Sunnybrook Montessori School

afternoon group

backbends

What a crazy week of weather we had, but we enjoyed it all, from the heat to the rain and in between.  On Thursday we wanted to make the most of the warmth, so we enjoyed a picnic lunch and did our afternoon work outside.  On Friday we had fun in the rain playing with all of the water we could find.

picnic lunch

boys in the sand box

girls in the sandbox

playing with baby mouse

walking the blocks

sharing her umbrella

Water!

buckets of water

mud soup

muck

drawing with the glitter pens

We spent our week preparing for Bring Your Family to Sunnybrook Night.  We learned how to give a tour of the classroom, and the children chose and practiced demonstrating items that they wanted to introduce to their families.  They made invitations to bring home with some new sparkly glitter pens, then used the pens to create as many beautiful sparkly pictures as they could before the ink all ran out.

number work

puzzle maps

table work

bats!

At the art table everyone was busy making bats.  They used good fine motor skills to hold the template, trace around it, cut it out, then decorate the bat.  Our classroom is now full of mosquito eating bats!

art

We welcomed a new friend on Wednesday.  Everyone was excited to meet her and show her around.  We are looking forward to getting to know her better throughout the year!

drop, cover, hold

We were all very much looking forward to seeing the firemen and the fire truck at the library on Thursday, but they had to postpone until next Thursday.  Instead, we participated in the Great North East Shake Out at 10:16.  We talked about what might happen if everything started shaking, and the children quickly pointed out that things could fall down off the shelves and walls.  They suggested places to go and ways to protect ourselves, then we practiced finding a table to go under until the shaking ends.

acorn transfer

color grading

afternoon work

counting pegs

helping a friend

letter formation practice

reading about butterflies

reading in the quiet house

Family Night

On Thursday evening the children were very excited to show their families their classroom and all of their favorite things to do at school.  They gave tours, demonstrated materials, and visited with friends.  It was fun to have our families at school and to be there at night!

demonstrating materials

some favorite work

introducing the metal insets

making bats

Friday students had a lot to accomplish.  They were very eager to make more bats in the morning, then they took some time to make thank you letters for a donation we received from the Lancaster Elementary School seventh grade.  The seventh and eighth graders had a super hero design contest, and the winners were awarded $100 to donate to an organization of their choosing.  The seventh grade group that won chose Sunnybrook!  It was tremendously thoughtful, and we are so grateful that they chose us as the recipients.

observing a spider

Digestion

For science in the afternoon, we learned about the digestive system.  The students examined their teeth in a mirror and learned that the front teeth are for cutting the food, and the back molars are for grinding.  To demonstrate this, the students took turns cutting up a peanut butter sandwich with scissors, then adding water (saliva), and grinding it down further with a masher.  We then demonstrated how the esophagus pushes the food down to the stomach by squeezing the muscles (pushing a wooden object through some tights), then poured the mashed food into a plastic bag stomach with some enzymes and acid (coke).  Everyone took a turn mixing and mashing the food in the stomach, then poured it into the small intestine (a leg from a pair of tights), and watching the nutrients come out to be used by the body while pushing the waste through.  Finally, we cut string the length of each section of the digestive system, tied them together, and stretched it out across the classroom – it was more than 20 feet long!

the stomach at work

the length of the digestive system

leaf shower

The chill in the air has been lasting longer into the day, so we kept our bodies moving to stay warm outside.  Most of the leaves have fallen off of the trees, littering our playground, which makes for some wonderful fun!  We trucked them around, raked them into piles, buried ourselves, and threw them up to create leaf showers.

One of our favorite parts of the day is outside time.  The children have become quite independent and speedy getting ready to go out, so we have been taking full advantage of our time.

LEAVES!

sitting on stumps

loading up the truck

During Monday Art we read about the artist Mary Cassatt, who painted family pictures.  We learned that she was never married or had children herself, but children and their parents were some of her favorite subjects.  She was good friends with the artist Degas, who is well known for his paintings of dancers.  She showed her work with Degas and other impressionists, who used lighter colors, ordinary subject matter, and visible brush strokes, as opposed to the use of dark colors, famous people and occurrences, and no visible brush strokes, which was the standard for popular art at the time.  After learning about Mary, many of us made our own family portraits.

art

pastels at the art table

At the art table pastels and dark paper were available.  The students created many bright, colorful pictures on the black, brown, and grey paper.

art table work

During circle we continued to sing some familiar songs, such as “The Seasons Song” that we learned last week, and the class favorites “The Hokey Pokey,” “Jump Jim Joe,” and “The Apple Tree Song.”  We also learned the new song, “Peanut Butter and Jelly.”  Some of the stories we read were Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  We also began reading Is It Living or Non-Living.  We learned that living animals need air, food, and water and that living plants need air, sunshine, water, and nutrients.  We shared what some of the healthy foods are that we each enjoy eating to stay strong and healthy.  We learned about our bones this week as well.  We felt in our bodies to find all of the hard bones, including our ribs, skull, arm bones, hand bones, leg bones, hip bones, and knees.  We have a model of the spine, so we counted the vertebrae, then took turns feeling a friends spine.

We read the story One, by Katherine Otoshi, about the color Blue who is quiet and reserved.  We talked about Wolfgang, and how he is quiet and reserved like Blue, and identified some of our friends at Sunnybrook who are quiet like Wolfgang and Blue.  Then we talked about Henrietta, and how she is energetic and excited, and we identified the friends that are more like her.  The children are very aware of which puppet they are more like, and were very quick identifying the friends in class who are more quiet like Wolfgang and Blue.  We also talked about Red, who in the story is not always nice, and we shared some things that make us feel not very nice.  Every child could relate to feeling sad, angry, or hurt and feeling not very nice.  Then we talked about different ways that we could help others when they are feeling not very nice, such as in the story when they invited Red to play, because maybe Red was feeling left out.  We began a list of kind acts, and every day the students will be invited to share kind acts that they observe others doing, which we will add to the list.  It is exciting to identify someone doing something kind!

cylinder block

cleaning up

binomial cube

checking on the chrysalis

hiding the nocturnal animals from the sunshine

work

reading with a friend in a cozy hiding spot

number puzzle

puzzle maps

sound sort

acorn transfer activity

working

trinomial cube

letter formation

I think you have a fever

The children continued to hone their patient care and medical skills.  They were very busy tending to injuries, curing illnesses, and providing excellent care.

doctors

caring for the patient

practicing dice addition to demonstrate

Friday students had a very busy morning.  Everyone went around the classroom deciding and practicing which materials they want to demonstrate for their parents on Thursday at Bring Your Family to School Night.

There was a special request for instruments during circle, so everyone had fun taking turns playing different instruments loudly, quietly, fast, slow, and following a pattern.

For science most of the students made skeletons with Q-tip bones.  They had a lot of fun identifying different bones in the body and figuring out how to put them together to build their skeleton.

instruments

skeleton science

rest time writing

40 years – a student from the first class of Sunnybrook, and the current class of Sunnybrook

looking through the albums

40 years of Sunnybrook gathered together to celebrate the anniversary of the school.  We had a wonderful time visiting, looking through albums, checking out the materials, and sharing memories of our Sunnybrook days.  Former teachers Gerry Tobin, Gerrie Scott, and Laura Tobin were in attendance, as well as some of the members of the first Sunnybrook classes.  Mary Sloat, founder and owner of the original school, shared memories of the first days and years of Sunnybrook.  It was a day of reminiscing about the first school experiences for many Lancaster families.

conversations

looking for old friends

the glass beads

founder Mary Sloat observing her grandson

Sunnybrook friends

some of the first Sunnybrook students

The Tobins

visiting

alumni

Islay Mist Ceilidh

In the evening many families and community members enjoyed some fabulous entertainment by the Islay Mist Ceilidh group, harpist Bill Tobin, and a surprise performance by Sunnybrook alumnus, Mcgowan Southworth, who sang his original song Anywhere With You.  In tribute to his earliest memories, Mcgowan invited all of the children in the audience to join him at the front, and everyone participated in singing in a round.  Thank you to all of the great performers who shared their time and talent in honor of Sunnybrook!

dancing to Islay Mist Ceilidh

Bill Tobin

Mcgowan

40 Years of Sunnybrook

catching falling leaves

leaf shower

Fall is in full swing!  Every time a breeze would send leaves falling to the ground, there was a burst of shouting and a race to catch them.  The rakes were busy making leaf piles to dump in the garden for compost, to jump in, and to throw in the air.  Some newly donated trucks were also busy being filled with sand for construction, and rocks to fill in the hazardous chipmunk holes.

throwing and catching

raking fallen leaves

jumping rope

the dog and cat cafe

sand play

fall art collage

We learned a new song about the four seasons, and recorded our observations about fall.  We observed that it is getting colder, the leaves are changing color and falling off the trees, butterflies are going through metamorphosis and flying south, there is less daylight, and plants are starting to die, so we are harvesting the vegetables from our gardens.  In honor of this end of summer harvest, we had a celebration on Thursday.

During our harvest celebration we had fun doing sack races, egg spoon races, the beanbag toss, eating special snacks, creating fall vegetable prints, and fall art.  It was exciting to have some of the families join us as well.

sack race

running race

egg spoon race

drawing a self portrait

At the art table the students finished up creating their self portraits, made collages by cutting pictures out of magazines, did lots of water color painting, and created many books and stories.

During Monday Morning Art, we learned about the artist Ashley Goldberg.  We observed her use of pen and ink, and in particular her abstract art print using dots.  We then made our own dot to dot pictures, creating dots all over our papers, connecting them, then painting in the designs and patterns we made.

dot to dot art

artist

more artists

heading out for a picnic lunch

doctors at work

One afternoon, some of the children were using the magnifying glasses as doctor’s tools, so we headed to the back storage room to get some more doctor’s instruments.  We set up an area with some stethoscopes, a tuning fork, a forehead thermometer, an otoscope, a scale, an eye chart, a height chart, and some posters of parts of the human body.  One young doctor requested gloves, so every child received a pair of gloves as well.  They have been busy listening to hearts and lungs, examining eyes, ears, and mouths, checking weights, testing hearing and vision, and measuring heights.

creating the height chart

what’s up, doc?

When we observed our newest Monarch caterpillar on Monday, we were afraid that is was not doing well, as it was curled up on the side of the tank.  We discovered later that it is actually a black swallowtail, not a Monarch after all, and it was forming it’s chrysalis.  Unlike Monarch’s, the male and female black swallowtail have different markings, so we will be able to determine its’ gender when it emerges.

making signs for Lancaster’s 250th anniversary parade

color grading

floor work

writing time

nocturnal animals and night time sky play dough

rough and smooth

six, seven

sound sort

collecting materials for balancing

The Friday students were excited for science.  We read the two stories Just a Little Bit, and Balancing Act, then created our own scales by placing boards on small log block fulcrums.  We used bean bags, dominoes, metal cups, marbles, and log blocks as items for balancing.  We observed that we needed to have items of similar weight on each end, or they would tip.  We also observed that if we moved the fulcrum, the weights could be distributed differently and it would not tip as it would if the fulcrum was set exactly in the center.

double balance

balancing

visitor