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Friday, October 14, 2005
Friday, October 14, 2005
Calendar
10/19 Kindergarten-Elementary Information meeting
10/24 All-staff Inservice day – School closed, no childcare
10/28 Halloween celebration and parade
ARDENWOOD HISTORIC FARM
GLM elementary and some 5 year old primary children will be visiting Ardenwood Farm on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Imagine a fully functioning farm on 205 acres in the heart of Silicon Valley, where time stopped about 100 years ago. At Ardenwood, visitors can help out with old-fashioned farm chores, visit a cow or sheep, try turn-of-the-century crafts, and ride a horse-drawn railroad. For more information about hours, special events, and visiting with your family, call 796-0199 or 791-4196.
HALLOWEEN CELEBRATION AT GLM
Children celebrate Halloween in different ways in every family. Some families have parties, some make costumes, others make an expedition of trick or treating. The school celebration is not a duplication of the family event, but a sensorial exploration within the school day of a holiday in our culture. Very young children usually just like to observe, and selectively participate in the unusual goings-on. The school celebrations are kid friendly and have a definite beginning, middle, and ending, so children can enjoy the novelty, and be reassured of the habitualness of the program. There are 3 very distinct age groups: toddler, preschoolers, and K-6 school-age. The event is planned with the children. Discussions are held at group time, songs are taught, and crafts are designed to acknowledge the coming of autumn.
The children know that on the designated day they will come to school with costumes over their street clothes (IF THEY WISH). The children have usual drop off rituals and share with classmates.
8:30 AM - Children come to the playgrounds with their teachers.
8:45 AM - Brief parade on asphalt playground with elementary students leading.
PARENT OBSERVERS NEED TO GATHER ALONG THE OUTER PERIMETER FENCING SO CHILDREN HAVE ROOM TO PARADE.
Children are free to observe, and not participate.
9-9:45 AM - Children are invited to rove the play-yards and choose from the activities set up by each classroom. Children do not have to do every craft, or visit every station.
9:45-10 AM - Parent helpers say goodbye, children are invited to individual class lunch areas to sing, snack and conclude the celebration.
10:00AM - Children in toddler and primary resume their usual class routines. Elementary class has dramatic activities appropriate to their age.
SOUND OF THE WEEK Each Wednesday your child is encouraged, with your help, to find an object at home (preferably not a toy) that begins with the sound of the week. Put it in a labeled bag to share with your child’s class. The sound for next week is “F”, as in Frog, Flower, and Fancy. Remember, the sound can also be in the middle or at the end of a word: h-u-F-F.
TUFF TUMBLERS TO CONTINUE
Tuff Tumblers has agreed to do two more gymnastic classes at GLM. There will be three classes (3:00, 3:30, & 4:00) beginning Wednesday, Oct. 19, and three classes (same times) beginning Friday, Oct. 21. Both sessions will run for six weeks (or longer, depending on holidays). Please sign-up ASAP, as these classes do fill up quickly.
CLASS NEWS
REDWOOD (ELEMENTARY)
It is basketball season at GLM! Our class has been practicing passing to their friends, jogging and dribbling, dribbling around obstacles, and dribbling between their own dominant and non-dominant hands. The children really like basketball and can't wait to play a "real" game!
On Wednesday our class went to see Batopia at the Lakeview Library! It was a very fascinating, informative show that was all about bats. The speaker, Maggie Hooper, was from the California Bat Conservation Fund. She began by telling the children about the misconceptions people have about bats, then the children saw a slide show with different species of bats, and finally, they saw some real bats who have been rescued and can no longer survive on their own in the wild.
The children had the following to say:
Zachary – Mosquitoes follow our breath, and I guess the bats follow the mosquitoes.
Kai – bats use “echcolocation” – it’s a sound the bats make and it bounces off the bugs. The bats know how close or far the bugs are with it.
Michael – Some big bats have ten times the eyesight we do.
Angelina – Bats have finger bones, just like we do, in their wings.
Clare – Some reddish-orange bats go in peach trees and some bugs like peaches and the bats eat the bugs and that’s a really lazy way to get food but you still get it.
We also learned: there are 815 different types of insect eating bats, 285 types of fruit eating bats in the rainforest, 16 types of carnivorous bats, and 3 types that drink blood (2 that drink bird blood and 1 that drinks mammal blood).
JACARANDA
Thank you to the many who have asked after Mrs. Saleem's family in Pakistan. Everyone is safe, although her brother's family lost their home and everything in it.
In the event of a disaster in our area, your child's extra clothing bag on their hook doubles as their disaster preparedness supply - please ensure your child will have extra layers of clothes, in sizes that fit.
MANDATORY Parent-teacher conferences will be November 15-16-17, 1-6 pm, available by sign up at the end of October.
Before attending conferences, each family needs to observe their child in the classroom for a thirty-minute period. Read more about observing, including how to be a "fly on the wall," on an information sheet in your parent boxes.
During the next Staff In-Service Day, October 24, 2005, the Jacaranda teachers will be assembling cultural resources for the classroom. Please bring National Geographics for clipping.
Two Elementary students joined the Jacaranda class last Friday afternoon and helped the afternoon children make cranberry cornbread for the Juniper & Jacaranda aftercare snack. The final product was a delicious success, and of course the process involved loving, kind older children interacting with the primary-age Jacaranda students.
Also in the afternoon, we studied a real, dead fish as part of our study of the parts of the fish. From their work with the parts of the fish matching cards on the shelf, the children already knew and were able to name the various parts of the rainbow trout, including fins, lateral line, etc.
When the younger children join a teacher on a walk around the campus during the mid- morning, the children's attention is focused on different parts of the environment, such as different species of trees, or songs or movement activities. This morning, the children listened for the different bird songs in the trees and in the air. They also watched and listened to the birds who live in the Lake Park building roof tiles that come and go and call to one another.
Thank you to Beth, Nico's mom, for reading to small groups of children on Thursday, and to Nancy, Sadie's mom, for celebrating Yom Kippur with the children on Friday.
JUNIPER
Clothing - GLM recommends clothes that the children can manage easily by themselves. Please choose clothes that can be pulled up and down easily for toileting purposes. Belts, bib overalls and button jump suits are inappropriate, as they require adult assistance and all too frequently are the cause of "accidents."
Parent Participation - Parent involvement is a hallmark of quality schools and an important element of being a part of Grand Lake Montessori. Jobs that any parent can volunteer for include: reading stories, food and/or craft preparation before a celebration or class event, sharing a cultural or family tradition, outdoor games, gardening, singing songs, sharing music or hobbies.
"It is often we who obstruct the child, and so become responsible for anomalies that last a life-time. Always must our treatment be as gentle as possible, avoiding violence, for we easily fail to realize how violent and hard we are being. We have to watch ourselves most carefully." - The Absorbent Mind, page 132.
LIVE OAK
Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, swish your bushy tail (repeat)
Wrinkle up your funny nose, hold an acorn in your toes.
Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, swish your bushy tail.
We are making the observations (however slight) of fall in our area. We went leaf collecting this week and began to identify the parts of the leaf. We continued our work on North American countries, parts of the fish, and land and water forms. The twos and threes in the class are very, very busy with sound games and learning the sandpaper letters. The fours are word building up a storm (today I saw three different rugs going at the same time) and some phonetic reading. It is so exciting. There is also a lot of exploring going on. Some children are choosing the pink tower and the brown stair every day to see what combinations they can make. And some children can’t get enough of making complex numbers with the golden bead materials.
Next week look for the Halloween sign up sheet.
Tomorrow is our picnic. I sure hope everyone can come. See you there!
GINKGO
We've had a great week! They especially loved talking about their three-day weekend enjoying special dinners, play dates, and going out of town.
This week we have started reading our first chapter book titled "Cam Jansen and the Snowy Day Mystery", one of the books we received from the Book Fair. The children are trying to guess the mystery before we get to the end of the story!. We're having a lot of fun talking about the possibilities (sometimes more than reading the book).
Mr. Hoffman joined our classroom this week and taught some new songs.
Thank you to Aiden's family for coming and baking with the class on Friday.
We had a fun time sharing our Sound of the Week items. Some children may not have brought in an item and that's OK, but everyone was able to think of words that start or end with the sound "E". Examples: Ear, Eye, Elliott! Some children tried to make up words! Thank you for helping your children to remember their items.
Have a great weekend.
MAGNOLIA
It was another busy week in Magnolia. The children have truly settled into the year and are all working with great focus. A big Happy Birthday to Ori and Jude Strayer who celebrated their 4th birthday with us. They shared some yummy pastries with us. Ms. Olivares needs two volunteers for an art project (decorating bags to hold all of the crafts made during the Halloween celebration), as well as pumpkin carving. Please e-mail her if you can help. Thanks!
MULBERRY
The Mulberry class wants to say a quick thank you to everyone who brought in items for Sound of the Week. The children really enjoy this time of sharing.
We had a terrific performance this week by a Latin American group called Alborada. They had children, teachers and parents up on their feet, dancing and singing. We look forward to having them come back again!
Please note that the mornings are becoming very chilly. Your child may need warmer clothing (sweaters, jackets). Be sure to check his/her extra clothing bag for weather-appropriate items, in the correct sizes. These toddlers grow fast!
Have a fun and safe weekend.
CAMELLIA
The Sound of the Week is coming along wonderfully. Everybody contributed wonderful things. The sound this week was "E", and we had Eggplant, Eye patch, and Elephant.
Remember next week is the "F" sound. Please bring something to share with the class.
Halloween is around the corner and the school is having a big celebration parade and lots of craft activities. The Brown Cottage is also having a parade and with many, many craft activities. Next week there will be a sign-up sheet for craft activities. Feel free to sign up more than one! The Halloween celebration is on Friday, Oct. 28. Everyone is welcome.
This week we read about pumpkins in the book, "I Like Pumpkins", by Jerry Smath.
It's about pumpkins of various sizes, shapes, and weights, and the children were amazed to see the different pumpkins.
We want to thank Diane Spiegel, Michael's mom, for getting a wonderful tea set for our afternoon teatime!
Calendar
10/19 Kindergarten-Elementary Information meeting
10/24 All-staff Inservice day – School closed, no childcare
10/28 Halloween celebration and parade
ARDENWOOD HISTORIC FARM
GLM elementary and some 5 year old primary children will be visiting Ardenwood Farm on Tuesday, Oct. 25. Imagine a fully functioning farm on 205 acres in the heart of Silicon Valley, where time stopped about 100 years ago. At Ardenwood, visitors can help out with old-fashioned farm chores, visit a cow or sheep, try turn-of-the-century crafts, and ride a horse-drawn railroad. For more information about hours, special events, and visiting with your family, call 796-0199 or 791-4196.
HALLOWEEN CELEBRATION AT GLM
Children celebrate Halloween in different ways in every family. Some families have parties, some make costumes, others make an expedition of trick or treating. The school celebration is not a duplication of the family event, but a sensorial exploration within the school day of a holiday in our culture. Very young children usually just like to observe, and selectively participate in the unusual goings-on. The school celebrations are kid friendly and have a definite beginning, middle, and ending, so children can enjoy the novelty, and be reassured of the habitualness of the program. There are 3 very distinct age groups: toddler, preschoolers, and K-6 school-age. The event is planned with the children. Discussions are held at group time, songs are taught, and crafts are designed to acknowledge the coming of autumn.
The children know that on the designated day they will come to school with costumes over their street clothes (IF THEY WISH). The children have usual drop off rituals and share with classmates.
8:30 AM - Children come to the playgrounds with their teachers.
8:45 AM - Brief parade on asphalt playground with elementary students leading.
PARENT OBSERVERS NEED TO GATHER ALONG THE OUTER PERIMETER FENCING SO CHILDREN HAVE ROOM TO PARADE.
Children are free to observe, and not participate.
9-9:45 AM - Children are invited to rove the play-yards and choose from the activities set up by each classroom. Children do not have to do every craft, or visit every station.
9:45-10 AM - Parent helpers say goodbye, children are invited to individual class lunch areas to sing, snack and conclude the celebration.
10:00AM - Children in toddler and primary resume their usual class routines. Elementary class has dramatic activities appropriate to their age.
SOUND OF THE WEEK Each Wednesday your child is encouraged, with your help, to find an object at home (preferably not a toy) that begins with the sound of the week. Put it in a labeled bag to share with your child’s class. The sound for next week is “F”, as in Frog, Flower, and Fancy. Remember, the sound can also be in the middle or at the end of a word: h-u-F-F.
TUFF TUMBLERS TO CONTINUE
Tuff Tumblers has agreed to do two more gymnastic classes at GLM. There will be three classes (3:00, 3:30, & 4:00) beginning Wednesday, Oct. 19, and three classes (same times) beginning Friday, Oct. 21. Both sessions will run for six weeks (or longer, depending on holidays). Please sign-up ASAP, as these classes do fill up quickly.
CLASS NEWS
REDWOOD (ELEMENTARY)
It is basketball season at GLM! Our class has been practicing passing to their friends, jogging and dribbling, dribbling around obstacles, and dribbling between their own dominant and non-dominant hands. The children really like basketball and can't wait to play a "real" game!
On Wednesday our class went to see Batopia at the Lakeview Library! It was a very fascinating, informative show that was all about bats. The speaker, Maggie Hooper, was from the California Bat Conservation Fund. She began by telling the children about the misconceptions people have about bats, then the children saw a slide show with different species of bats, and finally, they saw some real bats who have been rescued and can no longer survive on their own in the wild.
The children had the following to say:
Zachary – Mosquitoes follow our breath, and I guess the bats follow the mosquitoes.
Kai – bats use “echcolocation” – it’s a sound the bats make and it bounces off the bugs. The bats know how close or far the bugs are with it.
Michael – Some big bats have ten times the eyesight we do.
Angelina – Bats have finger bones, just like we do, in their wings.
Clare – Some reddish-orange bats go in peach trees and some bugs like peaches and the bats eat the bugs and that’s a really lazy way to get food but you still get it.
We also learned: there are 815 different types of insect eating bats, 285 types of fruit eating bats in the rainforest, 16 types of carnivorous bats, and 3 types that drink blood (2 that drink bird blood and 1 that drinks mammal blood).
JACARANDA
Thank you to the many who have asked after Mrs. Saleem's family in Pakistan. Everyone is safe, although her brother's family lost their home and everything in it.
In the event of a disaster in our area, your child's extra clothing bag on their hook doubles as their disaster preparedness supply - please ensure your child will have extra layers of clothes, in sizes that fit.
MANDATORY Parent-teacher conferences will be November 15-16-17, 1-6 pm, available by sign up at the end of October.
Before attending conferences, each family needs to observe their child in the classroom for a thirty-minute period. Read more about observing, including how to be a "fly on the wall," on an information sheet in your parent boxes.
During the next Staff In-Service Day, October 24, 2005, the Jacaranda teachers will be assembling cultural resources for the classroom. Please bring National Geographics for clipping.
Two Elementary students joined the Jacaranda class last Friday afternoon and helped the afternoon children make cranberry cornbread for the Juniper & Jacaranda aftercare snack. The final product was a delicious success, and of course the process involved loving, kind older children interacting with the primary-age Jacaranda students.
Also in the afternoon, we studied a real, dead fish as part of our study of the parts of the fish. From their work with the parts of the fish matching cards on the shelf, the children already knew and were able to name the various parts of the rainbow trout, including fins, lateral line, etc.
When the younger children join a teacher on a walk around the campus during the mid- morning, the children's attention is focused on different parts of the environment, such as different species of trees, or songs or movement activities. This morning, the children listened for the different bird songs in the trees and in the air. They also watched and listened to the birds who live in the Lake Park building roof tiles that come and go and call to one another.
Thank you to Beth, Nico's mom, for reading to small groups of children on Thursday, and to Nancy, Sadie's mom, for celebrating Yom Kippur with the children on Friday.
JUNIPER
Clothing - GLM recommends clothes that the children can manage easily by themselves. Please choose clothes that can be pulled up and down easily for toileting purposes. Belts, bib overalls and button jump suits are inappropriate, as they require adult assistance and all too frequently are the cause of "accidents."
Parent Participation - Parent involvement is a hallmark of quality schools and an important element of being a part of Grand Lake Montessori. Jobs that any parent can volunteer for include: reading stories, food and/or craft preparation before a celebration or class event, sharing a cultural or family tradition, outdoor games, gardening, singing songs, sharing music or hobbies.
"It is often we who obstruct the child, and so become responsible for anomalies that last a life-time. Always must our treatment be as gentle as possible, avoiding violence, for we easily fail to realize how violent and hard we are being. We have to watch ourselves most carefully." - The Absorbent Mind, page 132.
LIVE OAK
Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, swish your bushy tail (repeat)
Wrinkle up your funny nose, hold an acorn in your toes.
Gray Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, swish your bushy tail.
We are making the observations (however slight) of fall in our area. We went leaf collecting this week and began to identify the parts of the leaf. We continued our work on North American countries, parts of the fish, and land and water forms. The twos and threes in the class are very, very busy with sound games and learning the sandpaper letters. The fours are word building up a storm (today I saw three different rugs going at the same time) and some phonetic reading. It is so exciting. There is also a lot of exploring going on. Some children are choosing the pink tower and the brown stair every day to see what combinations they can make. And some children can’t get enough of making complex numbers with the golden bead materials.
Next week look for the Halloween sign up sheet.
Tomorrow is our picnic. I sure hope everyone can come. See you there!
GINKGO
We've had a great week! They especially loved talking about their three-day weekend enjoying special dinners, play dates, and going out of town.
This week we have started reading our first chapter book titled "Cam Jansen and the Snowy Day Mystery", one of the books we received from the Book Fair. The children are trying to guess the mystery before we get to the end of the story!. We're having a lot of fun talking about the possibilities (sometimes more than reading the book).
Mr. Hoffman joined our classroom this week and taught some new songs.
Thank you to Aiden's family for coming and baking with the class on Friday.
We had a fun time sharing our Sound of the Week items. Some children may not have brought in an item and that's OK, but everyone was able to think of words that start or end with the sound "E". Examples: Ear, Eye, Elliott! Some children tried to make up words! Thank you for helping your children to remember their items.
Have a great weekend.
MAGNOLIA
It was another busy week in Magnolia. The children have truly settled into the year and are all working with great focus. A big Happy Birthday to Ori and Jude Strayer who celebrated their 4th birthday with us. They shared some yummy pastries with us. Ms. Olivares needs two volunteers for an art project (decorating bags to hold all of the crafts made during the Halloween celebration), as well as pumpkin carving. Please e-mail her if you can help. Thanks!
MULBERRY
The Mulberry class wants to say a quick thank you to everyone who brought in items for Sound of the Week. The children really enjoy this time of sharing.
We had a terrific performance this week by a Latin American group called Alborada. They had children, teachers and parents up on their feet, dancing and singing. We look forward to having them come back again!
Please note that the mornings are becoming very chilly. Your child may need warmer clothing (sweaters, jackets). Be sure to check his/her extra clothing bag for weather-appropriate items, in the correct sizes. These toddlers grow fast!
Have a fun and safe weekend.
CAMELLIA
The Sound of the Week is coming along wonderfully. Everybody contributed wonderful things. The sound this week was "E", and we had Eggplant, Eye patch, and Elephant.
Remember next week is the "F" sound. Please bring something to share with the class.
Halloween is around the corner and the school is having a big celebration parade and lots of craft activities. The Brown Cottage is also having a parade and with many, many craft activities. Next week there will be a sign-up sheet for craft activities. Feel free to sign up more than one! The Halloween celebration is on Friday, Oct. 28. Everyone is welcome.
This week we read about pumpkins in the book, "I Like Pumpkins", by Jerry Smath.
It's about pumpkins of various sizes, shapes, and weights, and the children were amazed to see the different pumpkins.
We want to thank Diane Spiegel, Michael's mom, for getting a wonderful tea set for our afternoon teatime!
