// Photos: First week of December! //
// Week of Nov. 26: Curriculum Update //
We hope everyone had a lovely, restful, and delicious Thanksgiving with your family and friends!
We are happy to be back and the energy in the classroom is starting to show that everyone is excited and gearing up for the long winter break in December. This week we got right back to work and throughly enjoyed our weekly specials that were canceled last week due to the holiday. This week we also started to discuss what animals do in the winter and learned some new vocabulary — hibernation, migration and adaptation. We talked about bears, squirrels, badgers, hedgehogs, and mice and how they are currently scouring the earth for food and preparing for a long winter of sleep. We discussed how geese, ducks and even some fish and butterflies fly south to warmer climates. We also discussed how some animals like rabbits, leopards, and wolves adapt to their surroundings and survive even the harshest of winters. The children are so excited to celebrate our Hibernation Day on Friday, December 14th and we’ll send our more information on that soon!
// Photos from the last week in November //
So what's the big deal about arriving to school on time?
// This week at HPMS //
This week may have been the most exciting we’ve had so far because.....we had our FIRST SNOW of the season! In the morning, we read the book, Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser, and tells a whimsical and funny story about a squirrel, hedgehog and bear that stay awake to see the first snowflake. The snow started to come down during nap, so our Kindergarten friends made the first sighting and the classroom exploded with excitement and glee! Then they all immediately got their journals and started writing about the snow. It was such a beautiful moment! This week we also read our beloved favorite, Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth. This beautiful version tells the story of 3 monks who are on the search for “what makes one happy”. We have discussed the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving and started to prepare our Stone Soup ingredients on Friday. We are so excited to celebrate and eat together on Monday!
Other highlights this week included a special snack tasting with Olivia who shared her two favorites — pepperoni and sea weed! We also started an art project where we got to paint our friend’s feet and turn our footprints into silly turkeys. So fun! We had a wonderful time celebrating your children during Parent/Teacher conferences this week. Thank you so much for donating books to our classroom from the book fair. The children are really enjoying all the new reading material!
// The Days Leading up to Thanksgiving //
// Curriculum Update: Week of November 5 //
What another busy and fun week in the Indigo Room. The highlight this week was our Diwali presentation on Thursday where we learned all about the festival of lights! Armaan’s mom, Isha, and Siara’s mom, Shweta, came in to share some books and a craft with all of us. We read two books — Celebrate Diwali with Sweets, Lights, and Fireworks by Deborah Heiligman and Amma, Tell Me About Diwali! by Bhakti Mathur — and made some beautiful paper bag hand puppets based on the characters in the story, Lakshmi, Rama, Sita, Ravana and Hanuman. We learned that Diwali is the celebration of good over evil and how light triumphs over darkness. During Diwali light is spread all over the Earth! Diwali is one of the happiest holidays and customarily celebrated with beautiful clothes, decorations, sweets, fireworks, and lighting special oil lamps called diyas.
Afterwards we enjoyed some sweet and savory Indian treats provided by Anjali R. and Vir’s families. Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful holiday with us!
// Photos: Week of November 5 //
//Curriculum Update: Week of October 29 //
Happy November! The week surrounding Halloween is always a favorite week of the year for us. Although we don’t officially discuss and celebrate the holiday in the classroom, we do feed off the excitement of the children and bring in some fun books and activities that relate to the season and pumpkins as a way to keep the spirit abuzz (since it is pretty hard to ignore! 😉)
This week we read How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara and recreated the experiment done by the students in the story. We opened up our clean, large pumpkin — scooped out the pumpkin, separated out the seeds, washed them, dried them off, and put them inside a bag labeled “Big Pumpkin”. Ms. Kristi brought in some seeds from a smaller pumpkin she had at home and we sorted them out into rows of 10 to count them together easily during circle time. We all made our hypotheses as to which pumpkin would have the most seeds or how many seeds would be inside each of the pumpkins. We counted together and found out that our large pumpkin had 363 seeds and the small pumpkin had 493! We learned that pumpkins with more lines on the outside and pumpkins that are darker in color actually have more seeds as they have had more time to grow on the vine.You cannot tell directly from just its size! So interesting and the kids were truly amazed! We also carved a jack-o-lantern out of our large pumpkin and the children enjoyed watching it lit up in the classroom during work time.
This week we also sang 5 Little Pumpkins and read the Julia Donaldson classic, Room on a Broom. We hope everyone had a happy and safe Halloween with their friends and families!
// Photos: Week of October 29 //
Brought to you by "The Media Mavericks" (Upper Elementary & Middle School Students @HPMS)
// Week of October 22: Curriculum Update //
“The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education.” - Maria Montessori
This week we went back to the basics and completely revamped our Practical Life area to recaptivate the children’s interest and give them plenty of oppurtunities to build those fine-motor skills, concentration, independence, sense of order and more. We added some new tools — including a strawberry huller — along with some advanced sorting, water transfer activities and silver polishing! This week we’ve also continued with our study of pumpkins with learning the various parts: flesh, pulp, vine, leaves, tendrils, stem and seeds.
Thanks to all the parents who were able to join us for Curriculum Day last Saturday. We had a great time showing off our favorite Montessori materials and answering your questions. Thank you also to Alina for sharing her favorite snacks with us this week — quinoa chips, salsa and olives. Yum!
// Week of October 22: Photos //
// Week of October 15: Curriculum Update//
There is no other way to sum up our week in Indigo Room other than FALL FARM FUN! We started started off with a pumpkin scrubbing lesson during circle time and spent all of Monday work cycle making our large classroom pumpkin sparkling clean and ready to carve. It’s one of our favorite lessons to give this time of year and the children get so into it! We’ve started reading the classic book, From Seed to Pumpkin, and are discussing the lifecycle of the pumpkin plant and how plants make food through photosynthesis. Then we spent a lovely day at Abma’s Farm and enjoyed petting some animals (goats, ducklings, cows and rabbits to name a few!), took a tractor hayride, picked pumpkins from a real patch with vines, and shared a nice lunch together before heading back to school. Thank you to our parent chaperones for joining and helping make our first field trip a success!
Other highlights this week included a special snack tasting from Milo — chicken dumplings! The kids who tried them during circle time said they were delicious and all requested to have them in their lunches next week. 😉 We also wished Ms. Diana a very happy 34th birthday on Monday with lots of love and hugs! We ended our week with a visit from Vir’s mom, Sheena, and her childhood friend, Mukta, who wrote and illustrated the inspiring storybook, I Heart Art. The children love hearing it read aloud again and again and participated in an activity where they drew their very own self portraits. What a fun-filled week!
// Week of October 15: Photos //
// Curriculum Update, week of Oct. 9 //
The children returned from a long weekend eager and ready to take a deep dive right back into their work and play with their friends. This week the kids have shown us that they are totally excited and ready for it to feel more like autumn. We’ve enjoyed lots of time in the park collecting leaves — tossing them in the air and watching them gently float to the ground, noticing their change in color, keenly observing the various shapes and asking for more information, including the names of the trees they come from. They’ve also enjoyed choosing some samples to bring back to the classroom and placing them on our nature tray to observe with a magnifying glass and get a closer look at the subtle differences leaves hold. It’s amazing how something as simple as a leaf — something we as adults barely notice — turns into a treasure for children in the fall season. How exciting to be able to experience leaves through this lens and appreciate their beauty!
This week we also introduced a large pumpkin to the classroom thanks to Vir’s family! The children played a circle time game with Ms. Sasha to learn and internalize the nomenclature for the parts of the pumpkin and look forward to a lesson on scrubbing it. We are so eager and excited to go on an adventure to Abma Farm next week with the other Early Childhood classrooms and have the opportunity to pick our very own pumpkins!
// Photos from the week of Oct. 9 //
//Curriculum Update: Week of October 1 //
What a fun-packed week! This week we welcomed an old Green Room friend back to the new Indigo Room community. We are so excited to have him back and his friends were so excited to see him on Monday!
On Thursday we joined with the rest of the Hamilton Park Montessori School classrooms (EC and up) and celebrated the International Day of Peace and HPMS’s 12th birthday! We sang along and moved together to three beautiful songs: Peace Like a River, Light a Candle for Peace and a new favorite, All Together Now by The Beatles. What a joyous and moving way to end the week. Thanks to everyone who was able to join us for this special event. See you next Tuesday for even more fun!
// Photos from the Week of Oct. 1 //
