Sunnybrook Montessori School

Most of the leaves have fallen to the ground, allowing the sunlight to filter through the branches and warm us on these cold fall days.  Raking up leaves to jump in, throw up in the air, and dump in our garden for compost has been keeping us busy and warmed up.Monday students learned about the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, who is most well known for his red, blue, and yellow art, part of the Dutch De Stijl (The Style) movement in the early 1900’s.  We looked at his paintings and noticed how his work transitioned from realistic to very abstract, with black lines filled in with white and the primary colors, then to lines of primary colors depicting a city, such as New York.  The children used black, blue, yellow, and red markers to make their own Mondrian style art.

In preparation for Bring Your Family to School Night, the children finished up their family portraits, thought about what items they wanted to show and demonstrate, took a tour of the classroom, and made invitations to take home to families.We read Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and introduced aspects of a story, including setting, the main and supporting characters, the antagonist and the protagonist, the emotions the characters experience, the conflict/question/challenge, and the resolution.On Wednesday morning we took a field trip to the library to see Miss Ronnie.  She showed us the parts of the book – cover, back, pages, and spine.  She talked about how we put the books on the shelves with the spines out so we can read the title and author.  She gave us a tour around the children’s room and then taught us about fiction (stories that are false – make believe) and non-fiction (stories that are real – contain facts).  We learned that non-fiction books have a white sticker at the bottom with a number that helps us know where it goes on the shelf, and that non-fiction books are located along the walls of the children’s room.  She showed us where the fiction books are in the middle of the room.  She also showed us where the holiday books are located, which have holiday stickers on the spines, and early readers, which have purple stickers on the spines.  She also demonstrated how to locate a specific book, then place a space saver in that spot so we know where to return it.  The class then split into three groups by age and worked with a teacher to select two books per group to borrow with our library card.The cartographers continued their map making work with Susan, finishing up their measuring and cutting out pieces for shelves, rugs, tables, etc. in our classroom.  They shared their work with the group and children helped to identify the different areas on the map and place the tables in their spots in the classroom.We celebrated two birthdays this week.  Our newest five-year old brought baseball cupcakes to share.  He was pleased to walk the earth around the sun while we listed the seasons and counted his five years before blowing out the candle.  The soon to be four-year old excitedly passed out her chocolate chip pumpkin muffins, then orbited the candle sun with the globe as we named the seasons and counted her four years before being serenaded with the birthday song and blowing out the candle.  Happy Birthday, birthday kids!!During Spanish with Zeanny we sang our body songs and counting song.  Zeanny read a counting story about Spanish celebrations, called Fiesta! and told us that we will be learning about Spanish holidays over the next six weeks, before we have a big celebration of Las Posadas in December.  We then played some Spanish number finding and color finding games before ending our group with the adios song.Mr. Bond came for woodworking on Thursday to accommodate our library field trip.  He created a shelf to store all the pencil holders the students are making.  Each holder has its own space and the children know where theirs are located.  This week they used nails and small hammers to attach the first side of their pencil holders, carefully working to hammer the nails in so it is securely attached.During Music with Susan, she read Musical Max by Robert Krauss and illustrated by Jose Arugo.  She then brought out the rhythm instruments.  This time everyone had an instrument at the same time and took turns playing them to the Sunnybrook version of “Johnny Hammers with One Hammer.”  The children took turns with the different types of instruments; tone blocks, bells, rhythm sticks, and maracas.The hospital was once again busy with doctors and nurses attending to patients while the check in clerks made sure all the paperwork and payments were in order.Believe in Books visited with Piglet on Friday morning.  Sally read us a story about Piglet.  He wants to play with his friends, but they are all busy, so he makes up his own game.  His friends then all come play his game with him.  The children each got their own story to take home to keep.  Non-Friday students will get to choose their stories next week.Friday students continued their study of living and non-living.  We reviewed what is living and what is non-living with the book Is It Living or Non-Living?  We recalled that plants and animals are living.  We know that animals need air, water, and food, and that plants need, air, water, sunlight and nutrients to live.  We then read Plants are Living Things and learned more about plants and how they grow and change, their parts, and how they can reproduce.  We took down a spider plant and carefully poured it out of its pot to look at the parts.  We located the long leaves that produce food in a process called photosynthesis.  We looked at the roots, whose jobs are to soak up the water needed to make food, and hold the plant in the ground.  We then took five baby spider plant runners to do an experiment.  We put one in a jar with air, light, and nutrients (plant food) but no water, a second we placed in an airtight jar with water, light, and nutrients but no air, a third we placed in a jar with air, water, and nutrients, then placed it in a covered pot so it will not get sunlight, a fourth we placed in water with no plant food, and the final was the control with water, nutrients, air, and sunlight.  We will observe them weekly and compare them to see how they fare.

The leaves are still on the trees, and winter weather is already arriving!  It was cold and windy throughout the week, and our first snowfall of the year blanketed the ground on Thursday, much to the delight of many, and the dismay of some.  Big plans for snowman construction were made in the morning, but implementation was a challenge with all the leaves tangled up in our ½ inch of flakes.The artist Mary Cassatt was introduced Monday.  Mary Cassatt is most well known for her paintings of families, despite being single and childless herself. The children shared stories of their families and family get togethers, then planned out and created their own family portraits to display for Bring Your Family to School Night next Thursday.  Students worked on family portraits throughout the week, and will continue to work on them again next week.The cold winds accompanied us on our walking field trip to the fire station on Tuesday.  We were grateful to have several parents join us for the morning.  Before departing, students shared many safety rules.  Everyone held hands with a partner and stayed behind the partners in front of them.  We stopped at all intersections and walked close to the buildings and as far from the road as possible.  At the fire station we checked out the trucks, hoses, and equipment, then had a discussion with Zina, who donned her fire suit, talked to us about fire safety, showed us tools firefighters used, told us about the fire hoses and fire trucks, then all the children had the opportunity to climb into the fire truck to see where the firefighters ride.  It was a fun and educational adventure!Upon our return we made some truly creative thank you cards for Zina.
Dramatic play was busy with Doctors, nurses, check in attendants, X-ray technicians, and patients.
Susan introduced map making.  With some help from some friends, she demonstrated how to make a map of a house.  Students placed doll house furniture on a large piece of paper, setting up the pieces by where they thought they might be in a house.  We then discussed where walls and doors might be.  Susan traced around the furniture, then removed it, and we used our memories to recall where items were so Susan could label them.  She then introduced making a map of our classroom.  Students had measured the room and outlined it on graph paper.  Because a map is a small representation of a location, we would not be able to pick up the furniture and trace around it, so Susan and many of the children spent Thursday measuring the various areas of the room, coloring and cutting out rugs and furniture, and placing them on our classroom map.During Thursday Spanish we sang our color song and body songs, then Zeanny introduced the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.  She showed us many paintings he made, in a variety of styles, from his blue period, to cubism, to abstract art.  She created a black outline of one of his paintings, which the students worked on coloring in later in the day.  She played an “eye spy” (in Spanish) color spotting game.  Zeanny would name a color and the children would guess what item of clothing Zeanny was looking at, and who was wearing it.For woodworking Mr. Bond had a special bag for each student.  Each bag had 5 pieces of wood inside, which will go together to create a pencil & notecard holder.  Mr. Bond showed each group a series of photos, and as with the bird feeders, the students put them in order of construction, from first to last.  The students then worked on sanding their pieces of wood, which they will gradually assemble, and then take home to keep.During music with Susan we read the stories Farmer Joe and the Music Show and Thump, Thump, Rat-a-Tat-Tat, two rhythm and rhyming books.  Susan introduced different types of drums and we listened to the sounds they made. We then took turns rat-a-tat-tatting with rhythm instruments, and Thump, Thump, Thumping on the big drum. Everyone got to hit the djembe before getting ready for outside.Friday students read Life by Cynthia Rylant, and two books about Living and Nonliving.  We learned that living things need air, water, and food to live, and all living things can move independently, even plants!  We discussed how all living things grow and change, and eventually die.  We learned that plants make their own food using air, water, and sunlight, and they will turn and grow toward the sun.  We then did a sorting activity, where each child closed their eyes and chose an item from a bowl.  They then determined if it was living or nonliving, and placed it on the corresponding tray.

It was glorious to have a couple of toasty days to enjoy before the rainy, cold, windy days of fall returned.  We took advantage, spending as much time outside as we could.  The playground was overrun by dinosaurs, dare devil jumpers, balancers, and rockers, leaf rakers, and haulers.
We continued to discuss fires and fire safety.  We talked about good fires and how fire helps us.  The children shared that fires can keep us warm in a wood stove, and we can use campfires to roast marshmallows.  We discussed how fires were used for cooking and how important it was to not let fires go out before the invention of matches and lighters, so families would feed their fires and bank them to keep coals burning.  We also discussed how farmers and foresters may intentionally set a controlled fire to burn portions of fields or forests to allow new plant life to grow.  Susan taught us four new fire songs – two about good fires, and two about two very famous bad fires – “London is Burning,” about the Great Fire of London in September of 1666, and “Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow,” about  The Great Chicago fire of 1871.  At the art table the children created tissue paper fires by wrapping small tissue squares around the eraser of a pencil, painting some glue on the paper, and dabbing the tissue onto the glue.We brainstormed and discussed ideas for a new dramatic play theme, and after several votes, it was narrowed down to a hospital or an airport/airplane.  It ended in a tie vote, so Susan reminded us that there is a DART helicopter that takes patients to the hospital, so it was agreed that we would create a hospital with a helicopter.  We began setting up late Thursday morning, and continued Friday morning.  The helpful doctors, nurses, patients, and pilots were anxious to get busy!We finally named the calf.  This vote also ended in a tie.  Suggestions from Butterscotch to Dandelion were shared. In the end it was between Toast and Belle.  Since it was an even vote, we decided to wait until the following day when other students would be present and do a re-vote.  When most of the Toast team decided to change their votes, Belle became the winner!  Welcome to the Sunnybrook family, Belle the Jersey calf!We read and performed the story of The Little Red Hen, as told and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, with puppets.  We performed it twice so each child could have an opportunity to be a character.  The little red hen discovers some wheat berries that she and her chicks plant, tend, and harvest.  She and the helpful chicks then take the wheat to be milled into flour and use the flour to bake some bread.  Throughout the process she asks her animal friends for help, but despite their ability to contribute, they refuse.  At the end when the Little Red Hen asks, “Who will help me eat the bread?” they all say, “I will!” but she says, “No, only my chicks and I will eat the bread.”  Several of us felt this story was a bit sad because the animals didn’t get any bread.  We thought about why that was and agreed to revisit this story next week, when we might ponder: Were the animals able to help the little red hen?  Why did they refuse to help?  Why did the little red hen refuse them bread?  What could everyone do differently next time?  If the animals knew what she was going to do with the wheat, would they have helped?During woodworking with Mr. Bond the children worked together to assemble the two birdhouses they sanded and organized last week.  Each child screwed in a screw, using their strong arm, hand, and core muscles to push and turn the screwdriver.  They were so excited and proud when they were completed, and are anxious to hang them out for the winter birds to enjoy when the snow arrives.
Using and making maps was introduced through the stories How I Became a Pirate and Me on the Map.  We learned that we can map a room, a house, a street, town, state, country, and world.  We took a clementine and peeled it, then pushed it flat to show how something round can be made into a flat map, but it would change the shapes and sizes of the land and water.During music Susan read the story Penny’s Song and we sang high and soft like Penny’s mom, and low and loud like Penny’s dad.  We used our ears to listen to two bells to determine which was higher and which was lower, then moved our bodies up when the high bell rang, and down low when the low bell rang.  We then moved our bodies gradually up and down as we sang up and down the scale.  Finally we took out some rhythm instruments and took turns striking, shaking, and ringing to our musical version of Johnny Works With One Hammer.Friday students had a delicious time during science doing an apple taste test.  Each student had the opportunity to select one of ten apples to test.  They described the physical appearance of their apple, which was drawn on our chart according to the describers description.  Each apple was then cut into slices, and everyone tasted it, describing it’s taste and texture using words such as sweet, tart, tangy, sour, crisp, and soft.  After tasting all the apples, the children wrote their names next to their favorite apple, or an apple they had never tried before and might want to try again.  It was super-duper hard for some to decide and wanted to write their name next to every apple!

The rain kept us in a few days this week, so by the time the sunshine returned we had plenty of energy to expend.  We made good use of our outside time!Zeanny visited us on Monday for a health lesson.  She read us the story Germs! Germs! Germs! all about those dreadful illness causing germs.  She did an experiment with us to demonstrate the importance of proper hand washing.  Everyone gave Zeanny a high five (after she put glow germ lotion on her hands) then we examined our hands with a blacklight and noticed all the glowing “germs.”  We added a few more “germs” then washed our hands the way we typically do.  After checking over our hands again, we discovered that we still had a lot of germs left, so we went back and scrubbed with soap all over our hands, including in between fingers and under nails, for 20 seconds while singing a “Rub the Germs Away” song Zeanny taught us.  This time we removed most of the germs.  The children decided that washing thoroughly was a good idea!
Monday was our first play date day, and therefore our first library day.  Susan and Tammy introduced the children to the expectations for library behavior and the schedule, then walked over and had a wonderful time visiting.  They renewed our library card and helped to pick out some books to borrow for a couple of weeks.  They were quite excited by their choices.Our second butterfly ecased Monday afternoon just before 4PM, so a few friends were able to see it just after it emerged. We set the tank outside on its side Tuesday afternoon in hopes that the rain would soon end and it could find some nectar for sustenance. As we were lining up for lunch on Wednesday, it flew past us and landed in the grass. We were happy to say goodbye and give a proper send off.Homes and houses were introduced through the books Homes and Houses and Homes.  We learned about all the different types of materials that homes can be made from, how some are large and some are small, some keep cold or heat out, and some have lots of windows for ventilation, and that homes are located all around the world and may be constructed to fit the environment where they live and the available resources, such as houses on stilts or huts made of mud. We talked about where we live – in a home, in a town, in a state, in a country, on a continent, on the Earth, in our solar system, in our galaxy. We read the book Energy from the Sun about what energy is, and where we get ours. The Cosmic nesting boxes were then introduced, which shows the Milky Way Galaxy, inside of which nests the Solar System, inside of which nests planet Earth, etc. At the art table the children made their own homes by drawing on thick Mat board with pencils or crayons, then painting them with water color markers.  We will put them on stands and use them in the block area to build communities.We read Stop, Drop, and Roll about a girl named Jessica who was learning about fire safety in school and was worried about remembering all the different safety procedures.  We discussed various fire safety rules and read the book Fire Safety, so we would know to always stay under the smoke, stay out in the open and never hide,  call for help, stop, drop and roll if fire is on your clothes, touch doors to see if they are hot before opening them, and make a fire safety plan with your family.  We will be visiting the fire station in a bit over a week to meet a firefighter and see the equipment.Henrietta and Wolfgang (our hen and wolf puppets) visited to help us think of ways to appropriately manage our emotions.  The children, Henrietta, and Wolfgang had a productive discussion about taking deep breaths, taking a break, having alone time in the quiet house, getting hugs, and spending time with a friend or teacher to help calm ourselves if angry, sad, or over excited.  We sang our version of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” with strategies so we can better remember what to do in the moment.  We made happy, sad, angry, and excited faces and noticed how our bodies tensed or relaxed by how we were feeling.For woodworking Mr. Bond brought the parts of a bird house with photos of the assembly process. Each group worked together to put the photos in order from the first step to the last, then they took turns helping to sand the parts. Next week they will screw them together. It was a fantastic planning and ordering activity that took some good observing, problem solving, and communication skills. As always, thank you so much Mr. Bond for another fantastic Wednesday!We read All Kinds of Families and Whose Mouse are You? to introduce the similarities and differences among families and to start to get to know each other better.  We played “When the cool wind blows” and stepped onto the rug when a statement applied to us, such as “The cool wind blows for everyone who is a sister” or “the cool wind blows for everyone who has an uncle.”

For Spanish with Zeanny we continued to learn about Latino culture and countries where Spanish is the primary language.  She introduced items from some of the countries, including an icorina whistle, some sombreros, a coffee grinder, and several other items.  We enjoyed singing our Spanish songs and listening to the story El Sombrero del tio Nacho (Uncle Nacho’s Hat) by Harriet Rohmer.Susan read the singing story books Fiddle-I-Fee and Over in the Meadow, then we took out the rhythm instruments and practiced following a rhythm. Susan revised the song “Peter Works with One Hammer” to use the child’s name and singing “strikes with one mallet” to teach the terms strike and mallet, and give each child an opportunity to follow the rhythm of the song. Each child then chose an instrument and practiced resting, playing, and holding.For Friday science we attempted to take a silent listening and looking walk after reading about fall leaves, why they start out green and change color, and the story The Listening Walk.  We quickly discovered that it was just not a suitable day for being quiet and listening, so instead we ran around the bandstand before heading to the playground to run some more.