reason and problem solve.  We talked about things that we can do when we are angry until our frontal cortex is in control again and we can talk and reason.We added another side to our pencil/note holders during woodworking with Mr. Bond.During Spanish we practiced our usual songs and our Los Posadas song.  The children are starting to get the words down (much better than I am)!  We played a Simon Says type game, standing way up tall – gigante – and crouching down low – pequena. We also practiced dancing the merengue a couple of times.  We are getting better and better at marching while moving our hips, jumping, clapping, and making a train around the room.Practicing and preparing for our winter performance has been a daily activity.  The children are familiar with several of the songs, and we are now working on our accompanying music.  Each child selected a song that they wanted to play an instrument or hold a picture for and we began practicing that.  Some are playing a block from the glockenspiel, some are ringing hand-bells, others are shaking jingle bells, and a group are holding pictures for a New Hampshire Winter version of the Twelve Days of Christmas that the children wrote with Susan.Friday students had a quiet day.  A Sunnybrook Alumnus visited for the morning and taught us how to make silly putty.  She is an expert!  She guided them through it, adding ingredients, food coloring, and glitter, then helped them mix it until it was just right!  They all had so much fun mixing it up and playing with it for the morning.

Winter is fast approaching.  As the dark has begun to encroach on the beginnings and endings of our days and the final leaves have drifted to the ground, we have been bundling up and staying active to keep warm in the cooler temperatures.  Bulls have been roaming our yard in search of food, pumpkin decomposition has been hastened, and travelers have been hopping, scooting, peddling, running, and riding around.Monday students learned about nutrition with Zeanny.  She introduced My Plate and the food groups, then read Bread, Bread, Bread and Nanette’s Baguette to teach us about grains.  We did some moving and grooving to exercise our bodies then each tried a plate with a piece of different grain products, including rice cake, pita bread, bagel, and baguette with some hummus and cream cheese.Monday was the monthly visit to the library with Susan and Tammy.  The children chose some new books to borrow, listened to a story, then spent time playing with trains, caring for babies, putting out fires, and rolling marbles down chutes.Stone Soup, an annual Sunnybrook tradition each November, was introduced.  We watched a video of the story of three hungry travelers knocking on doors in search of food.  When they are repeatedly turned away, they decide that they will cook for the hungry community.  They request a large pot and commence preparing a feast from a stone.  We will continue to read a variety of versions of the Stone Soup story in preparation for our Stone Soup meal on Wednesday, November 21^st.Nurse Heather visited to tell us about her work in the hospital.  She wore her scrubs so we could see what a nurse’s uniform is.  She demonstrated how to use a stethoscope to listen to our hearts, lungs, and stomachs to make sure everything is healthy and strong.  She introduced a sphygmomanometer to measure blood pressure.  She told us about the helicopter that sometimes picks up patients that are in need of special care and takes them to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.  The children had many questions and comments to share.  Nurse Heather learned a lot about us during her visit!During woodworking with Mr. Bond the children each had the opportunity to add another side to their pencil/note holders.  Another few weeks and they may be ready to go home.We continued to practice our Spanish colors, numbers, and body parts with Zeanny.  The children took turns placing colors and numbers when Zeanny named them in Spanish.  She introduced the festival of Los Posadas, and a song the travelers sing as they move from one house to another.  Zeanny told the story of an expectant mother and father riding a donkey in search of a place to stay, and how people re-enact this story by visiting houses in the community and knocking on doors, asking for shelter.  When they reach the final house, they are invited in to celebrate together.  Zeanny also introduced the merengue and we began to learn how to march and move our hips, clap our hands together with a partner, and move around the room in a train.  We will continue to practice and hope to impress you with our singing and dancing during the winter performance!Susan brought out the glockenspiel and each child had an opportunity to play along to the song Make New Friends.  As Susan conducted, the children watched and played their block when pointed to.  They are anxious to each choose a song to participate in and play along with for our performance in December.Friday students continued to learn about how healthy food helps our bodies.  We studied the digestive system and how our bodies use and break down, then eliminate, the food we eat.  We read some poop stories, Everyone Poops and Perry Poops, and a digestion story, What Happens to a Hamburger?  We munched some crackers in our mouths using our teeth and saliva, then swallowed them down into the esophagus, then into the stomach.  In conjunction with What Happens to a Hamburger? We used a masher and water to be the mouth chewing up crackers and mixing with saliva.  We then “swallowed” it and it travelled to the stomach bag where it was mixed with stomach acids and mixed some more.  We then used an egg shaker as food and took turns squeezing it through the intestines (a cut off leg of a pair of tights) then pooped it out the end.  We stretched out strings that had been tied together to represent the digestive tract from the mouth to the anus – 21 feet long!  It is pretty amazing that all fits into our bodies!

What a witchy week we had!  Witches on broomsticks were soaring around the playground, cackling delightedly as they flew through the leaves, past the potion makers, and between the balancers.Monday artists studied the Swiss German artist Paul Klee (pronounced Klay), whose colorful surrealist artwork made use of lines and shape.  We examined many of his most famous works, including Fish Magic, Cat and Bird, Twittering Machine, and Fire Evening.  We used Castle and Sun as the inspiration for our colorful shape art, creating works titled Fish in the Sea, Daddy’s Bed, The castle and the Hungry Caterpillar, etc.
In celebration of Halloween, we read lots of Halloween stories, including Room on the Broom, Inside a House that is Haunted, Halloween, and The Little Old Lady who Was Not Afraid of Anything, and sang our Halloween songs; The Ghost of John, Stirring Our Brew, and Five Little Pumpkins.  We also did the Hokey Pokey using the names of the bones in our skeleton – the phalanges, patella, pelvis, ribs, vertebrae, clavicle, scapula, and skull.
On Halloween day the children who chose to do so arrived in costume and celebrated with a variety of Halloween themed activities.  They tossed worms and rats into a cauldron, made loud sounds by running over bubble-wrap, got bare feet stuck on sticky paper, scooped seeds and pulp out of a pumpkin, created jack-o-lantern faces.  We had fun mixing potions (the most desired activity of the day) with Lyn’s mom, Suzy, who came to spend soand me time with us.Mr. Bond came to hang the bird-feeders with us.  The children went out with their group to fill the feeders with seed then hang them from the tree.  The children helped hold the rope while Mr. Bond raised the feeders, then we all stood back to help decide when it was level.  We noticed that there were seeds on the ground under the feeders on Thursday, and discovered a hair on the feeder, which we determined was from a squirrel rather than a bird.  We are hoping for some birds to come before the squirrels make off with all the food!
We finished our morning off enjoying all the tasty snacks that families sent in, then ran off all our energy on the playground.  Thank you so much to everyone who contributed a treat!Thursday morning Zeanny introduced the Mexican holiday Dia de Muertos (The Day of the Dead).  We watched a short clip from the film Coco, then Zeanny showed us how to make Papel picado garlands by folding and cutting tissue paper.  She told us about sugar skulls and showed how they are decorated with flowers and bright patterns.  The children then had the opportunity to make their own papel picado garlands and create a colorful sugar skull mask.During music with Susan, she introduced the glockenspiel, which the children will get to play for the winter performance.  We then ordered the hand bells from low to high, taking turns ringing and comparing them to put them on the scale where they belong.  Some good listening was required to determine which were higher and lower!For Friday science Susan introduced the four cardinal directions (North, South, West, East) and the use of a compass rose.  She explained that a compass will always point North, as our Earth is a giant magnet.  They played a game where they took turns with the compass and friends moved to different coordinates, then they had fun exploring with magnets.