Maria Montessori

April News

As we are entering the second term, a lot of new work is being introduced to both classrooms. Water works and care of the environment activities have become very popular, such as water the plants in the Toddlers class and table cleaning, arranging tables and chairs after meals for the Early Years class.

In the Early Years class, the children are still trying to aim for academic excellence, with work on letter recognition, initial sounds, phonograms and sight words. They are developing their pencil grips steadily and they are doing their handwriting without ‘tears’ and with more confidence now. We also talk about the calendar during circle time every morning. With the help of Montessori materials, the children find abstract concepts and language skills easy to understand and remember. They are also learning to control their movements by walking instead of running in the classroom.

In the Toddlers class, there are several activities in the areas of colours, shapes, art. They have been busy learning about what are primary colours. They will be learning what colours they can get when they mix and play with the primary colours. We have also started to encourage the children to be independent to come up with their own art pieces using materials such as coloured papers, egg shells, fish scales, feathers, etc.

Since we started “Show and Tell” last month on Pets, the sessions have been very successful. We have seen a variety of objects and heard interesting stories about them. Through this process, the children are learning important communication skills such as speaking clearly, introducing themselves, offering descriptive details, preparing the information they wish to share, answering questions which are directed to them about the information they have shared, etc. Importantly, children are learning to speak in front of their classmates, which help to build their self-confidence. Please continue to support your child towards selecting objects and pictures of nature and culture to bring to school for “Show and Tell” on every Friday.

Our fun and fantastic theme for April is on Toys. Toys are more than for amusement as they profoundly influence many aspects of children’s lives. We will be looking into the origin of toys, types of toys even gran’s toys in comparison to present days. We will also learn about Malaysia traditional toys and be playing some Malaysian favourites such as seven stones, kites and spinning tops at school. We would like to inform you of one special day whereby the children will have a Teddy Bear picnic. Info will be sent out soon.

Mar News

Wow! With everyone settled in, we are looking forward to a wonderful peaceful March. Feb culminated with an enlightening tour to Tropical Spice Garden, to round up our theme on Plants. The children had a terrific time. It was so interesting to see a group of young children asking questions and learning the many new types of plants. Going on a field trip also taught the children how to behave on outings, care for themselves and friends.

We have been practicing handshakes. The children are learning how to shake hands, which hand is the right hand, and to make eye contact and smile when they greet someone. They are also learning one another’s names. We’ve been practicing our fine motor skills by cutting with scissors, stringing beads to make necklaces and bracelets. Our gross motor activities included tossing beanbags, throwing and catching balls, marching with musical percussions, doing the "Clap with Me", and of course, lots of music and movements. This month we will focus on children’s social skills such as sharing and taking turns.

We started to talk more about how and why we use calendars. On 13 Mar, we will be sending the calendars home for the Early Years children to finish as “homework” over the holiday. The calendars run from Jan – Dec of 2009. The children should finish writing the numbers and days. When they have finished, please help them to label dates they think are important throughout the year, like birthdays, holidays and special events. Please return the calendars to school on Monday after school break. We will be asking the children to share their calendars during our morning circle.

Our exciting theme in Mar will be Pets and we will be learning animal sounds, care of pets, body coverings and movements of animals. We will also be learning about occupation of people who work with animals.

At school
Some of the learning experiences during our Pets theme are :
· Creating a doghouse out of an old box for Floppy

· Show & Tell – The children can bring their stuffed animals to talk about them. If you are willing to bring your family pet to school to show the children, please let us know and we can arrange a time convenient for you and your pet.
· Listening to stories like Oxford Reading Tree - The Pet Shop, Me & My Dog, Tails are not for Pulling and Footprints.
· Pet Store – The children will be learning about counting and making choices.

At home
To develop fine motor skills, pls provide magazine for your child to cut or tear pictures of animals. These can be used to create an animal collage to hang in your child’s bedroom. Have fun with your child!

Dec Holiday Camp - Cooking Party

Does your child want to be Chef of the day? In Dec, we had a really fun cooking party for our school children as well as outside children for a week.

Who's the instructor? I'm proud to say that it's me. Yes! Another hidden talent that I have which is baking. The children, all between the ages of 5-12, grouped into two, have a great time creating and baking, as well as playing fun games, watching pastry and bakery videos and taking home some nifty treats!

We did a lot of prep work buying all the ingredients, cooking utensils, aprons sewn and pre-making our adequate mix of recipes - banana muffins, easy cheesy chicken dippers, cupcakes, cookies, crepes, pizzas, etc to ensure that everything will turn out well on the actual lesson. On the actual day, everything that the children do started from scratch. They weight, measured their ingredients, they made the dough and broke the egg all by themselves with little help from adults. It's time to get messy !

We had the children assembling their own individual pizzas - bowls of sauce, cheese and toppings were passed around the table and yes, I think some of the children weren’t really thinking that they’d be eating these as they piled on loads and loads of tomatoe.

They were so creative with their cookies and seemed to have a great time making little treats that then went into the oven marked with their name, and into goodie bags to take home after the party. We ended our cooking party with lots of party treats eg strawbery ice-cream crepes, melon skewers and jellies.

Feb News

What a great first month of school. We have been transitioning into new routines at school, learning everyone’s names, making new friends and getting to know each other. Currently there are 13 children in Toddlers Group ages 2-3 and 13 children in Early Years Group ages 4-6. The Early Years Group is under the guidance of Ms. Ng and I. She graduated with a Business Degree and has a passion in teaching. We look forward to an exciting year ahead with the children. You may have noticed there are 4 children attending our Junior Educare as well. One of them is Ms. Sri’s son. We are very delighted about this new addition to the school as we are providing this service to children whose primary schools are around the neighbourhood.

Our first theme was All About Myself. We discussed about our senses, how to take care of our teeth, how many fingers we have on our hands, where we are from and how old we are. In Montessori environment, there are some basic expectations we have for the children such as we tell the children “walking feet” means walk safely and calmly in the environment, “indoor voices” means use gentle voices, no yelling across the environment. We constantly remind the children not to disturb others who are working and return materials in good order to shelves.

We will start our second theme with the study of Botany by introducing Plants & Flowers. We use the book The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. It is a wonderful book to use especially for the younger children. Some of the activities planned for the children are, we will examine seeds, plant and compare different types of seeds, learn how seeds travel, learn how the stem carries water, learn the needs of plants, parts of plants and lots of art and crafts will be made with this theme. We encourage parents to participate with children by collecting different types of leaves and bring to school that we will press into a book.

To enhance our learning, the Early Years children will be going on a field trip to Tropical Spice Garden, Teluk Bahang Penang on Feb 25. The school does not have mass transportation so we rely on parent volunteers or teachers to transport our students to and from field trips. Further details will be sent out later on.

Birthday the Montessori Way

On 23rd Jan we celebrated Qian’s 2nd birthday. Glad that his busy parents were able to spend time organising a party for him. From the feedback from Qian's dad, he looked very excited and happy and this time he's aware that it's his birthday. I saw that too when I made a quick move downstairs to wish Qian Happy Birthday. No photos of Qian though, as I was upstairs teaching the Early Years. Ms. Sri was very happy with the children as they were able to follow the activity and the whole situation was very calm during the birthday. Hmm....that shows that our toddlers are growing up!!

Another birthday we celebrated was for Aden which was on 30th Jan. He is 2 years old too. We managed to do a Birthday Walk for Aden. A timeline of photos were shown to his friends and based on that we told stories to his friends. What sort of thing could he do when he was one? Sit up?.. Eat?.. Walk?.. Could he talk? We can see that this made the child feel so special.

Field Trip - Botanical Garden, Penang

Our school took a first ever field trip to Botanical Garden after learning about Insects. The children were transported by two cars. We departed from school at 9am. Here we all are...very hard to get the little ones to focus though, they were too excited to explore the plance. So Gabriel was left out in this photo... Gabriel Gabriel where are you ?...

We began with a walk from the entrance and helped our selves out at one of the shady spots near the river. While we were walking, I posed a few questions for the children to keep observing things around them. Can you spot a monkey ? Can you see a butterfly? What type of plant is this ? They had a blast with this!

A picnic mat provided a nice sit down moment for the children. We had sandwiches, children's fav drinks and fruit.
Do you want to play with me ? Let's go and catch some butterflies. I heard Ms. Estee said there are some dragonflies over there. Come on, let's go!

How many butterflies you caught ? Well...fun time has to end. It's time to go. The children helped packed the things and put in the picnic basket. They helped each other fold the mat.

This activity was a favourite for them. We truly experiencing fun time with each other and the children have chance get in touch with nature.

The day ended with a smile. We had a great day and perfect weather. We're already planning our next trip in Feb.

Jan News

Welcome back everyone to the start of the new term. We have certainly had a very busy month in Dec with holiday camp, cooking party and Christmas party too! We had lots of fun during the Christmas party. The children enjoyed decorating cookies and made party necklaces.

We are pleased to say that we have a total of 12 new children joining us this term. We hope that the children will settle in well soon and are looking forward to an exciting time with them. We will be spending most of our time getting the children know each other, daily routines and exploring the environment.

Our first theme is All About Me. We will be discussing about ourselves, our bodies and senses, favourite things, friends, families and also Chinese New Year festival that we will be celebrating end of this month. Some fun activities we have already planned for children include sharing information about their family as well as themselves. birthdays, making prints of body parts, culture table of Chinese New Year and lots of paint exploration.

We have a few children whose birthdays are around the corner and yes we encourage birthday celebration in our school. It’s a tradition in Montessori environment to celebrate children’s birthday by having a birthday walk. Here is how it goes..The birthday child will hold a globe and walk around a circle line. A candle will be lighted up and place on a model sun in the center of the circle. While the child is carrying the globe and walking on the circle line, his/her story (based on info given by parents) will be told. Every one complete walk around the sun represents the earth orbit around the sun one round and means one year is past. If the child is three years old, he will walk for three rounds. The child gets to blow the candle in the center at the end of his/her story. Then the birthday cake will be brought out and we’ll sing the birthday song together.

To let the children know more of the birthday child, photographs of the birthday child from each year of his/her life, a basket of his/her favourite book, toys or things will be shown to the class. These things will be displayed in the environment for a week and will be returned home after that. Parents are encouraged to inform the school early before the event.

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are enjoying the new year! I apologize that I have been absent from blogging as compared to my past presence. I have to get use to update my blog often as I know some of you out there are waiting for me to upload the photos that I've promised. Yes...i still remember and will do it soon... do appreciate your patience. I hope that I'll be here more in the near future as I've made some adjustments to the demands on my time at school because I have a bunch of dedicated teachers who help me a lot with school work and share their love of teaching with me. I really appreciate their hardwork.

Chinese Camp

The theme in Nov was Insects. I will post up our activities soon but I couldn't resist putting up two video clips from our Chinese Camp.