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“…the child’s intelligence (is) a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination.” - Maria Montessori This year we look forward to developing a curious, kind, and inspired community together. We hope to ignite imagination in each other and help discover new passions and curiosities. Jamie SchaubJamie@traversechildrenshouse.org Room Parents _ |
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Classroom Highlights
December 16, 2024
Recently we’ve been learning about different celebrations that happen between November and January. I’ve been reading from the book “Let’s Get Festive, Celebrations Around the World” by Joanna Konczak and Eva Poklewska-Kozietto. While of course you know how excited your children are for Christmas, I am trying to remind them of all of the other celebrations happening in our community and around the world. We talked about: Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas in other countries, the winter solstice, Kwanzaa, and different new year traditions.
Many of your children have finished their studies and presented them, or will soon! We have a special acknowledgement to give to the 6th years who finished their MMUN position papers last week, which is a huge accomplishment!!
This week I will share one of my favorite art forms with your children, printmaking. On Friday they will have some examples to share with you!
I wish you all a sweet winter break filled with cozy times together reading books, playing games, and hopefully getting out in the snow!
See you on Friday for the sing-along, if not before!
Jamie
November 21, 2024
It was so lovely to meet with all of you and discuss your children! I want to share what a joy it is to know each of them and to be part of their lives, their growth, their challenges and their celebrations.
Today I am thinking about Rue in the classroom and what she has offered your children. For some they enjoy just giving her a little pet now and then (which has been shown to lower one’s heart rate), others love taking her on a walk (or a run), they try out new tricks and play with her, and they also make sure she isn’t eating snack, the compost, or escaping the classroom. She has offered them comfort, responsibility, and most obviously, joy. Right now she only comes once a week, and on that day she comes home with me and sleeps all the way until morning! Most visits she gets about 7 walks with small groups of friends. The love for her is apparent!
I’ve been using the book “Life Skills” by Keilly Swift to talk with your children about social and emotional learning. This week we talked about how we can sometimes have negative feelings about ourselves which can be visible through: low confidence, avoiding things, no concentration, mood swings, sleep changes, and feeling sick. We wrote the phrase “It’s good to be me” in our journals and also wrote some ideas about ways to help when we feel down. Those ideas include: getting into a routine, choosing healthy foods, moving your body, turning off screens, changing what you can, taking your mind off things, being kind to yourself, finding ways to boost your mood, and spending time with loved ones.
We are looking forward to our electricity outing tomorrow 11/22 and Stone Soup on Tuesday 11/26! I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving together! See you at the Holiday Sing on 12/20 at 11am.
October 18, 2024
Happy autumn!
We have been busy learning about why leaves change color, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the difference between fair and equal, operations with fractions, writing complete paragraphs, and practicing red words!
Part of my Orton-Gillingham training introduced me to new ways of teaching red words, or words that you just have to memorize to spell correctly because we cannot sound them out. Your children were tested on which words they know and we have been adding words to red word booklets while also arm tapping and finger tapping the spelling. We have enjoyed adding our kinesthetic sense to learn our spelling words.
We’ve been using the book “Antiracist Kid” by Tiffany Jewell to discuss and define concepts in the Justice chapter. This week we talked about the following words and gave examples: fair, equitable, justice, equal, equity, bias, and stereotype.
Many of the children in this classroom LOVE learning about ecosystems and making drawings to include the abiotic (non-living) and biotic (living) parts of the ecosystem. We’ve learned about the consumers and the role of decomposition.
We added a list of reminders to each table to encourage better choices, balance, and time management. Part of practicing executive functioning skills requires some scaffolding and I noticed that some students are able to continually make balanced choices from work to work and some needed reminders. We are hoping that by having written reminders, we will give less verbal reminders and they will learn to remember and balance on their own.
Coming up:
Picture day: Monday 10/21
Family visiting sign up here if you haven’t yet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jl-QeI8QuJYdAG7C3UifzEAryu12AwLx_ZJJPk6ieBo/edit?usp=sharing
Halloween: your children may BRING their costumes to wear in the classroom in the afternoon after Spanish. Please have them come to school in another outfit so that they are able to participate in PE and recess.
Dia de los Muertos: your children are learning about the celebration of Dia de los Muertos in Spanish class and our room. Please have your child write a short paragraph about a non-living ancestor to bring in with a photo (if you have one) on October 30th.
September 16, 2024
Cedar Classroom Families!
What an exciting time it has been being together these last weeks! Your children finished our classroom agreement and made an art piece to share how they would like to feel and how they agree to be in our room. I have attached a photo so that you can see! I think that my favorite is “we agree to be ourselves!”
In my class about supporting neurodivergence in the Montessori classroom we talked about the importance for all students to learn executive functioning skills. I began thinking about the ways that we support this in our room already. Your children are learning time management by writing what they work on in their work logs with the times they begin and end. They have the support of the adults around them to encourage them to move on to something else or remember to work on a lesson or study if we don’t see that happening.
One aspect that was discussed in class was working memory and the importance of practicing this. The example I can think of is when I teach them suffixes and prefixes we have charts across the room and your children travel and “collect” in their minds a line of words with the same root and different suffixes (i.e. jump, jumpy, jumping) and bring them back to write on their papers. We also started a new way to practice visually last week by looking at a picture of 20 objects for 30 seconds and then recording what they remember. We have now done this three times in the hopes of remembering more each time, your children have improved! You might enjoy practicing at home by remembering someone’s phone number and dialing it, an address and then searching directions, remembering prices for items in a store, etc.
Flexibility is another skill to learn! Much of school is predictable and the same, but in changing the schedule or the rules of a game it actually supports flexibility in children. I have seen your children naturally do this with games in the gym when they make up new rules or even a whole new game. Perhaps you can try this with a favorite card game or board game at home.
Lastly, our 6th year students have been promoted to Canadian Delegates for Montessori Model United Nations!