Sunnybrook Montessori School

Sledding was once again the name of the game for the week.  The children took turns going down the snow hill in pairs, seeing how far they could sled or “snowboard.”  There are so many groups of friends within our whole group of friends, and it is so fun to see them interacting so cooperatively with each other.Reminding children that the snow is not suitable for consumption is a daily conversation.  A friend decided to bring a chunk in to melt, and we began observing what else we could see in that snow that might end up in our mouths.Eric Carle art continued on Monday.  The children took the painted papers they made last week and cut them into pieces, which they used to create a collage and glue to a large paper.Tuesday was an exciting day with our visit to the Post Office.  We met postman Tim, and he took us on a tour through the back, showing us the loading dock where mail comes in and goes out, the sorting stations, the letter bins, the large trolleys for moving the mail, the check out counter where people purchase stamps and mail packages, the office where passport photos are taken, and the back of the rented postal boxes.  We learned a lot about how the mail is sorted and distributed!Valentine’s day was another exciting day.  The children distributed their Valentine cards, then selected their work for the morning.  Some of the special Valentine’s day activities included a roll and color game, where you roll a die, then color in that many hearts on your page.  You continue as long as you want, or until the page is full.  Another activity was a Valentine sight word coloring page, where each sight word is colored a specific color to create a picture.  At the end of the morning the children enjoyed selecting treats from a wide range of offerings.  There were so many things to choose from, it was hard to decide which to have!  Thank you to everyone who sent in a special snack!  They were much appreciated.Blocks were very popular this week.  Everyone seemed to be in need of some social building time, and we enjoyed listening to the conversations, strategizing, problem solving, story telling, and negotiating going on.The post office also continued to be busy with customers buying stamps and mailing letters, writing letters by hand and on the typewriter, and checking mail.On Thursday we read the story Friends by Helme Heine, about three friends who do everything together.  One day after their adventures they sit down to enjoy some cherries.  Charlie Rooster was concerned that he did not get as many as Fat Percy the pig, so Johnny Mouse and Fat Percy gave him all of their cherry pits.  We discussed the difference between fair and equal, such as having the option to choose which activities you prefer.  While some students prefer to draw, others prefer building with blocks.  Sometimes it is hard to see that equal is not always fair, and that fair does not mean equal.For music we brought out the drums.  It is always the best when the playing begins spontaneously, rather than being guided, so we spent several minutes just enjoying the rhythms the students produced.  Eventually we revisited quarter notes, half notes, and whole notes.  As Susan had previously demonstrated with blocks, we counted out and played quarter notes with one beat per count, half notes with one beat for every two count, and whole notes, with one beat for every four count.  We also introduced what each note looks like, so we can connect a visual with the count.  At the end the children wanted to take turns conducting, so a couple of students quickly lead the others through louder and quieter playing.Friday students continued to explore the states of matter by making balloon rockets.  They stretched and pulled their balloons and did their best to inflate them by blowing air into them.  Many of the students were able to do so independently with some mighty puffing.  Tammy and I blew up the balloons for those who just could not make theirs inflate, then we clipped the ends and taped each balloon to a straw on a string.  The children then opened their clips and watched their rockets shoot across the room as the air was forcefully expelled from the balloon.  Some needed a little assistance to get going, but most students repeated it multiple times and enjoyed seeing how far their balloons would go.

We were so excited for all the new snow!  By the end of the week, the snow was up past knees, so we were building up our muscles walking and running around.  We shoveled and shoveled, building up our snow hill.  We had fun playing alligators and crocodiles, pulling and being pulled in sleds, doing LOTS of shoveling, and rolling down, getting buried in, and sledding down our snow mountain. Friday students decided to make use of the giant snow bank at the end of the driveway. They shoveled the top of the bank to make it flat and push some snow down to make a better hill for sledding.For art on Monday we introduced the art of illustrator & author Eric Carle, who paints large pieces of paper using various tools to create different patterns and effects.  Once dry, he uses them to cut into pieces which he collages together to create pictures.  Most of his books feature animals, including the popular The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  The students took large pieces of newsprint, selected their desired colors and tools, and got to work creating their own large sheets of paper for collage work next week.After art the children took their monthly trip to the library with Tammy and Susan, where they enjoyed playing with the trains, in the large vehicles, etc.Valentine’s day was introduced, which we will celebrate next week with our Valentine’s Day party and some fun Valentine themed games and activities.  Each of the children decorated their Valentine mailbag, where all their friends will deliver their Valentines.Susan shared some animal collage pictures using shapes.  The children took a page and cut out the shapes, then followed the picture instructions showing how to build their chosen animal with the shapes.  They glued them all together then colored their giraffes, pandas, and zebras.We decided it was time to switch up Dramatic Play, so the children shared suggestions, then took a vote.  It was a close race between a camp & campsite and a Post Office.  The Post Office was chosen with 11 votes over the 9 for a camp.  We got to work taking down our forest and setting up the Post Office.  We wanted to keep our trees, so we taped them up in the science area of the classroom.  In the Post Office we installed some mailboxes, a front desk with a cash register where stamps and packaging can be purchased, and a writing table where letters can be written and addressed.We read the story Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin, then learned how to write a letter.  We were introduced to the letter format, including date, address, body, and salutation.  Many children wrote cards and/or letters to their friends, and then responded.  We brought in a type writer on Thursday, and the children tried to wait very patiently for their turn to type out letters and words.  It was a busy Post Office!For Spanish Zeanny continued to practice colors, counting, body parts, and animal names.  Last week we focused on pollito (chick), and this week we emphasized vaca (cow).  She read El Gran Granero Rojo (The Big Red Barn) by Margaret Wise Brown, where we were introduced to the names of many animals, including caballos (horse), oveja (sheep), cabras (goat), ganso (goat), and vaca (cow).   We played a fun game, where we did fun actions if we had the color she named.We discussed sleep and how it helps us stay healthy.  The children shared that it makes your body stronger and helps you get energy.  We did an activity where we each wrote or illustrated what we had done that day, and stuck it in a mailbox.  We talked about how the mailbox is like our brain and it stores all the information from our day, and at night our brain sorts through it all to decide what to keep and what to filter out.  We went through our mailbox and decided which things were important to keep, and those we should let go.On Thursday morning we listened to the story of The Mitten as told by Jan Brett, then acted it out.  The children took turns being the various animal characters and crawling into the parachute mitten, while the Niki character skipped around the room wandering the forest, not realizing he had dropped his mitten.For music Susan introduced some more animal songs, and we moved our bodies the way the animals might.  As pandas we reached across our bodies to gather and eat bamboo, as giraffes we reached up high to chomp leaves with our hand mouths, as elephants we took giant steps, lifting our knees up high, and as zebras we galloped across the plains.During Friday science we introduced the states of matter – liquid, solid, and gas.  We squished together as close as we could to become a solid, spread out a bit to become a liquid, then spread out a lot to become a gas.  We felt three balloons – one filled with gas, one with water, and one with ice, to see how they each take up space, and that gas and liquid can change shape, but solids retain their shape.  We also poured water into different containers to see how the “shape” of the water changes.We celebrated the most recent fourth birthday with some tasty chocolate vegetarian cupcakes topped with strawberries and blackberries. The birthday girl was so excited for the arrival of her special day! She proudly held the globe and orbited the candle sun while we named the seasons and counted the years, then we sang happy birthday before enjoying the tasty birthday treats.

The groundhog has returned to his burrow for another six weeks after seeing his shadow on Friday, but we don’t mind the snowy weather.  The children continue to have fun sliding around on their bellies like penguins and taking turns on sleds.  We loved the Thursday snowfall, which got everyone busy shoveling up the new snow into sleds and onto new snow mountains.For Monday art we introduced shadow puppets.  We read several books about shadows, including Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow by Ann Thompert and What Makes a Shadow? by Clyde Bulla.  We watched a video of a shadow puppet performance of The Three Little Pigs made by a group of students in England.  The children then decided which characters they wanted to create, found pictures for reference if needed, drew them, cut them out, and stuck them on sticks. The shadow puppet theater was very busy all week as the children put on shows with dinosaurs, princesses, owls, puppets, monsters, etc. for their friends.We introduced being nature detectives by using clues in nature to determine which animals have been passing through.  We read Footprints in the Snow, Big Tracks, Little Tracks, and a big book about tracks.  Susan taught us about the different types of walkers – diagonal walkers, bounders, gallopers, and pacers.  We tried walking the same way the animals do to create the track patterns we found in our books.  It was quite challenging!  We laid out large pieces of paper and the children used track stamps to recreate the walking patterns that animals make.Zeanny has returned!  We had our first Spanish session on Tuesday.  We continued our color identification and counting practice, and she introduced a fun story about pollos (chickens) and pollitos (chicks) that visit the biblioteca (library) with the bibliotecario (librarian) and niños (children).  Zeanny gave everyone a colored pollito and we played a game with them, then we taped our pollitos onto popsicle sticks to take home as puppets.On Wednesday we did a germ experiment after reading the story A Germ’s Journey by Dr. Thom Rooke about how germs are spread.  We pretended to cough or sneeze into our hands.  Everyone who wanted to try it were given a dab of “Germ-glo” lotion.  We then touched some things with our germy hands and used a UV flashlight to detect the “germs” that we spread around.We read the groundhog day stories Grumpy Groundhog (brought in by the Armstrong family – Thank you!) and Gregory Groundhog Predicts the Weather to introduce groundhog.  Children who were interested made their very own groundhogs with shadows at the art table on Thursday.  They had fun coloring them, cutting them out, pasting them together, and coloring the snowy ground around the groundhog shaped shadows.  On Friday morning Tammy showed us a brief clip of Punxatawny Phil predicting when spring would arrive.During Thursday music time with Susan she read several animal poems and we pretended to be the animals she read about, moving as described in the poems.  She then introduced The Carnival of the Animals, composed in 1886 by Camille Saint-Saëns.  She told us how he composed it as a piece of fun correlating his friends to different animals and making the music reflect their personalities.  She read poems by Jack Prelutsky that were written to go along with the music, and we moved to the music and poetry.For Friday science we combined our knowledge of measuring with an introduction to ramps.  The children split into two groups.  Each group chose three marbles – a large, medium, and small, then set up long tubes to act as ramps/tunnels.  They took turns dropping the marbles through the tubes and marking where they stopped, then measuring the distance that they rolled.  They soon began just rolling them through and marking where they stopped, then comparing how far each marble rolled.  They had a lot of fun changing around the set up of their tubes to see if they could change the distance the marbles traveled.

Despite the cold, the children were anxious to get outside each day, where they would run, climb up and slip down the little hill, play pretend games, slip around on the ice, and pull each other in sleds.For Monday art we read the story Perfect Square by Michael Hall about a square that is cut, torn, and taken apart to then reassemble itself into new pictures, such as a fountain, bridge, river, and mountain.  Each child selected a color square, then cut or tore it into pieces, then glued the pieces onto paper to make a new design.Tuesday morning the children made some Thank you cards for Officer Lucas, in appreciation of his visit last week, when he introduced mammals and played a matching game with us.At the art table, children continued work on their dioramas, and some began to make mini fairy puppets and theaters.We began discussing what animals do in winter, including adapt, migrate, and hibernate.  The children pretended to be chipmunks, bears, frogs, birds, etc. searching for and storing up food, finding a den and going to sleep, burying down into the mud, and flying south.  We discussed how some animals may adapt by growing in thicker fur, growing a new colored camouflage coat, changing their eating habits, and packing down paths in the snow for quicker movement.On Wednesday we pretended to be hibernating and dormant animals, such as chipmunks and bears.  As bears we ate LOTS of food to build up our fat layers to act as insulation and sustenance during the winter when we would not be moving or eating for months at a time.  We discussed how animals stay warm in the winter.  Everyone was given an ice cube, which they held in their bare hands.  The children shared how people can stay warm by staying inside with heat, and putting on lots of layers and protective clothing when going out.  They shared that animals stay warm because they have thick coats of fur and many build up layers of fat under their skin, which acts as insulation.  We took turns putting on a cloth mitten, a blubber mitten, and a fur mitten and holding our ice cubes to see how they insulate from the cold.We introduced the practice of making silence.  We looked at a calming picture, then rang a chime and flipped the picture to the word silence, then we sat silently and listened to the noises around us.  When the picture was turned back around, we stopped making silence.  We discussed the noises we heard.  One distinct clicking sound had been quite prominent, and the children originally thought maybe it was the ticking of the clock, but upon further listening discovered that it was inconsistent, unlike a clock.  The children took the morning to solve the mystery of the clicking, and they found that the noises were made by the heating pipes.Pooh came from Believe in Books with Andrea and Connie on Thursday.  Connie read a story about Pooh and Piglet searching for the flying dragon that Tigger and Roo found down by the river.  They asked everyone if they had seen a dragon fly, and although everyone else had seen it, Pooh and Piglet could not find it, until they finally spotted the dragonfly at the river.  Children who wanted to gave Pooh a fist bump or a wave to avoid spreading any germs we might have, then each chose a book to take home.Before heading out for a short recess, we did some scarf dancing then set up and did an obstacle course, walking over chairs, sliding under tables, stepping through hoops, walking a balance line, and tiptoeing over the stepping stones.Friday students continued to learn about measuring.  We read the story How Big Is a Foot? by Rolf Myller, then learned how to properly measure using a ruler, by aligning the end of the ruler exactly with the end of the item being measured, and using a finger to mark the end of the ruler where we would place the beginning of the ruler to continue our measuring.