April 2015

NEWS

This month’s Monday Morning Montessori focused on simple ways to immerse your child in nature this spring and summer. Nature provides a rich source of hands-on, multi-sensory stimulation, which is critical for brain development in early childhood. There are so many inexpensive ways to draw your children outside and to increase their awareness of all that’s around them. It’s very important to make much of this open-ended, free play rather than super structured. The children’s creativity will soar when they get to investigate all of nature’s rich bounty themselves.

A few ways to accomplish this are:

Create a nature table or shelf for your child where they can investigate seasonal items.

For outdoor fun:

Outdoor weaving Painting

Music

I built a version of the music wall that is now a part of SJES Children’s experience! It was so simple to make and will hopefully be as popular with the SJES children as it was with my grandchildren!

Musical fence by Mrs. Loree

Ideas for night time fun…shadow puppets and flashlight adventures!

Mud pie making station

Resources: Nova Natural, Constructive Playthings, Fat Brain Toys, Hearthsong, Oompa Toys, Kid O Toys, Montessori Services, Magic Cabin

Books: Jennifer Ward’s “I Love Dirt,” Amanda Blake Soule’s “The Rhythm of Life,” Rebbecca Cohen’s “15 Minutes Outside,” Dawn Isaac’s “101 Things for Kids to do Out-side”

Online Links:Pinterest (Follow my Natural Play Board)Happy HooligansCrafty CrowChasing Cheerioshttp://www.pca.state.mn.us/index.php/view-document.html?gid=21290 http://www.naturerocks.org/ http://theimaginationtree.com/2012/08/60-nature-play-ideas-for-kids.html http://www.letthechildrenplay.net/2010/01/outdoor-and-natural-play-links.html

Investigating inchworms on the playground!

I hope you’ll share pictures of some of the ways you’re incorporating nature with your children!

Mrs. Loree

In Appreciation for Keith BrayMarch 24, 2015

Keith, I can’t tell you how much we here in the St. James community appreciate all you have done and continue to do to ensure the safety of our students and staff. You not only helped us shape our safety procedures but have shown up in a mo-ment’s notice during times of unrest. It gives us all such peace of mind to see you on the premises!

We’d like to make a small gesture of thanks by dedicating a parking spot in the back parking lot for you. Not only will this be a small convenience for you, but will likely deter any criminal activity from that area!

Thank you again, from the bottom of my heart.

Warmly,Loree Birkenback

Thank you to all of our wonderful families for making Grandparent’s Day and the Easter egg hunt such a success!

Kindergarten Field Trip to see “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”

MDO Parents,

We have continued working in the classroom and are trying to remember basic classroom rules as well as take our time with all of the works. We have practiced walking and not running, pushing in our chair, rolling and unrolling a rug, and carrying a tray properly. These simple actions may seem forgettable, but are a very important part of taking our time and complet-ing tasks the correct way for the safety of our space.

pouring clothes pins peeling eggs for snack

superimposedgeometric shapes

tracing numbers on a sand tray

alphabet

We have great areas in our room and we need to remember to concentrate on each work and take our time to clean up for the next person. This shows that we care about our sur-roundings and our fellow classmates, which is a crucial skill to use throughout life.

gluing tissue paper animal habitat

These past few weeks we have been working hard in all areas of the classroom. In our prac-tical life area, we have switched up a few works to keep them fresh and appealing to all of our friends. We also added a paper cutting work that the children can’t wait to get their hands on. Although it is fun for us to add new works, keeping old works in the classroom is also important because a child can always go back to a familiar lesson and complete the task with ease. Repetition is imperative because a young child’s works are very different from the adults. When an adult works, he sets out to accomplish some goal and stops working when the objective is achieved. A child however, does not work to accomplish an external goal, but rather an internal one. Consequently, they will repeat an activity until the inner goal is accomplished. The unconscious urge to repeat helps the child to coordinate a movement or acquire some ability.

Our children are ready to go outside and run off some excess energy. Please don’t forget to apply some sunscreen on them if it is considered necessary.

Thank you very much! Mrs. Eva, Mrs. Bianca and Ms. Mary

MDO

Earth and all it’s wonders - stars/moon/sun, water/land, fruits/vegetables, animals large and small. Our month has been filled with fun new experiences and exploration far and near.

Royce bird and squirrel watching from our classroom. He is noticing the plants, flowers and trees all blooming around our community.

Our three year olds getting ready for the visiting Planitarium, where we will learn about the stars, moon and planets.

Vaughn matching, sorting and counting big and little animals. One red big duck and one red little duck.

Toddler 1

Rhys, clean and preparing group snack. We have preparing, cooking and clean all our own snacks.

Nico, is using our small microscope and magnifying glass to explore our sea shells and black sand from our oceans.

We also had grandparents day and a fun exciting Easter egg hunt.Lots of socializing and learning of all Gods creations has been fun filled month.

Mrs. Anna and Ms. Annabel

Toddler 2The end of the year is drawing near and spring fever is more profound than ever in the Toddler 2 class. We have had a lot of rainy days this month and the children are eager to get outside and play. On the sunny days we get out and take advantage of the beautiful weather. We are so blessed to have the porch and we can work outside.

Vivienne and Emery are scooping rocks into small buckets, while Abby is transferring ducks in the water table.

Noelle is playing with sno dough and Michelle is watering our plants.

Another great spot to continue our learning is the blacktop area. It is such a joy to watch the second year children get excited when they can finally reach the pedals on the tri-cycles and ride. :) We bounce balls, blow bubbles and draw pictures with chalk. This is our favorite place to play on the playground.

Thank you again for all the grandparents who came and spent the morning and egg hunted with us. The children’s smiles on their faces were priceless. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Toddler 2April, Lilly, and Eliane

Moving on up!

Toddler 3 has taken on some BIG works this month and has had so much fun learning and experimenting with the new things in our class! This is the time of year you will see a lot of sharing and socializing in the classroom; children love to help one another!

Cork fishing is a very popular work that involves many steps: measuring, carrying a container full of water, pouring water, as well as fine motor ladle transfer. When the children are done with this work they gather all their materials and set them aside to clean the water left on the tray with a towel before returning the work back to the shelf. They LOVE this!

Squeezing orange juice has been so exciting for them! They love to make what they consume; they take a lot of pride in their food creations.

Tegan shows Ryan how to grade by size with an apple underlay puzzle.

Aidan goes fishing for corks!

Hays gets an introductory lesson on orange juice squeezing.

Toddler 3

We are teaching the children not only primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), but also secondary colors (green, purple, and orange). They are making their own secondary colors using the color mixing to combine the primary colors. This is like a magic trick to them :)

The children have been working so hard these past few weeks, striving to perfect the sequencing of more challenging work. We are seeing beautiful results as a whole in the classroom!

Thank you to everyone who came to be a part of the Easter egg hunt and Grandparents Day. It was such a great turn out; not to mention a FUN filled day!

Madie works on mixing primary colors to make secondary colors.

Tara combines the broad stair and pink tower!

Eliza smiles with the Easter bunny!

Love,Ms. Coral, Jaymie, Amy, Hanna

Families of Primary One:

This is always such an exciting time of year at SJES because the children get to ob-serve the life cycle of a butterfly! Over the past several days we have witnessed the caterpillar larvae form its chrysalis’—the hard outer shell—and begin to hatch! We celebrated Earth Day with special visitors from the Perot Museum of Nature & Sci-ence. The children had a chance to experience the portable planetarium, where inside they learned about our planet earth, the sun (our “daytime star”) and our moon. They examined the night sky for constellations like the Big Dipper. Afterwards, our Perot visitors gave the children a chance to see and touch a real meteorite, which is a metallic mass from space! The children are working on many big works in the classroom. We have added a light box to our room that the children use tohelp them with their handwriting by tracing letters and words to make short vowel word books.

In mathematics, we are working with beads, beads, and more beads! A few of our Kindergarteners have started the long chain of ten (that’s 1,000 beads)!

Primary 1

Ms. Amaris gave a wonderful group lesson on the geometric solids this week. The children learned the names of each figure and performed a blindfolded sensorial exercise. In this exercise, they reach into a bag of small wooded figures and guess which geometric solid to match it to by feeling the shape of the figure with their hands.

The children have also learned about color mixing, particularly what happens when the colors blue and yellow are mixed. And, to celebrate the season of blossoms and blooms, wildflower stencils have been provided in Practical Life for children to use to make their own wildflower gardens.

We hope that your family is enjoying this time of year as much as we are in class! As always, if you have any questions/comments/concerns please feel free to contact us!

Ms. Amaris & Ms. Kim

We have also learned about the parts of a plant (in our class we use a tree as an example) and the parts of a flower. The children identify the various parts, label them and make a book of what they have learned.

GRACE AND COURTESY

In a Montessori classroom the lessons in Grace and Courtesy set a tone of respect and kindness. The students are shown how to shake hands at the door each morning. They learn to wait and be patient when needing help from a teacher or when waiting for a turn to have morning snack. From our Practical Life works, the students learn to say ‘Yes, Please” or “no, thank you.” We always have several boxes of tissues in the classroom and students are consistently encouraged to use them as needed. We work on “conflict resolution” —the students involved talk and work out their differences in the presence of a teacher and the teacher intervenes and helps as necessary. Closing classroom doors quietly is emphasized and practiced. The students are expected to walk around “rug works” without stepping on another students work. When a work is dropped or broken and scatters all over the floor the students is taught to pick/clean up independently. The third level students teach lessons in grace and courtesy when they help younger students as needed. Being in the Montessori classroom for the Kindergarten year allows the child to experience this role of leadership.

All the best!Mrs. Barrineau, Ms. Marla and Ms. Martha

“April showers bring May flowers.”Ahhh, and we have had wonderful April showers.

The outdoors is a beautiful sea of green. What a wonderful sight to enjoy.

Primary 2

April has flown by so quickly! The children have kept busy with a great variety of work, our Earth Day celebration, and discussions about the ways that nature changes in the spring.

We discussed the life cycles of butterflies, ants, and chickens. We have observed many kinds of seeds, leaves, buds, caterpillars, and snails - both out on theplayground and inside the classroom. Many of the children have also been taking time to care for our classroom plants by watering them and polishing the leaves. On Earth Day, the children enjoyed visiting the Perot Museum’s planetarium. In the classroom, we also discussed everyday ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Our April continent study has been Africa. We have been talking about the diverse languages, countries, peoples, and climates that span the continent. We have been reading about the deserts of Northern Africa and the language Swahili, which is spoken in central and eastern Africa. Ask your child to count to five for you in Swahili! :)

Photos clockwise from top: Astrid giving water to a garden snail; Audrey working with the lifecycle of the butterfly; Eloise matching the ‘foods from Africa’ nomenclature cards

Primary 3

Our April birthday was Timo Baeza, who turned five. Audrey Lippert also became a big sister to her baby brother, Nathaniel Henry Lippert. Hooray for life! Ms. Tamara and Ms. Monica

Our two favorite books about Africa are Moja Means One by Muriel Feelings and A is for Africa by Ifeoma Onyefulu.

Patrick and Ms. Yoko working with color box 2

Timo and Alexander hard at work

Wow! It’s hard believe that the month of April has come and gone so quickly! The children are enjoying the warmer weather and we are fast approaching the end of another great school year.

There has been so much exciting work happening lately! The kindergarten students have all completed several long skip counting chains and are finishing the work in their science journals. Noah, Claire, and Brooke worked together to complete the 100 board and then wrote all the numbers from 1 to 100!

Carson, John, and Pearl have been writing stories with the moveable alphabet. Evan and Anna made beautiful flower arrangements and placed them throughout the classroom. William, Henry, Vivian, and Mark researched the life cycle of a butterfly and then made their own books.

Elizabeth, Emily, and Olivia have been working with the phonetic object boxes. Taylor and Annabelle have created beautiful metal insets.

Zane and Walker made a robot pattern with the cubes and prisms from the pink tower and broad stair. Natalie just returned from a trip to Europe and she helped us locate France on the world map. As you can see, we have been very busy!

Primary 4

The children absolutely loved the portable planetarium presented by the Perot Museum! Space studies is a favorite topic among the children in our class and they were very excited to learn more about planets, stars, and constellations. We learned that several new dwarf planets have recently been discovered in our solar system. We also learned how to find the North Star and he Big Dipper in the sky. The children even had the opportunity to touch a small asteroid!

Happy Spring!

Ms. Elizabeth and Ms. Ashley

GardenApril in the Children’s

It’s been challenging to get out to the garden this month, but we are so thankful for the rain and how it’s benefitting our garden!

The children have been investigating all the signs of spring and learning the names of everything new. We’ve recently been wrapping yarn around bamboo sticks to add a rainbow effect to our teepee!

We have Clematis, sugar peas and green beans training up the sticks. Won’t that be a wonderful place to sit?

One of our favorite signs of spring has just appeared on our Fennel this week…the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars! This is the fifth year that the swallowtails have returned but it’s so exciting every time we see the beginning signs that they are here!

I hope you’ve also been watching the progress of the Painted Lady chrysalis in the indoor habitat on our breezeway. It’s a wonderful lesson of patience and wonder for all of us.

Happy Gardening and exploring!Mrs. Loree

Art &It’s been an exciting April!

In art class, the second year students studied shading, blending and flow. We focused on artist Georgia O’Keeffe, creating flowers resembling O’Keeffe’s famous paintings.

The children were each given two colors, a light and a dark, as well as white to mix with. They started in the middle of the paper painting white for the center of the flower, then blended their light color with the white and moved out to the edge of the paper blending their light color with the dark. Our goal was to have the colors flow from the middle of the flower to edge. The results were the beautiful petals of a flower.

Technology

The kindergarten students finished their self portraits and started a new mixed media project. I am so proud of the hard work they put into their portraits! We also worked on a special project that will come home soon!

In technology, we started our PowerPoint presentations! The children are hard at work typing in the steps to their favorite Montessori work. I have also started taking pictures of the children doing their favorite work in the classroom. It is really special to see how passionate they are about their work. I have enjoyed getting to see them working in their classroom and having them tell me about their favorite work step by step. I know you will be so proud of their presentations when you see them next month. Mark your calendar! The Kingergarten Showcase is May 28th at 5:30pm. You will be receiving an invitation soon!

Happy Spring!Ms. Hanna

Another year has flown by and somehow we are in May again. I have enjoyed this year tremendously. There has been such growth since August, tears have been replaced with smiles. In the last couple of weeks I have noticed the second year toddlers are looking like primary students. Not only do the second toddler students look like primary students, they act like a primary student. They have grown and are becoming leaders. The primary students continue to be a continuous burst of energy. They love to draw and absolutely love markers and stickers. Their growth can be seen during playtime. Their ability to resolve their differences with friends has improved greatly. They can talk to their friends and resolve their differences and very seldom need to seek the help of a teacher. It makes for a peaceful environment in our little ASC Family.

Happy May and Last Month of School!Lisa Wilson & The ASC Staff

ASC

As April comes to a close we look back and reflect on all the goings on of Chapel. The children were able to learn about and experience Holy Week. This is a time to prepare ourselves for Easter! We were able to talk about all the events that led up to Easter such as; Palm Sunday, The Last Supper, and Jesus Praying in the Garden. These are key events packed with a lot of ideas and emotions that the children are free to sort through. The Kindergarten children have asked some excellent questions during our lesson times. One child asked, “Why did Jesus come to the earth and die on the cross for us?” Before I could answer another child spoke up with, “Because He MEANT to. He knew that’s what would happen. He meant to save us all along.” I was shocked and couldn’t have said it better myself. I am constantly struck with just how much these little ones “get.” They get it!!!

We are now trying to process all we have learned this year! There are so many precious moments that we have had together, and I hope you hear lots of stories at home about your childs Chapel experience. With one month of school left I continue to drive home the most important Bible Lesson that I ever learned. God loves you. He loves us! Please help us at St. James make this point solid! There are so many wonderful and in depth conversations you can have with your children at home! You might even be surprised at what your child can teach you about God. I know I learn something new from them everyday!

We also talked about the parable of The Sower. A man tried to plant his seeds by scattering them on the ground, laying the seeds on rocks and sticking them into bushes. It wasn’t until he found good rich soil that he was able to grow healthy and strong plants with the help of sun, air and water. It’s the same with love! How can you sow your seeds of love in life?

Enjoy your last month at school and please join us for Chapel Services any time!

Blessings,Ashley WoodruffChristian Ed. Director

Chapel