Blue Bell Montessori Children’s House Family Newsletter January 2011

Montessori Quote “One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child” Maria Montessori Principal’s Corner Dear MCH Families, Maria Montessori considered lessons in history central to peace. For the younger child, this means learning about oneself in relation to time through following the daily calendar, participating in the celebration of life (birthday) ceremony, marking the flow and cycle of the seasons and the weather, celebrating holidays, learning about children who lived during other times and places, and recognizing personal growth. Through these lessons, the child senses that they are both big and small in relation to the world. They are big in that they matter – they have special gifts to contribute to the world, and this is their time! They are small in that they are part of a world so much greater than any one individual. This dual realization is the foundation for a peace- oriented young citizen of the world. The personal opportunity to make your mark, along with awe and respect for the world through time leads to a sense of responsibility to make the world a better place. I wish all of you a happy, healthy, and peace-filled 2011. Thank you for sharing your children and their special gifts with us! Best regards for a joyful year, Marsha

Snow Closing Update The best way to find out if we are closing or opening late due to snow is to check one of the following:

Listen for our school closing number 384 (Montgomery County) on KYW News Radio (1060AM). Google www.CBSphilly.com , select KYW, then click on “school closings”. We will be listed as 384

(Montgomery County). Look for our school number rather than our school name which can be confused with other schools.

Register on the KWY News Radio for automatic notification of school closing or late opening. To do this, google www.CBSphilly.com , select KYW, click on “school closings”, then click on ‘“click here” to subscribe to automatic alerts’.

Call the school phone @ 215-646-6816. If school is closed or opening late, the message will have been changed to reflect this information.

Please remember that if you hear we are opening one hour late, supplemental care will open at 8:30AM. If you hear we are opening two hours late, there will be no morning supplemental care and school will begin at 9:30AM. If bad weather develops during the day, please check one of these resources while you are at work or at home for early closing information.

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As a Montessori community, we are dedicated to educating our children about peace and peace heroes. We will celebrate and honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the month of January at BB-MCH. Our school will be closed in observance of Dr. King’s birthday on Monday, January 17th. We encourage you to use this as a “day on” rather than a “day off” by joining your child in a community service project that day. Some suggestions appropriate for young children include: making cards to deliver to children in the hospital, taking home baked cookies or muffins to a senior center near your home, cleaning up a garden or local park, helping an elderly or infirmed neighbor with a home repair or errand, or delivering your old blankets and towels to a local SPCA or animal shelter. Fall 2011 Registration Look for your Fall 2011 re-registration information later this month. Of course current families have priority in reserving spots for next September. Since we already have a wait list for September, 2011, we ask you to re-turn your re-enrollment form promptly. After current families register, we will be able to open registration to new families! Upcoming Events in February Groundhog Day – February 2 Chinese New Year begins – February 3 Scholastic Book Fair begins – February 10 Book Fair Family Night – February 10 Valentine’s Day – February 14 Pajama Day for all – February 18 President’s Day – February 21 (Teacher in-service - school and supplemental care closed) Theater at BB-MCH – “Toad’s Escape” – February 24 (Primary children) Inside the Classrooms Prep A –Miss Val, Miss Sooksun, Miss Vanessa, Miss Jacy December has come and gone very quickly but that did not stop our class from doing loads of work! In our Practical Life area the children have enjoyed putting candles into the menorah (while trying not to break them), dreidel spinning, tree decorating, small pompom transferring, small snowman pouring (which teaches patience and concentration), and snapping and zipping real baby clothes (very popular)! In the Language area the children have been working with the sound baskets, categorizing, the missing parts to the snowman work and our snowman puzzle. In the Math area we are continuing to work with number recognition and quantity by using cards and counters. Our Sensorial area has also been well liked; the penguin sorting has been a fa-vorite! This encourages the child to recognize each color and place like colors together in a sorting dish. The other favorite in the sensorial area has been matching the shape of an object to its shadow. The children have also enjoyed having bagels and cream cheese for snack, where the children used all of their grace and courtesy knowledge to share the cream cheese with the friends at their table. They also spread the cream cheese on their own, which encourages them to be careful and patient while learning to hold a knife (plastic of course!!). Everyone cleaned up after him or herself and several children did the knife washing! Each child did a unique watercolor painting. I took each child’s photograph as they were painting, then we made a special treat for their parents for the holidays. The children loved presenting this special gift to their parents! Prep B – Miss Pauline, Miss Stacia, Miss Margaret Dear Parents, All the holiday excitement has just kept our class buzzing along all month as we learned about different holiday celebrations through reading, discussion, music, movement, crafts and Montessori class work. All of this work of course involved cultural studies and helped the children discover the world around them.

The first holiday we discussed was Hanukkah. We read Chanukah by Trudi Strain Trueit and the Counting Menorah Candles book, which also pulled in some math skills as we counted together. New Montessori Classroom Work included “spinning dreidel work” which was very challenging for them but they loved to watch the dreidels spin just as much as they liked to watch them fall. There was also “dreidel sorting” by color work and “counting the candles on the menorah” work in math. Artwork included gluing glitter on drei-dels and Menorah stamp work. Cooking to build community and cooperation included making dreidels out of marshmallows and pretzel sticks. Creative Movement: we spun our bodies fast and slow to “I’m a Little Dreidel” which worked on balance, body control and focus. Questions to build language skills and sense of community: Do you have a Menorah at home? The next holiday was Christmas and we read My Christmas Stocking by Crystal Bowman and talked about the meaning of Christmas and all the holidays being to share our love and how we feel good inside when we spend time helping friends and family. We also read Let’s Bring Mom Breakfast by Sharon McConnell and My Dad by Debbie Bailey. We discussed helping each other in the classroom by cleaning up the room and pushing in the chairs and putting the work back on the shelves and how many friends have been helping other friends clean up their work when pieces fall on the floor. Questions: Do you clean up your toys at home? What do you do fun with your family? Do you have a Christmas tree at home? New Montessori Classroom Work: Most of this work was in practical life working on sorting by like and color, transferring with various tongs to strengthen the pincer grasp and scooping with small and large spoons to work on eye hand coordination. Work included “red and green crystal transfer work” and “Christmas eraser sorting work”. We also had a zipper and buckled purse with candy canes inside to help the children begin to zipper and buckle. Another work was “find the gingerbread men in the box” work to give them practice in taking off lids so they can care for themselves. Also to help them dress there is coat and mitten and glove work on the shelves. Many of the children can now put on their own coats by standing at the top of the coat, placing hands in the sleeves and flipping the coat over their heads. They have also been working with brooms and dustpans and crumbers. Holding the broom with two hands and all the coordination these tasks require are very difficult for them but they are so enthu-siastic about cleaning the room that their efforts and good intentions are what matters most at this time. A good example of this is “rice pouring” which has turned into clean up work because the children take out the work off the shelf just to spill it so that they can clean it up. Artwork: Gluing tissue paper on Christmas balls and placing the Christmas balls on the Christmas tree, which was great for building both eye hand coordina-tion and math skills. Creative Movement – We did movement to the song “This Little Drum Under the Tree”. We talked about presents they would get for whichever holiday they celebrated and moved around the room bringing the presents to life such as trains, bikes, bouncing balls and airplanes. This activity explored a vari-ety of movements including jumping. Another song we did was “Eight Little Reindeer Pulling Santa’s Sleigh” which worked on galloping skills as well as counting backwards as one by one the reindeer fell and bumped their heads till Santa had no reindeer and had to rely on Rudolph to save the night. Working together the class created a very large candy cane from red, green and white paper and then walked the candy cane de-sign on the floor. Cooking included making red and green jigglers. This was also a science lesson because they had to mix dry and liquid ingredients and we talked about whether the fridge was hot or cold and what they thought would happen to the liquid once it was cold. They did guess it would get harder. This was also sensorial because they could smell the cherry and lime jello. In Language new work included “matching mommy and baby animals” in both the animal basket and puzzle pieces. The green basket has encouraged saying words like green bear, green apple, and green parrot. Finally, we read My First Kwanzaa Book by Deborah Newton Chocolate and talked about the kind of person we want to be such as kind and helpful. We also then read Christmas Eve Blizzard by Andrea Vlahakis and this led to a discussion about what animals and we do in the winter and how hard it is for the birds to find food in the snow. So for our holiday service project the class made bird feeders out of almond butter and birdseed and then went outside to hang them in the trees.

This also was a Science lesson in seasons and animal activity as well as plant activity since we had to talk about our pumpkin plants dying due to the cold weather. They held the drying plants in their hands and we talked about these plants breaking up into the dirt to feed the new plants we will plant in the spring. Take Care and we hope you enjoyed the holiday season with your children, family and friends! Miss Pauline, Miss Margaret and Miss Stacia Primary A – Miss Judy and Miss Chandana December was so much fun! The extremely cold weather kept us inside much of the month, but that just gave us more time for working, learning, and singing. We had a wonderful time when Ainsley’s mom, Johanna, came to visit. Johanna is a dance teacher and helped us to dance our way through the Nut-cracker. There were smiles and laughter everywhere as the children portrayed party goers, soldiers, mice, dolls, snowflakes, and other characters. Thank you, Johanna! We learned about our five senses, and sorted pictures into piles according to which sense we would use to learn about the pictured item. As a follow-up to Maya’s mom’s visit in November, we have been tracking the countries of origin of the families in our class. Using strings and a world map, we have been making lines from our names to the countries of our ances-tors. The children have been surprised to see how many families have come from Europe, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany. We also have quite a few families from Asian countries, and one from South Africa. So far we do not have any families which originated in South America or Australia. Our international greetings in December included “jambo” from Kenya and “g’day” from Australia. We learned about the De-cember holidays, and enjoyed putting candles into the menorah in our Practical Life area. We learned how Christmas is celebrated in other countries, and the children thought that Christmas on the beach in Australia (our winter is their summer) sounded like fun! Everyone enjoyed rolling a marble in red paint to create candy cane art, and did a great job cutting to make evergreen trees in the snow. We hope all of the parents liked their holiday gift wreaths, made with fingerprints and love! Afternoon Kindergarten class – Miss Judy December was a month full of excitement and energy! Despite the very cold weather, the children really enjoyed a visit to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Roxborough. The program focused on using our senses to learn about nature. The children heard a story about animals, then used their sense of touch to try to identify objects in a bag – a deer antler in one bag and a tortoise shell in the other. They also felt deer and fox pelts. We then went outside for a nature walk, and used our sense of sight to look for birds, plants and berries. We also were treated to a wonderful sight – a herd of 7 or 8 deer quite near to us in the woods! As a follow-up to our field trip, we made bird feeders with pine cones, almond butter, and bird seed – all donated by Nathan’s mom, Ruth. Many thanks – the children had a great time! We brain-stormed as a class to come up with a list of 100 things we can see, and we are still working on a list of 100 things we can hear. Our artist for December was the Swiss artist Paul Klee (pronounced Powell Clay), and the children did really lovely reproductions of one of his paintings. We listened to the music of the Nut-cracker Suite by Tschaikovsky. In math, we worked on measuring by the inch and experimented with non-standard measurement as well. We also worked on estimating length, distance, and quantity. Our world language greetings continued with “jambo” from Kenya and “g’day” from Australia. Of course, the Decem-ber holidays were a big topic of discussion and we enjoyed learning about Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwan-zaa. Primary B – Miss Brenda and Miss Jayanthi The month of December was full of celebrations (Hanukkah and Christmas). Our first celebration began on December 8, 2010, the first night of Hanukkah. The holiday lasts eight successive days during which eight candles are lit, beginning with one on the first night, two on the second night, three on the third night, and so on. The celebration is also known as the Feast of Lights. The children enjoyed placing a candle on the menorah each day. They also learned a new word “Shamash,” the middle candle that is used to light the others. The dreidel game was quite popular among all of the children. Any number of people may take part in the game. Each player begins the game with an equal number of game pieces (10 – 15) such as pennies, wooden chips, etc. At the beginning of each round, each player places one game piece into the center.

Every time the pot is empty or has only one game piece left, every player should put one in the cen-ter. The driedel is spun once by each player as he/she takes a turn. Depending on the outcome, the player gives or gets game pieces from the center. There are four symbols on the dreidel. Nun means “nisht” or “nothing” in Yiddish, the player does nothing. Gimmel means “gantz” or “everything”, the player does nothing. Hey means “halb” or “half”, the player gets half of the pot. Shin means “shtel” or “put in”. Peh means “pay”; the player adds a game piece to the pot. If you find that you have no game pieces left, you are either out or may ask a neighbor for a loan. Enjoy the dreidel game at home with your family. Our second celebration, Christmas, began as the children excitedly painted gift bags and snowflakes for parent gifts and baking muffins. During community gathering, we spoke of how each one of us celebrates the holiday of Christmas. All of the children shared wonderful stories about their family’s traditions during this time of year. We concluded our celebrations by enjoying a “Pancake Brunch” in the classroom. The children were involved in the preparation of the party. Winter tablecloths, plates, napkins and cups were placed about the elongated tables as everyone sat together and enjoyed the brunch. It was nice to observe the peaceful conversation amongst the children. After the brunch, the children participated in the cleanup process with delight. They felt quite proud of their accomplish-ment of being a part of a community. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Miss Brenda and Miss Jayanthi Primary C – Miss Stephanie and Miss Nancy

I can hardly believe that we are heading into the year 2011! We had a fast paced December learning about Hanukah, Christmas and Las Posadas. The children really enjoyed creating picture frame gifts for their parents. I hope you enjoyed them too! I had such a joyous time teaching each student how to wrap a gift! The explosion into reading has continued into December. During class time, we are continuing to study sight words. We will begin to find and collect words in our environ-ment and create a “word study” book. The class has been devouring the Movable Alphabet, the begin-ning sound boxes and their take home red/purple envelope reading bags. Continuing our literacy study, the students enjoyed exploring folklores and the author Tomie DePaola. We will begin to study author Mem Fox in January. The students continued their study of geometric shapes while playing I-Spy within the regular story books in our class library. The afternoon class has begun to study weather, the water cycle and volcanoes! I can’t wait to see what other tidbits of knowledge we will research and find in January!

Thank You, Ms. Stephanie and Ms. Nancy

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 Happy New Year!

2 3 School Resumes 4 Library French Creative Move-ment

5 Music Pizza

6 7 8

9 10 Lil’ Sports

11 Library French Creative Move-ment

12 Pizza

13 14 15

16 17 MLK Staff In-Service Day— School and Sup-plemental care closed

18 Library French Creative Move-ment

19 Music Pizza

20 21 22

23 24 Lil’ Sports

25 Library French Creative Move-ment

26 Parent Program Time TBD

27 28 29

30 31

January 2011