Thank you all for sharing your children’s lives with us, it is with great honor that we are able to be a part of their educational journey.

Carrie

 Lower Elementary

Hello Families!

It is wonderful to be back from break, in a new year, ready to rock and roll.  The students have come back ready to set goals and accomplish them and so we have been very busy!  We are currently working on wrapping up our study of the Fundamental Needs of Man throughout history.  Soon we will dive into the study of Central and South America as we prepare for FAME.  In the Spring, we will study climate change and oceanography.

When you get a moment, please have conversations with your student about their spare clothes and winter gear.  It is important to make sure that their spare clothes are weather appropriate and that they have a set at school as we head into colder and often damp weather.  We go outside if the temperature is above twenty degrees and we try to get them out as often as possible, temperature permitting.

In February we will get to participate in the annual Bowl-A-Thon.  We are hoping to raise the most money so that we can win a pizza party!  We also like to have a little classroom incentive, so we are working on that with the students.  It is a lot of fun for a child to embarrass their teacher or earn extra recess time, so we have no doubt that the students will come up with some fun classroom incentives.

We look forward to seeing everyone at conferences!

Thank you for sharing your child with us!

-Ms. Amanda and Ms. Jess

Primary 2

I can’t believe we are already halfway through the year! Time flies so quickly!

This month in class, we are going to be studying Martin Luther King Jr. We are going to be reading books in class about him, as well as just generally covering this topic in our history.

Additionally, lots of us are now learning how to tell time! Don’t be surprised if you suddenly always know what time it is at home, thanks to your little one.

I also wanted to bring up a few upcoming events here at school. On January 22^nd, we have our Montessori Information Night. That’s a good time to come learn more about what it is that we do, as well as ask any questions you might have, and just to come get to know the flow of a classroom a little bit better. Additionally, we have Parent Teacher Conferences coming up on the week of January 27^th-30^th. I will put a sign-up sheet outside the classroom a few weeks beforehand.

Last, but certainly not least, we have our upcoming Bowl-A-Thon.  I wanted to reach out for drivers on the day of the Bowl-A-Thon – if you are able to drive to the bowling alley, any and all help would be greatly appreciated!  Remember, the amount that you raise during the Bowl-A-Thon will count directly towards your annual $250 fundraising commitment – if every student raised $200, we would raise a grand total of $28,000! The classroom that raises the most amount of money, gets a pizza party! I don’t know about you guys, but pepperoni pizza sounds pretty good right about now….

I want to thank you all for the amazing year we have had so far. Thank you for making this community beautiful and supportive – I hope the rest of our year goes just as smoothly!

Thank you,

Miss Emma and Miss Megan.                             

Toddler 1

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday break spent with family and friends!

We welcomed a new friend into our classroom in December, his name is Kannon. The children are excited to get to know him.

Just want to say thank you to everyone that attended our classroom holiday gathering. We enjoyed watching the children decorate their cookies and snowflake ornaments.

The next few months will bring all sorts of new works and colors for the children to explore. January will bring the different shades of blue. We will read books about winter and learn about penguins and polar bears. Our sensory bin will be filled with different items pertaining to winter.

The month of February will bring the colors pink and red, as well as reading books about love and kindness.

The children are enjoying circle time. We sing along to books with music. We also have rhythm sticks the children use to make music. We will be adding scarves and snowballs to our circle time as well soon.

Parent-teacher conferences will be coming up the week of January 27-30th. I will have a sign-up sheet outside the classroom door Monday, can’t wait to talk to each of you about your child!

Thank you for sharing your children with us!

Miss Tammy, Miss Coti and Miss Jamie

High School Classroom

Hello Everyone!

I hope that everyone and their families had an enjoyable holiday break. The high school classroom is already hard at work on their second semester courses. We will be busy this semester with individual student work, not to mention, the group S.T.E.M. and Research projects that we complete together in class outside of Indiana Connections. This year the students have been more interested in political and current events around the world. We have open discussions about some of the events like the unrest in Hong Kong currently or the political climate in countries like Great Britain for example. This had led to the construction of an ongoing information board hanging in the classroom that gets updated every week.

The high school students have also been participating in bringing science demonstrations to some of the lower classrooms every week. This has been a great program all around and benefits communication among the students. There is also cooking lessons and our creative writing exercises to round out our activities. Thank you for all of the help with ingredients in the cooking lessons, it is a huge help in making these lessons work for the students.  The two most recent cooking lessons were Vietnamese Pho and Japanese Okonomiyaki.

Just a reminder that parent teacher conferences are coming up at the end of January and we have sent home forms for Bowl-a-thon pledges.

Thank you for all the support you give to the high school classroom and helping to make it a great experience for the students.

Mr. Josh                                                                                                 

Primary 3

Welcome back from a relaxing two weeks off.   We are kicking off the second half of the year with many new works in our classroom

This has been a week for mathematics.   Many children are working with the memory game, a work that allows the child to choose a numeral (0-10) from a box and look at it.  Without telling anyone what it is, they hold that numeral in their memory and walk to a different part of the room where we have a container with identical objects.  The child then counts into their hand, the quantity they need to match the numeral.  This requires the use/practice of many skills:  numeral recognition, gathering quantity, memorization and experiencing the size differences in the quantity gathered with their senses.  We are also working with the teens board works, composition of number and a lot of basic operations.    We have incorporated a unit study of The Mitten.  When reading this book, we are talking about who is the Author and illustrator, as well as the sequence of the book.  We have added math with mittens and some corresponding language works.

We are talking about the bowl–a-thon in our classroom.  They really want to win a pizza party!!!

Thank you so much for sharing your children with me.

Warm regards,

Miss Beth and Miss Delaine

From Upper Elementary

Happy New Year! Can you believe it’s 2020?!

I hope you are all able to join us on Wednesday, January 22^nd at 6:30pm for Montessori Comes to Life. This is an event we have held for a few years now and it is back because it is AMAZING! It is a beautiful way to “see inside” your child’s classroom and see several Montessori materials in use. You will be amazed by what your child has access to each and every day.

Have you had a chance to stop up at the front lobby to see some of the reading material available? One book of particular interest, Golden: Celebrating Ages 13 and Beyond is provided by the Dekko Foundation (www.dekkofoundation.org), is all about these wonderfully peculiar creatures you and I love so much – the TEENAGER! The author(s) channeled their inner Montessorian for sure! Take a look and let me know if you have any questions or comments or would like to talk about anything further. These Upper Elementary emerging adolescents crave independence, involvement in their community(ies), and causes to champion.

Our annual Bowl-a-Thon will be February 7^th – pledge sheets went home our first Monday back from break. Our classroom is busy cheering each other on so we can be the “classroom with the highest pledge total”! The students have come up with all kinds of challenges for reaching certain goals. For example, they have challenged themselves to raise $10,000 – as a classroom – and if they can, I have agreed to color my hair in a rainbow undercolor. Please help your student by allowing them to talk with family members, friends, neighbors, church friends…. Anyone who will support their efforts to help their school.

Thank you so very much for your daily support of your amazing young people.

Miss Rachel

 From the Upper Elementary Students

              Save the Oceans

Dear Parents:

The students of the Upper Elementary class have been very concerned about cleaning up our world’s oceans, keeping the oceans free from plastic litter and helping wildlife live free from plastic trash.

We would like to support cleanup work being done by the organization, 4ocean.com.

This is an organization dedicated to great cleanup work of our oceans – getting the plastic out of our oceans.

To raise funds to help this good work, we have made beautiful beaded bracelets. We are selling them for $10 each.

Students will be set up in the front lobby beginning this Friday, January 10^th and running through next Friday, the 17^th. We will be available at arrival time (8:15 – 9:00) and dismissal time (3:15 – 3:45).

Please come buy a bracelet and help support our work.

Toddler 2

We have made it half-way through another great year! We cannot believe how much growth we have seen in the children’s autonomy. It’s never more apparent than at mealtimes. Without being reminded the children quietly get up from the table and put their leftover food into the compost then put their plates, cups and utensils into the dishpan. Next, they confidently go to push in their chair and get a towel to wipe up any spills they have made. Then they go on their way to choose a work or get on their nap cot. It is such an awesome thing to see!
In case anyone has heard your child singing, these are the words to our community song at snack:
“Look around and you will see a community, a family. We are brothers, sisters too, thank you for our snack”

After noticing the children’s strong interest in all of the dinosaur works we had out on the shelves we were inspired to have a ‘The Dinosaurs’ Night Before Christmas’ theme. We had a great night and plan to expand the selection of dinosaur work and books in our classroom.

Next, we plan to study the amazing country of Japan! Thanks to Miss Emily, who lived there for several years, we have access to great information and genuine Japanese materials. It’s a fantastic opportunity to educate the children in a different culture.
We will also begin the wonderful sensorial experience of Food Tasting. The children have been doing beautifully with the food preparation we started in the fall and our next step is Food Tasting. Involvement with food work is such an important area of the Montessori education. Maria Montessori believed the children passed through phases called “Sensitive Periods” which allow a child to learn specific concepts more naturally and easily than at other ages. Toddlers are in the Sensitive Period for refinement of the senses.

The children have also been loving Spanish with Miss Vera. They are so excited when she comes into the classroom and are doing well naming their colors, fruits and vegetables in Spanish.

We hope you are having a great winter!

Miss Sam, Miss Carli and Miss Emily.

Primary 1

Now that we have returned from winter break getting back in the swing of things. The children enjoy going outside and playing in the little bit of snow that we’ve had, when it’s not too cold. Please remember to send your child in a winter jacket with a hat and gloves every day. Make sure your child has winter/ insulated boots that can stay at school. Since winter is here please make sure that you switched out your child’s extra clothes for warmer clothing.

We have been studying the continent Antarctica and the Arctic and the animals that live there. The children have parts of a caribou and penguin books. This month we will study South America where it is located and the animals that live on the continent. Our class is studying living and non-living and working with objects that sink and float. We are continuing to work on days of the week, months of the year, our continents, numbers and our sounds.

I wanted to mention there has been some changes to our classroom. Mr. Michael the art teacher is now the assistant in P-1. I as well as the children are very excited and looking forward to having him in our class every day.

The game night was a success thanks to everyone that came and enjoyed that night with their child. Our class hibernation party was a blast, some of the children are asking when we will have another hibernation party since they had so much fun. We will be having a Valentine’s Day Party in February. Please remember to check your child’s backpack daily for their green folder.

Thank You

Ms. Jeanene and Mr. Michael