Sunnybrook Montessori School

Fall has arrived!  The leaves have started changing colors, the crab apples have been falling, and the weather has started to cool as the days get shorter.  The children have been busy like squirrels, running around chasing each other, collecting treasures of nature, and practicing their balance.
For Monday art we learned about the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, who is famous for her self portraits.  We looked at a few of her tamer self-portraits, and some self-portraits by other artists.  We observed that the self-portraits looked just like the artists, with accurate skin tones, hair shades, eye colors, face shapes, and features.   We then used markers, crayons, colored pencils, and/or water color paints to create our own self-portraits.  We read the stories Whoever You Are by Mem Fox, and Why am I Me? and introduced this activity to the class on Tuesday. Throughout the week Susan guided small groups through the creation of their own self-portraits, which are displayed in the art gallery (except for another 4 or 5 to finish up next week).We continued to read about and discuss farming, farm animals, gardens, and harvesting.  On Wednesday morning we got to meet our calf.  She visited from the Fay farm, and we learned so much about her.  Our calf is brown.  She is a Jersey. Jerseys produce milk that has a lot of thick cream.  When she grows up (in about two years), her milk will be sold to Cabot, and made into cheese.  Right now our calf is one month old and weighs 90 pounds.  When she was born she weighed as much as a human four-year old (about 40 lbs), but when she grows up she will weigh 1000 lbs!  Right now she is still drinking milk – 2 gallons every day!  Soon she will start eating grain and grass.  She lives in her own hutch in a group of hutches near other calves.  Since she is still a baby, this helps keep her healthy and free from catching germs from other cows.  When she is a little older she will live with a group of other calves, who will become lifelong friends (just like Sunnybrook friends!).  We were so excited to each have a turn to pat her and lead her around on her halter. At the end of the morning, we were gifted with all sorts of goodies from the farm – cheese, stickers, a pencil, a bracelet, a tattoo, and a snack guide. Everyone was thrilled with their gifts. Over the weekend we will think of names for our calf. We will share our ideas and vote on what to name her on Tuesday.For woodworking Mr. Bond prepared a hammering activity.  Each child used a hammer to pound nails down into a piece of wood, then turned it over and hammered it back through.  They continued to hammer until they were ready to move on – some did it just once, while others did it several times.  They were impressively accurate with their hammering skills!We read Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens.  Lazy Bear and Clever Hare performed the story for us, along with Clever Hare’s family.  Click this sentence to view a video recording of the story.

Zeanny introduced Spanish Heritage month, which we will be learning about over the next several weeks.  She brought a map of Central and South America, and the country of Spain.  She showed us each of the countries where Spanish is the primary language, and we practiced repeating their names.  Zeanny told us that music and dancing and brightly colored clothes and flavorful foods are a part of Latino culture.  She read us a story about Spain, where the Spanish language originated, and we watched a Sesame Street Video about a Latino festival.  We danced along to the song as it played.  After Spanish, several students carefully colored in the countries on the map where Spanish is spoken, and we hung it on the wall.During music with Susan we continued to practice rhythms, but this time on the big drum.  We sang our songs, and Susan introduced some new ones about fall.  We followed Susan’s drumming patterns, carefully listening, watching, and counting to be sure we played slowly, quickly, and tapped out the correct number of taps.  Finally, at the end, we made rain drip drop, then pitter patter, then booming thunder so loud we had to cover our ears!The sun arrived for the harvest festival and most of the children chose to help set up.  They carried out the pumpkins, paints, smocks, paper, crayons, hoops, etc. and arranged the items on the playground.  Thank you so much to Mr. Bond for the pumpkins for painting!  (We still have several painted pumpkins on the playground if your child’s did not come home on Thursday).  When it was time, we were anxious to get out to enjoy all of the activities.  There was pumpkin painting, vegetable printing, apple transferring with tongs from one bucket of water to another, leaf, bark, and wood rubbing prints with crayons, pumpkin balancing, and an acorn balancing obstacle course, where the children held acorns on little spoons and carefully maneuvered over balance pods, stepping stones, up the balance beam, over the stumps, and through the hoops.  It was such a fun day!Friday students took their first field trip.  Melissa Grella from Taproot Environmental Education came to Sunnybrook and walked with us down to the Community Garden.  We were so careful to hold hands with our partners the entire walk and to stay behind the pair in front of us.  When we reached the Community Garden, Melissa showed us the raised bed where the McCormick family had planted carrots for the food bank.  We learned to pull them up by grasping at the bottom on the leafy stems at the top of the carrot and pull it up out of the ground.  Some of them were quite big and stubborn and needed some extra help to get out.  We snapped off the tops, which went into the compost, and put the carrots in a box.  When we had pulled them all, we washed off our hands and some of the carrots, which we then got to try.  We walked the carrots back down to the food bank at the Methodist church, where we dropped them off with Myra Emerson, who will use them in a soup or other dish for families to enjoy.  Thank you to Melissa for allowing us to participate in harvesting the carrots and accompanying us on our walk!

Our third week once again brought lots of beautiful weather.  We did lots of running, jumping, throwing, kicking, pushing, digging, investigating, problem solving, raking, collecting, and discussing.  The balls were kicked, thrown, and passed.  The tunnel made a great launching pad for the daredevils who were challenging themselves to jump across the sand box (which we revised to avoid jumping on the sandbox edges).  The engineers were busy getting things stuck in the tree so they could figure out how to get them out. The inventors were creating obstacle courses and leaf piles for navigating and jumping in. The construction crews were digging out sand, setting logs, and building castles and jails.  The drivers were motoring bikes, cars, sleds, and hopping balls around the yard. The scientists were collecting and examining all of the creepy crawlies they could find.  The monkeys were climbing trees, or at least attempting to do so. It was an energetic week outside!Monday students had fun reading To Be an Artist and Harve Tullet’s Mix It Up.  They then got busy with finger paints, selecting two primary colors at a time – red, yellow, blue – then mixing them together to create a secondary color – orange, green, purple – or all three to make brown.  At the end of the morning we used our color mixing knowledge to predict what would happen in the stories White Rabbit’s Color Book and Mouse Paint.
On Tuesday we introduced butterfly or color prints, made by dropping dollops or smears of color on paper then folding it in half so it prints on the opposite side, creating mirrored prints.We read Fire Drill and discussed how to safely conduct a fire drill by remembering to walk, immediately lining up, being silent, and responding with “Here I am” when called by name.  We then practiced our first fire drill of the year.  For new students it was difficult to understand why we wore our slippers outside, but we explained that a fire drill is an emergency and we need to get out of the building as safely and quickly as we can, not taking time to change shoes or even put on jackets.A demonstration of how to take out a mat, unroll it, walk around it, and roll it up was given.  We continue to work on walking around the mats rather than directly over them.Our first birthday of the year was celebrated on Tuesday.  The birthday girl (whose birthday was in August) brought some tasty cinnamon rolls to share.  She clearly explained the birthday routine to all the new students and demonstrated walking the globe around the candle sun while we listed the seasons and counted the years since her birth.  Happy (belated) birthday to our newest 5-year-old!On Wednesday we were looking forward to woodworking.  First, we practiced making silence and listening to the tone of the singing bowl, keeping our eyes closed until we could no longer hear it ringing.  Everyone then had an opportunity to tap the bowl before heading off to work.

Mr. Bond brought a great project for us to learn the new skill of sanding, and to practice and improve our skill with a screwdriver.  Each child was given a wooden block with his/her name on it.  They then sanded it smooth before attaching it to the other blocks with screws.  When using the screwdriver boards there is no resistance, so they were just becoming familiar with the twisting motion.  With the project the children needed to push and turn to make the screws go in – a rather challenging task for small hands and arms.  When it was completed it was a wonderful piece of art for our classroom.  Thank you, Mr. Bond!
During group we read the book, Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, then acted it out in two groups.  In the story, two children and 8 animals request a ride in Mr. Gumpy’s boat with him.  He agrees, giving each an instruction to follow to prevent the boat from tipping.  All the animals did well at first, but then started to do all the things Mr. Gumpy had said not to do and tipped the boat right over, soaking all the passengers, who then went across the field and home with Mr. Gumpy for tea.Thursday morning was our first Spanish session with Zeanny.  She started with “Me llamo” (My name is), then “Mi Cuerpo” (a body song).  She introduced La Caja Magica (the magic box) and pulled out some items from inside after we said the magic words and blew on it to make it open.  Zeanny showed us where the Spanish speaking countries of North and South America are, including her home country of Costa Rica. She pulled from la caja magica a long piece of fabric that is the colors of the Costa Rican flag and the US flag – rojo, blanco, et azul, which we hung on the wall.  She also introduced us to the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo with the counting story, Contando Con Frida.During music with Susan we again sang the song “Love Grows,” shaking hands for the second verse.  Susan created clapping rhythms, and we listened very closed to identify the pattern and follow along.  When she changed the rhythm, we had to listen closely to see how it had changed.  After clapping rhythms, Susan brought out the rhythm instruments again – maracas, frog and alligator guiro rasps, sticks, and bells – to create and follow more rhythms.  We learned to rest (stop), play (shake/tap once), and hold (keep shaking/tapping).  It was amazing to see everyone follow and repeat the rhythms so accurately!Friday students read Each Peach Pear Plum and used our scientific observation skills to find the hidden characters in the pictures.  We then continued to read What is a Scientist? and learn what a scientist does.  We learned that scientists measure, count accurately, and compare and sort.  We then practiced these science skills by measuring each other back to back and determining who was shorter and who was taller, then lining up from tallest to shortest.  The children decided they wanted to do a second science activity, so we removed our slippers and they sorted them.  One group sorted by the material the slippers were made from – fluffy fabric, wool felt, leather, or foam rubber.  The second group sorted by stinky and not stinky – smelling each slipper to determine which pile it belonged in.  There were only 2 non-stinky slippers and 8 stinky ones!

Our second week was mostly sunshiny and warm, with some showers that ceased just in time for outside. We brought the balls out so we could kick and toss them back and forth. We played Red Light, Green Light with balls in our hands, stopping to balance on one foot when Red Light was called. We searched for and collected a multitude of worms, tipping over the logs to find them in moist, dark places. We observed lots of caterpillars but were cautious not to touch the fuzzy white or yellow ones with long black hairs, as they can cause a skin rash. We did lots of digging in the sand, biking, driving trucks, jumping off the tunnel into the sand, and balancing on the logs. We enjoyed every moment of our time outside!Monday students were introduced to the artist Yves Klein, who created his own unique color blue, and made monochrome paintings using only that color. We learned that mono means one, and chrome means color, so monochrome means one color. We then created our own monochrome paintings using six shades of the same color. We introduced monochrome painting to all students on Tuesday, and monochrome art was created throughout the week.We continued to learn about our classroom, the routines, expectations, how to treat our materials, the process of putting something back when we are finished, and being responsible for our belongings and needs. Everyone already knows to freeze bodies and voices whenever the lights go out and the bell rings, and then carefully head to the rug for group time when the lights come back on. They are so still like statues, one would think they were carved from stone!

We sang several of the songs we learned last week and added some new ones. We learned a second version of the “Peanut Butter and Jelly” song, which we liked a bit better, as it has hand motions. We sang “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” “Mary Wore a Red Dress,” “Do As I’m Doing,” and “Shake Your Sillies Out.”We learned how to get a teacher’s attention by placing a hand on a shoulder or grasping a hand until a teacher can turn and engage. The children have picked this up quickly, which has helped to reduce the verbal attention cues that can get lost in the classroom chatter.

A favorite book, We Are All Alike, We Are All Different was read, which introduced the concept of having similarities and differences and celebrating both. We also read My Name Is Elizabeth, about a girl who wants to be called by her full name, not a nickname. We realized that only a few people in our class have nicknames. The story What I Like introduced the concept of liking and disliking different things. We discovered that the boy in the book does not like fleas, peas, or bees, but several of us really love peas and bees (though no one loved fleas). We played the game “When A Warm Wind Blows.” The leader says, “A warm wind blows for anyone who _____________” and lists something that might be similar or different about us. The first day we listed colors that one might be wearing. When the statement “A warm wind blows for anyone wearing orange” was spoken, all children wearing orange would silently step into the center of the rug. We played several times, listing many colors. The following day we played listing preferences, such as “a warm wind blows for anyone who loves spaghetti.”Wednesday was our first woodworking day with Mr. Bond. Many children were super excited for their turn to use the tools. Mr. Bond created some screwdriver and wrench boards where children could use Phillips head screwdrivers, flat head screwdrivers, allen wrenches, and hex wrenches to insert screws into their matching spots in the boards. The children were placed in one of six groups of four children each. Some enjoyed it so much, they attempted to join other groups to continue their turn. We are looking forward to next week and working with Mr. Bond again. Thank you to Mr. Bond for volunteering his time and skills! This is going to be a great year together!
Thursday was our first music group with Susan. She began by introducing songs about friendship. First we learned the song “Make New Friends” then we learned “Love Grows.” When Susan introduced the second verse of “Love Grows” she helped us go around the circle, shaking hands first with the person on the right, then turning and shaking hands with the person on the left, who then turned to shake hands with the person on their left, and all around the circle back to the beginning. At the end, she brought out some maracas and rhythm instruments, and the children enjoyed playing with and without a conductor guiding them.Friday students read Becoming Butterflies about a class who had caterpillars that turned into chrysalises then monarch butterflies, just like us. We continued reading What Is a Scientist, then practiced observing and documenting skills. The scientists took turns observing the caterpillar and chrysalis in the tank, then documented their observations by drawing what they saw, trying to be accurate in their depictions. We labeled, signed, and dated the documentation, then posted them on the wall.