NEWS January 2

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I recently had the great opportunity to attend the American Montessori Society’s Head of School retreat in Punta Can-ya. The location was breathtaking, and the ability to con-nect with so many other educators was priceless. The con-ference centered on Catherine Steiner-Adair’s best seller “The Big Disconnect”. Dr. Steiner-Adair has frequently appeared on television (The weekend Today Show, Good Morning America, The Discovery Channel, Cnn, PBS, 7NBC, NECN, HBO) on NPR Radio in different states, and in numerous newspapers (The New York Times, Bos-

ton Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun, Washington Times) and in magazines (Child, Parent, Vogue Town and Country, Self, Mademoisells, Good Housekeeping, Na-ture, National Geographic).

As a mom, grandmother and educator, Catherine’s research confirmed my suspi-cions that technology has a direct correlation in the rise of focus issues we’re see-ing in the classroom but I found much more of the recent data shocking and a little terrifying. The latest research shows that five year olds entering schools are coming in with decreased:

• language and vocabulary• ability for self-expression• ability to sit for story time• abilities to deal with their own frustration

• independence• capacity to play• ability to control manipulatives• ability to collaborate

One of the most interesting aspects of the research is how angry children are about their parents screen time. They are jealous and crave our attention. Catherine explained the damage done to a child whose parent takes them to the park, but then pulls out their cell phone. I have to admit I am guilty of that! As a Montes-sorian I know that children are avid observers of us, but I thought they were ab-sorbed in their play and wouldn’t notice as I answered a couple of emails that could have waited.

Catherine also touts the vast ways technology has improved people’s ability to con-nect through skype, face time, etc; but encourages us to commit to being screen free the majority of time around our children (and significant others). It is a book that will make you think about your role as a parent, advocate and pro-tector as she leads you into the scary world of technology as it’s applied in elemen-tary, middle school and high school children.

Catherine’s book is a necessary read…I hope you’ll place it near the top of your must-read list! Mrs. Loree

We have had a great start to our year in the MDO classroom. We have multiple children responding very well to potty training.

The children love the new environment that we created before they came backto school after the holidays. The children love the yoga work, our birdwatching work, the independent food corner, the sound book, and all theother wonderful works we put out for them.

We are in need of more food for our independent snack corner. We would loveany donations of fruit, vegetables, yogurt or anything else that could beprepared by a toddler. Each day we need 2 bananas, 2 clementine oranges,and an apple. Other fun food items that increase fine motor ability and/orthe senses are snow pea pods, bell pepper, and cucumber. The children reallylove having access to snacks.

We also love to cook as a group! Some of our favorites to make are bean and cheese quesadillas, oatmeal and applesauce. Please let me know if you'd like to bring the ingredients for a group cooking activity.

Sincerely,Your MDO teachers!

MDO

Elizabeth is learning the yoga poses we have out for the week. She loves to come

in the classroom and start with yoga

Top Left: Zayden is peeling a clemtine. He loves the inde-pendent food corner

Top Right: Canyon is looking through our binoculars watch-ing for birds. He loves this new work

Bottom Right: Annabelle is making cards for Valentine’s day. We make them for a nursing home every year

Toddler

Brrr! Toddlers cold outside and so imagination playground here we come. We are having fun with snow art and cold sensorial ice cubes. Working with different elements in the classroom has the children working very hard and learning a lot of new concepts. Ice picking like the great archeologist is a popular work in the

class this month. We also introduced yoga and the farm to our classroom and of course the board stairs and pink tower came out

this month as well.

Mr. Anna and Ms. Bea

January has been a busy month in our class. We started off with Father Gardner's

visit, all the children love when he comes in monthly to give birthday blessings. Cooper and Hoyt are sitting patiently while father

Gardner reads a prayer over them.

Since the winter months can lead us to spend more time indoors, we added more gross motor in our class. Yoga is an all time favorite in our class. Toddler yoga is a great way to teach body control. The children can now choose that as a work. We have pictures of

different yoga poses they can choose from. Lydia loves doing the tree pose, and Harper and Elise

are doing downward dog.

Mrs. Loree brought gardening to us last Friday. The topic was birds! The children listened, while she read a story all about birds. Mrs. Loree even surprised us and gave us a set of binoculars for us to keep. Thank you!! The children love bird watching. Isla is trying to look for a song sparrow

or red robin.

Mrs. April, Mrs. Lily and Ms. Eliane

Toddlers love to be moving, so adding 4 and 6 lb. medicine balls in the environment was a huge hit! It the perfect way for them to explore

movement and gain knowledge about their bodies.

Independence in the bathroom: Ms. Coral’s Class.

Since the Christmas break a lot has changed in our classroom. We have rearranged the classroom to better suit the needs of the children and we have also gone diaper less! The older children have been happy to model these steps for the younger ones. Potty training is a process that the children learn according to their bodily cues. It also consists of teach-ing the children how to dress and undress themselves. It develops patience and bathroom

etiquette such as learning how to wait for their turn, wipe, flush the toilet and properly wash hands.

Being aware of their bodily cues is a big part of potty learning. It may take some longer than others to recognize the feeling of having to use the potty or being wet and that is normal. Potty learning will be one of the main subjects we focus on as we wrap up the

school year, which provides plenty of time for the children to learn. It can be a long pro-cess but consistency and patience are key; the children have responded well.

Ms. Coral, Ms. Martha, and Ms. Jana

Violet practices dressing as she pulls her underwear on herself

Friends dressing and waiting their turn for the potty a social

experience

Madeline practices putting on the baby legs to keep her warm in the classroom while she potty learns

Primary

Dear Parents of P1,

We are so pleased with how eager the children are for new lessons! On Monday, January 7th, we had the pleasure of working with local Montessori guru,

Deborah Harrington. A wealth of knowledge, she is best known for her home-grown approach to Montessori. She is a master at creating beautiful and enticing extensions to go with classical Montessori works. We worked together to create

some fun and educational cultural works for our classrooms to teach the chil-dren about everything from animals of the world to the planets and outer space.

One of the favorite works is the Continent Folder of Africa. The children have been learning about animals and land forms in Africa as well as famous monu-

ments and artifacts. The children have also been exploring the seasonal changes and learning about which months correlate to the seasons. It has been so much fun to introduce the children to cultural studies with our new works and exten-sions. By giving children a broader understanding of the world they live in, we

begin to lay the groundwork for future stewardship and peace studies. They truly begin to understand their place in our school community and how it extends to

the global community.

Love and peace,

Ms.Charlotte and Ms.Kalindi

LANGUAGEIn language the students have been working on the sounds of the alpha-bet. After a student has learned the sounds of the alphabet, they start

“reading” to the reading helpers. This allows them to continue practicing the sounds they have learned. With continued work in the classroom on the MOVEABLE ALPHABET and other exercises from the language shelf the student continues to build a knowledge of letter sounds and putting

those sounds together to make a word. The older students continue to do more advanced works from the language shelf as well as working

more on handwriting and the control of the pencil.

The MOVEABLE ALPHABET is a large flat box that has individual lower case letters in separate compartments. There are several cutouts

of each letter; the vowels and the consonants contrast in color. The moveable letters allow the child to “write down” words as he or she

determines each component sound. This series of exercises increases in difficulty from writing three letter words to writing stories. The stu-dents can start with the Moveable Alphabet as soon as they learn the

phonetic alphabet

Mrs. Barrineau/Ms. Ana

Happy New Year, everyone! 2014 is off to a wonderful start at St. James. The children re-turned from the Christmas holiday refreshed and ready to learn.

There has been a big emphasis in our class this month on geography and zoology! The chil-dren have been learning about land and water forms, specifically lakes and islands. This has transitioned into a variety of other geog-

raphy works. Several students had their first lesson with the continent map this month and

one child has begun tracing and pricking the continents to make a map of his own! We have a new extension to the continent map that matches wildlife species with each continent (the teachers made this during our January in-service). The children love this work! A few older students are also busy making their own maps of Africa, North America, and the United States.

Our kindergarteners have enjoyed our new picture dictionary and animal encyclopedia to help them write stories and conduct re-search projects. Often the research leads us back to the globe to find us where and what kind of habitat the animal lives in.

AJ with the wildlife continent map

Levi making a continent map

Our younger children have been embracing the zoology curriculum with the animal nomenclature cards. We have a variety of nomenclature cards that teach the parts of the fish, the bird, the horse, the frog, the turtle, etc. Our little boys especially enjoyed a new lesson different in-sect species.

We have spent time discussing the changing of the seasons and the ro-tation of the earth at group circle time. Our library has some wonderful books about the seasons, such as Lights of Winter by Heather Conrad, A Tree is Nice by Janice May Audrey, and Frozen Noses by Jan Carr. Ms. Loree painted a beautiful seasons work for the primary classrooms too. The work illustrates how nature changes with the seasons of the year and teaches the child to sort the months of the year by season. We are having a wonderful time exploring the wonders of our world while staying nice and warm in the classroom. The children are making many new discoveries and we look forward to sharing more of them with you next month.

Ms. Tamara and Ms. Julia

Emory making the lake and islandDavid with the insect nomenclature cards

Happy New Year!

The children have returned from the holiday break refreshed and ready to get back to work! The spring semester is always exciting because the children have completely normalized within the classroom which allows for more lessons on our most challenging materials.

The Kindergarten students have been given their own creative writing tablets to practice writ-ing sentences and short stories. When they fill

up an entire page, they are free to draw illustrations to go with their writings. The children have been very busy writing and illustrating about Christmas vacations, their families, pets, friends, and favorite hobbies.

Many of the second level students have explod-ed into reading and beginning writing. They are having fun spelling words phonetically using the moveable alphabet and beginning to read the Bob Book series in class and with Mrs. Shannon. It is also very common for children in the Montessori environment to begin to write before they read. Once the children know their phonetic sounds, they can begin writing simple words.

The older children have begun to learn research skills. They are using picture dictionaries and encyclopedias to find out more information about their favorite plants, animals, conti-nents, and modes of transportation. First level students have been observing their older peers and are requesting more challenging and bigger lessons! They are working on making maps of the world, tracing and writing their names using the light box, and creating extensions to lessons they had in the fall.

Ms. Elizabeth and Mrs. Ashley

We learned so many interesting things about the earthworm this month! We learned the parts of the earthworm and conducted experiments to help us discover the fundamental needs of an earthworm. We found that earthworms prefer moist over dry, veggies and fruit over meat and dairy, and dark over light.

The Great Worm Races

Once we knew what earthworms like, it was time to put that knowledge to the test by using carrot and banana peels, a little water and the shade from our hands to get our worms to travel from an inner circle to the outer circle. Some of the children named their worms and cheered as their worm wriggled across the lines. All kinds of strategies were put into place, but I noticed a great amount of good sportsmanship as all the worms were congratulated for a good try!

The older children also measured and graphed the length of the earthworms. The majority of our subjects were shorter than 5”.

On a side note, I submitted this lesson and have been chosen as one of the presenters at this year’s American Montessori Society convention that will be held in Dallas this spring…maybe I’ll appear on the late night show circuit next!

Happy Winter Gardening!

Mrs. Loree

Happy 2014!

In the month of January, the second level children drew a Van Gogh inspired oil pastel. The subject matter is of a tropical seascape filled with palm trees, an ocean and a dolphin. It has been so chilly, I thought it would be fun to bring some warmth to the children’s art! The Kindergarteners are working on a beautiful still life painting on canvas! Each class either did a pear with an apple, banana, orange, or grapes!

Artwith Ms. Judi

Danielle’s still life!

Some examples of the Children’s beautiful Van Gogh-inspired tropical seascapes in oil pastel

Technology

The children in Technology are continuing to work and explore through the

different websites. As, they are mastering the control of the mouse, I intro-

duced them to some typing games that help with keyboarding skills. I showed

them how there are three different rows, Home, Top, and Bottom Rows. The

websites provide fun keyboarding games that make it fun to type. Abby is

shown using the number pad to “cut” the fruit before it disappears. The Lego

robotic animal this month was a Lion that roared and sat up! The children re-

ally enjoyed it.

with Ms. Judi

The After School Staff is happy to be back and spending time with your children in the afternoons. It looks like we will are going to have a cold winter. We will always try to have outside time, so please continue to send their coats. If we are not able to go outside we will use the Parish Hall as our playground so that children can have a large space to move around and play. The primary children had fun decorating a

large box and playing with the box on our last rainy day. It is fun to see them get so excited about cardboard. Our toddlers are busy and on the go as well. They love coloring and puzzles but they especially love circle time when they sing songs and listen to stories.

Potty training has begun in the MDO and tod-dler classrooms. If your child is potty training and in ASC, please make sure that we have extra clothes. Typically if your child is in the beginning stages of potty training, they will come to ASC in diapers or a pull up. We will still encourage using the potty chair and as they progress and they are using the potty on a more regular basis, we will keep them in their cotton underwear.

As always, if you have any questions or con-cerns, please feel free to call me.

Happy New Year!

Lisa Wilson

We are so happy to be back at school and in Chapel les-sons! When we got back from Christmas break we were able to talk to children about the Epiphanyseason! This is the time of year that we celebrate the Magi’s realization that Jesus was the son of God. They had an Epiphany! I pray that we all continue to have Epiphany’s throughout the year as we learn more and more about who God is.

January has also been a time for us to share with the children what friendship and caring for our neighbors looks like. In the story of Ruth and Naomi, loyalty and faithful friendship is shown. We teach the children to not only have good and helpful friendships, but to also know that God is a true and faithful friend to us always. This month we also got to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Chapel. A parallel story of Rosa Parks was

given to the children. We talked about a lady who was very short and was not al-lowed to sit at the front of the bus because she was “different” and much shorter then all of the other passengers. The children all agreed that this was not fair and that she should be allowed to sit anywhere because in God’s eyes we are all His chil-dren. No matter what our differences are, it’s important to respect everyone and offer God’s love to all. To really encourage these points we did an experiment using four different colored eggs. While all the eggs looks differ-ent on the outside, we discovered that they err all the same on the inside. Just like us. God bless you this Epiphany season as He continues to reveal Himself more and more to us!

Blessings,Ashley WoodruffChristian Education Director

Upcoming Events

FebruaryFebruary 4th-100th Day of School

February 11th- PTO Meeting at 6:00pm

February 14th- Valentine Parties- Noon Dismissal - NO ASC

February 17th- Winter Break- SCHOOL CLOSED

February 22nd- Auction

February 25th & February 26th- Montessori Education (9-11am)