Parents,
It was so much fun to see so many of you at the fall festival!
This week we will write our mission statement using several of the books that we have read this past month. Once we get it written we will say it at the beginning of class every day. I love writing these. They are so powerful and help us begin each day with the end in mind!
This week we will be talking about the parts of a pumpkin, magnetic vs. non-magnetic and introduce our first continent study, our own continent of North America.
We will be learning two songs this month. One is America the Beautiful and the other is I’m Lucky. We will be performing these songs during our class feast. We will be joining Ms. Joy’s class and making a relish tray, butter, and corn bread. Parents are invited and encouraged to come to this event. It will be Friday the 17th. I will be posting a sign up to bring items for the feast. The items need to come unprepared the day of the feast as the children will be preparing them. We could also use two parent volunteers to help the entire time so if you are interested send me an email.
At conferences many of you asked what their child does while they are in class. This brings up one of Montessori’s core principles. The concept of choice. In a Montessori classroom children are free to choose what they would like to work on – within limits. There are two basic ground rules: you have to have had a lesson and the material has to be available. Maria Montessori said “These children have free choice all day long. Life is based on choice, so they learn to make their own decisions. They must decide and choose for themselves all the time . . . they cannot learn through obedience to the commands of another”. In Angeline Stoll Lillard’s book Montessori: the science behind the genius she talks about the many studies that have been done that support the idea that having choice is a great benefit to education, learning and desire to learn more. Let me share just one with you. A study was done where children were asked to play a computer math game. Half of the children were able to choose the name of their space ship that took them through the game and half were not. The children who were able to choose the name of their space ship liked the game better and played it more than the children who did not name their space ship. They also choose more challenging tasks in the game and asked for fewer hints. They showed greater improvement from pre-test to post-test. “Having a sense of control over one’s environment is associated with better learning and better performance in children. A wide range of positive outcomes stemmed from a very simple choice manipulation” (Lillard, p. 84).
Many parents often confuse “choice” with “no limits”. These two could not be more different. The choices we offer to children need to be appropriate, direct and simple. One example might be “Sally which shoes do you want to wear today? Your tennis shoes or your sandals?” Note that not wearing shoes was not one of the options given. We empower our children when we offer them appropriate choices.
We would also like to have parents begin to come into the classroom to help with reading. If you are interested in volunteering please sign up on the following link https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/wrkwu I will post a new link each week. Thank you so much for all of your support!!
We hope you have a great week!
Ms. Jen & Ms. Martha