Sunnybrook Montessori School

Thank you so much to all of you who attended our third annual Scholarship Fundraiser Breakfast!  It was a wonderful morning, and it was great to have so many current and alumni members of the Sunnybrook family and community join us.  We were able to raise some much needed funds, making it possible for more families to choose Sunnybrook for their child.

Thank you to Mike Holland for catering, Maple Mills for the syrup donation, and Crane and Bell for providing beverages.

Hope to see you all again next year!

Warmer temperatures and rain have helped create a wonderful water system of rivers and streams running through the play yard.  We experimented with dropping things in the water to see which made bigger splashes.  We discussed and tried various ways of crossing the waterways, such as jumping over, wading through, traversing stepping stones, and building bridges.   We helped create pathways for the water to flow through and watched it flow to lower ground and even create a waterfall in the mud at the back corner.  Although it is a messy season, it is a lot of fun!
Rainy day indoor recess . . .
When we arrived on Monday we discovered that the floor was finished. We were so excited to finally be back to our full classroom after 11 weeks!

We did some pour painting on Monday in the style of Holton Rower.  Each student selected a small cube, then selected a variety of colors of acrylic paint and poured them over the block, creating layers.  This is one of my very favorite art projects, and the children really enjoyed squeezing the bottles and watching the paints flow and push each other out to create the patterns.
After completing their pour paintings and eating snack, they went on their monthly library visit with Tammy.  They spent time with the puppets, driving the vehicles, playing with the doll house, and running the trains along the tracks.
At the art table we continued to paint coffee filters with water colors to make flowers for the breakfast. They ended up making beautiful center pieces. Susan also brought in some printouts of Pysanky egg patterns, which we colored with red, orange, yellow & green crayons, then covered them with black water color, as is traditional.
The light table made a reappearance, and the children had fun creating their own picture stories by layering pictures together.
Tuesday was a big birthday celebration with our oldest student turning six and our oldest three-year old turning four.  We had a lot of fun frosting gingerbread cookies and eating their parts, and enjoyed a tasty fruit treat.  We counted for the birthday boys as they each took a turn holding the globe and orbiting the sun then blowing the flame after their happy birthday serenades.  Happy birthday to our six-year old and newest four-year old!
The continent of Africa was introduced this week and we had some fun doing some Africa related activities.  We compared and determined that Africa has the most countries of all the continents we have studied so far, with 54 countries.  We looked through the Africa continent box and saw some large and small wooden masks, a wooden carved crocodile, a small bicycle made of wire, some ancient Egyptian symbols, a small stone hippo, a carved wooden spoon, and a photo of children in Ethiopia from more than 50 years ago.
We read several stories based in Africa, including Handa’s Surprise, about a girl who carries a basket of fruit on her head from her village to her friend’s village, and along the way the animals pluck the fruit out and eat it.  We looked at many pictures of women and children in Africa carrying all sorts of things, from bundles of sticks to buckets of water, on their heads.  We then tried balancing things on our heads.  We started with balancing bean bags, then wrapped pillowcases around our heads to help support baskets and buckets and bags of things.  The children tried throughout the week to see what they could balance.
Thursday was a day for music.  We watched half of a fantastic 10-minute video on rhythm in Africa (click here to view), and nodded and tapped to the rhythm.  Then everyone selected a pot, bowl, bucket, or drum and got down to making music.  It was a lot of fun to listen to all the different sounds the various items made.
As we have agreed and demonstrated that we can be respectful to the animals, we were excited to have them back.  We have both the farm and all the African animals, including the okapi, African wild dog, warthogs, giraffes, African elephants, gorillas, hippos, rhinoceroses, antelope, and lions.
Our old friend, Sue Rouillard, came for a visit as a representative of the Lions Club with her special chirping camera. The children watched the colored lights and listened to the birds while Sue took a picture of each child’s eyes. Everyone sat very still and straight until Sue got a picture.
Friday students had a fun day with Tammy while Lyn was in conferences.  Tammy cut out large egg shapes, and the children used the shape punches to punch out and decorate with birds, flowers, leaves, shapes, etc.  The rain came down just as we were getting ready to head out for recess, so the rainy day activities came out.  It was a fun change to have a Tammy only day!

With slightly warmer temps we were excited to find some mud and water to play with.  We dug out rivers, stomped in puddles, navigated the icy and muddy terrain, scooped up mud, played crocodiles, and basked in the sun.
Gerry Scott came to read to us on Monday morning.  It was great to see her, as it has been a while since she has been able to visit.  She read us the story Little White Rabbit, by Kevin Henkes, about a rabbit who imagines what it would be like to be different colors, sizes, animals or do things such as fly.  The one thing little white rabbit never has to wonder about is how it feels to be loved, because he already knows that!
For Monday art we learned about the vary famous Michelangelo, who was responsible for some of the world’s most exceptional and well known sculptures and paintings, including David, Pieta, and the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.  We looked at pictures of some of his paintings and sculptures, including St. Proclus, Madonna of Bruges, and Sybils Erithraea.  We took a glimpse at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and discussed how he might have done such extensive paintings and some things he would have had to plan for and think about when painting on a ceiling.  The children realized that when painting above you, rather than in front of you, you would need to be careful of drips, so we discussed using small amounts of paint.  The children quickly got busy creating their own paintings on the ceiling, and some discovered that we also needed to watch our heads!
Susan introduced us to Pysanky eggs, which are made when wax is very carefully used to draw patterns on an egg, which is then dyed, then more wax is used to draw, and the egg is dyed again, and this pattern is repeated over and over until several patterns in varied colors are made, creating incredible works of art.  We used paper, white crayons, and water color paints rather than real eggs, hot wax, and dyes, but our eggs were beautiful as well.
On Tuesday we had a special visitor, Ursula, from Germany.  She sang us some wonderful songs in German about birds and a boy who goes to America then returns home to his mother.  She showed us pictures of castles in her home town of Coburg, and Hummel figurines made in Germany, which she had collected since she was young.  She even brought us a tasty treat of chocolate covered cake.  She showed us a photo of the statue of prince Albert, and told us of a movie about prince albert and Queen Victoria.  It was a wonderful visit, and we enjoyed meeting Ursula.
We read the story The Great White Man Eating Shark about a boy named Norbert who pretends to be a shark so he can have the swimming cove all to himself, and what happens when he is so good at being a shark.  Wolfgang and Henrietta chatted with us afterwards about how the people on the beach were feeling, and what everyone in the class felt about that situation.  Everyone agreed that it would be more fun to go swimming with family and friends, except Henrietta, who would really like to have the beach to herself.  The children felt that it was unfair to all of the other chickens and people on the beach to not be able to swim.
For science on Friday we continued to learn about the human body.  This week we learned about the skeleton and the jobs of the bones in our body.  We learned that we are born with more than 300 bones, but as we grow, they start to fuse together, and when we are adults we have 206.  We read that their three main jobs are to hold us up (give us our structure), protect our organs, including our brain, spinal cord, heart, and lungs, and to provide a place for muscles to connect.  As mammals, we have an endoskeleton, which is inside our body, unlike insects, arthropods, and crustaceans, which have exoskeletons.  Each of the children then used Q-tips to make their very own skeleton.

The children decided that the first week of spring was decidedly non-springlike, and several insisted that it certainly could not be spring with such cold, snowy weather.  The bitter wind kept us inside one day, but we were grateful to be able to get out the rest of the week.  We made the best of it, continuing to plow around the road they shoveled through the snow last week, blocking roadways, clearing them again, and making new shortcuts.  There were lots of running races and some games of chase and superheroes.  Last week we were so excited to discover a bench buried under the snow, and we had a lot of fun with it this week.  We even noticed that there was a smiley face carved into the seat and spent some time discussing who it could be.  Thank you so much to James Savage for making such a fun sitting spot!
Indoor recess . . .
For Monday art we read about the French artist Henri Matisse, who made many different types of art including paintings, sculpture, costumes, and gauche cut outs.  Toward the end of his life, when he could no longer stand to paint, he started “drawing with scissors,” creating some of his most famous works of art, such as La Gerbe (The Sheaf), and The Snail.  The children tried their hand at “drawing with scissors,” cutting shapes from colored paper and pasting them into patterns.
Our European adventures continued with a visit to Scotland with Gerry Tobin, a Scotland native and former owner of Sunnybrook, and Art Hammond.  Gerry showed us where Scotland is on the map of Europe, and we listened to her accent.  She read some Scottish poetry to us, which we really could not understand, though it sounded quite lyrical.  She then told us to close our eyes and took us on an adventure through the green countryside of Scotland, as she did with her family when her sons were young, hiking 100 miles through the lushness of the rainy island country.  Gerry and Art wore their family kilts, explaining how each family has their own tartan, so you know which clan people are from by the tartan they are wearing.  They then treated us to some beautiful Scottish music.  Gerry introduced and played her violin, while Art played his three flutes, including the small piccolo.  His flutes are quite old, one is 150 years old and the piccolo is almost 200 years old, both made of wood.  We listened to some soft calming music, then we marched around the room to in time with some marching music.  It was a wonderful visit!
The afternoon students watched a video of some Scottish Highland dancing.  We listened to the bagpipes playing, and the children tried jumping and moving their arms and feet in the style of the dancers. We then watched some Spanish flemenco dancing, and dressed up in scarves to resemble the fancy ruffled skirts.  The following morning everyone watched the Scottish dancing and gave it a try.  It was fun jumping and moving our feet and arms to the music.
Susan brought her modern flute in on Wednesday, which is metal rather than wood, and demonstrated how to assemble and play it.  She allowed everyone to take a turn attempting to blow across the mouth hole, which was a very tricky thing to do!  (She cleaned it very thoroughly between uses!)
We read the story Too Much Noise by Ann McGovern, about Peter, a man who thinks his house is too noisy because the bed creaks, the floor squeaks, the leaves swish, and the kettle hisses.  He goes to a wise man, who tells him to get some animals, which he does, and his house gets even noisier.  When the wise man tells him to let the animals go, he finds that the house noises are not so loud after all.   We then played the Tibetan singing bowl and listened silently until we could no longer hear it.

The Cat in the Hat came with Andrea and A.O. Kelly from Believe in Books on Thursday.  Everyone was full of excitement and energy, so before they arrived we did some jumping.  Some of us had a lot of endurance and jumped up and down through two full songs before the Cat in the Hat arrived!  We eagerly welcomed them, and A.O. read Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  We had a discussion about trying new things and how sometimes we think we won’t enjoy or like something before giving it a chance, but find that when we do try something new we might discover something we really like.  Everyone gave a hug, high five, or wave to the Cat in the Hat, then chose their very own book to take home.
For science on Friday we have moved on to a study of the human body.  We discussed what we notice about people when we look at them – what do we see on the outside?  They listed skin color, hair color, facial features, and size.  We read about skin, the largest organ on the human body, and it’s role of holding the body together and keeping out germs.  We learned about melanin, which is responsible for skin color, and we looked at a map of the world showing skin colors of indigenous peoples around the world.  We observed that the closer to the equator people are, the darker the skin color.  We talked about how it is always hot near the equator, and as you wear fewer clothes when it is hot, peoples bodies adapted to protect themselves in these climates.  We learned that melanin acts as a natural sun screen, which helps prevent absorption of UV rays.  We looked at our skin, eye color, hair color and length, and everyone colored a picture of themselves.