de Colores!

A little snippet from the Enrichment program in December.
Click HERE to Enjoy!

Shapes

Metal insets were designed by Maria Montessori to teach handwriting. Fundamentally they are metal stencils of ten basic shapes: circle, ellipse, oval, curvilinear triangle, quatrefoil, square, rectangle, triangle, trapezoid, and pentagon. The thick, sturdy metal frame teaches the child control of her pencil as it acts as a guide. Again, the child is instructed to follow a prescribed path around the frame – counterclockwise, the same direction most round letters are formed. Later lessons include tracing the inset and drawing lines within the shapes, that mimic later strokes used in forming letters.

As children learn how to control their pencils while tracing around the various shapes, they also learn to name all of them. This is the most abstract way the child is guided in his work with the various shapes, other than trying to draw them free-hand.

Friendship Soup

Each year, in the time of harvest, the courageous and brave venture out of their rooms to search and find -
The Fruits of Their Labors!

Each of the primary students brings an ingredient for the soup. Ingredients include tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, beans and onions. The students are responsible to wash and cut the vegetables themselves. Then, all of the vegetables are combined with broth, herbs and lots of love.

Parents and friends are invited to celebrate the friendship (and soup) with the children. It is a beautiful day with lots of proud parents and children. After all, how often do children prepare the food in your home?>
Give it a try, they can do it!

Add a book to this celebration - try:

Cleanest frog in town!

A basic premise behind the Montessori philosophy of early childhood education is that every child is eager for work, even when the work seems like chores to the adult. Through the activities of Practical Life, children not only perform a task; they are also forming foundations on which to organize skills and intelligence. Nowhere is this premise more evident than in Washing and Scrubbing exercises. This activity starts in the Toddler classes. Through these activities, children develop concentration, become aware of order and sequencing, gain control over their movements, become more independent, and learn to care for their surroundings.

AND, it is pretty fun to play with frogs, soap and water while you are at school! As with all things, it is easiest to learn when you just think you are having fun.

Mama Jama

the story telling Mama!


These children are always excited to see Mama Jama here at Montessori!

They hang on every word!

When you add the wonderful story teller AND the fact that it is pajama day...
sounds like you have a perfect day to me!

Traditional Montessori Toy

These little beauties are Knobbed Cylindrical Blocks.
They look simple enough, but...

The cylinders vary in diameter and height. Again, simple enough - but, there is a greater purpose than only the fun of playing with blocks. That would be plenty!

The Aim:

1. To help develop the child's visual discrimination of size, volume, thickness and height. To develop eye and hand coordination and enhance fine motor skill.

2. Indirectly, to prepare the child for writing through the handling of the cylinders by their knobs.

3. Indirectly, to prepare the child for later work in Mathematics, through observation of the regular difference in the cylinders.

SCHOOL PHOTOS!

Remember that this week Lindsey Lingenfelter of Linden Tree Photography will make individual school pictures next Tuesday and Wednesday, September 28th and 29th.

Lindsey will photograph the Blue Room, Yellow Room and Green Room (2 day) on Tuesday and the Red Room and Green Room (3 day) on Wednesday.

You will have the opportunity to order your photographs from the proofs.

Enrichment

Our Enrichment Program started on September 1st. This program is for students who are 4 1/2 years of age and up. The program meets Monday through Thursday from 12 until 1:30pm.

One new thing that the students will be learning this year is Spanish. Ms. Miriam is working with the students to make learning a new language fun!

In addition to Spanish, the children will learn about science with Ms. Audrey. If you have not considered Enrichment for your children, please do!

New Year - New Spirit!

We are off to a great new start at LaGrange Montessori! The children and teachers are getting settled into their new schedules.

One way to get to know other parents and students better is to attend Spirit Nights. In addition to all the fun, we raise some money for the school. We kicked off this year with one at Chick-fil-A. The children enjoyed playing together and getting Ms. Bobby to paint beautiful birds, tiaras and bugs. We will keep you updated for the next Spirit Night!

Drawing

All children should have a creative outlet. At 1st Presbyterian Montessori, we provide all forms of art materials so the children have a wide variety of opportunities to be creative.

Snack!!

What kid doesn't like snack? Seriously, what adult doesn't like snack for that matter? What's unique at Montessori about snack time is that the children are 100% responsible for preparing it themselves! And they eat it when THEY choose! Some eat snack around 9:15am and some eat around 10:45 - it's completely their choice!

It starts with hand washing. The child fills up a pitcher with water (to the green line) - pours it into a larger container where they use soap and a scrub brush to wash their hands. Then they empty the larger container into the sink, dry their hands and proceed to the list with their names.

Once they find their name, they remove it and place it in

to a basket - this lets everyone know that "Lucy" has had her snack.

Then the child chooses his or her snack, the day these pictures were taken the choice was Cheez-its or an apple

They also fill their own cups with water and then sit down at the snack table with

3 of their other friends to enjoy their healthy snack!

Dr. Seuss

1st Presbyterian Montessori had a very special visitor today - Cat in the Hat came by to help celebrate Dr. Seuss' 106th birthday. The Cat in the Hat read to both the toddler classes & the primary classes - it was really such a treat! Cat in the Hat read one of Dr. Seuss' books - a really good book - the Foot Book.

Poking

Have you ever heard your child talk about "poking" and wondered what they were talking about? Well, we're here to tell you!

Poking involves a large thumb tack, a carpet square and an image on card stock. The child uses a large thumb tack to poke around the image outlined on the paper. Poking around the outline perforates the image so that its easily detached. The act of poking aids in the development of fine motor skills and eye-hand coordination. It also mimics holding a pencil - which is important for handwriting skills.

Chick-a-dees

Here are two of our nine chicks...aren't they something else? The kids sure think so!

NINE!!

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was to go into school today and see how many chicks hatched last night...can you imagine how our children felt?? I was beyond giddy this morning when Ms. Emily told me there were NINE new baby chicks!! Honestly, I can't wait to go back in a few hours to see how many more there will be!!

Baby Chicks!!

If you have or know a child in one of our primary classes than you surely have heard about our chicken eggs!! Both the red room & the blue room have egg incubators and each hold about 30 eggs! As our children are learning, it takes about 21 days for a chick to hatch from an egg. During that time the eggs must be kept at a certain temperature and turned several times a day. Normally, a brooding mother chicken would do all this work, but seeing as we don't have 30+ chickens in our rooms we are using egg incubators to do the work for us!

Along with the incubators each classroom has their own "demonstration" egg. This set of 21 eggs shows the daily progression of a chick in the egg during their 21 day gestation period. Its not unusual, first thing in the morning, for the children run to look at that day's egg to see how the baby chicks have developed.

Today we had some very, very "egg-citing" news in the red room...our first chick hatched from it's shell, soon followed by another chick! When we left the class room at the end of the day there were 2 hatched chicks and several cracked eggs rocking & rolling!!

Thanks to InterfaceFlor for making the incubators and demonstration eggs possible! Last year, Ms. Audrey, from the red room, and Ms. Teresa from the Blue room. wrote & received a grant for this amazing project!

Premier Post

Welcome to the 1st Presybyterian Montessori blog! We hope that this will be a place for you to keep up with the current events of our little school, learn more about the philosophy of Montessori and watch as your children learn and grow in a safe, warm environment. We plan on having posts from our Director, Pat Headrick, a teacher or two, perhaps something from a parents perspective and most definitely we'll have input from some of our students!!

Since no blog is complete without images we'll try to keep this one full of fun pictures so keep your eyes out for your precious children! We will never post your child's name and only post pictures of children whose parents signed the consent form at the beginning of the year.

If you have any questions of comments please do not hesitate to let us know! You can contact us at 706.812.8513.