SJES NEWS
December 2016
What a beautiful time to be at St. James…the whole building is buzzing with the excitement of Jesus’s birthday. I get to see children donating toys and hear their sweet voices singing their Christmas songs. Are you looking for ways to bring more Montessori techniques home? How about a few toys that emulate our philosophy? Montessori-friendly toys allow for natural, open-ended learning. They are typically made of wood and other natural materials. Of course, there really is no such thing as a Montessori toy. These are simply toys that work well for families using Montessori principles at home. Montessori-friendly toys aren’t easily breakable, battery-operated toys. They’re most often beautiful, natural toys that encourage happy play and development of important skills. These types of toys never become outdated … they’re the types of toys you can hand down to your grandkids.
Christmas Gift Ideas for Toddlers 18 months to 3 Jumbo Primary Stringing Bead Set by Skoolzy
Small Rainbow Nesting Wooden Blocks Stacker, "Elements" of Nature: AIR by Grimm's Spiel & Holz
Melissa & Doug Beginner Pattern Blocks
Melissa & Doug Fold and Go Mini Barn
Guidecraft Jr. Rainbow Blocks
Plan Toys Cone Sorting
Christmas Gift Ideas for Primary Children, ages 3-6 Brio Educational Builder Set, Ages 5 Plus
Geo Shape Tack Zap Haba 2300
Melissa & Doug See & Spell
Montessori Phonetic Reading Blocks for the Beginning Reader
Imagability Wedgits Starter Set - 15 Piece Set
Unpainted Russian Nesting Dolls by Best Pysanky Nesting Dolls
POOF-Slinky 4600MBL Ideal Amaze 'N' Marbles
Learning Resources Stethoscope Melissa & Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards
Calla Admire’s family won last year’s auction bid for her to create this year’s Christmas program cover. She chose to make a lovely mosaic and entitled her artwork “The Christmas Star.”
Karolina Haas’ family won last year’s auction bid to have her featured on our annual Christmas card. Isn’t she a delightful Angel?
Merry Christmas! Mrs. Loree
Dear Famlies: We know winter is nearly here as we watch the final leaves drop from the trees. We hope you enjoyed the Thanksgiving break and that everyone was able to spend some quality time with their families. A big thanks to all of you for making both of our Thanksgiving Feasts a success. Also, a special thanks to our awesome parent volunteers who helped to set up and clean up! The MDO children continue to work on refining their classroom skills, including completing a work cycle. There are many steps involved with completing a work cycle, including pushing in a chair, cleaning up spills,
rolling up rugs, returning the work to its proper place, etc. Our students are learning many great skills that will continue to develop into the new year! We are also teaching the children how to blow their own noses and wash their hands. Please help us by reinforcing these lessons at home. After all, practice makes perfect!
In the classroom, some of our grace and courtesy lessons are teaching the children to apologize after making a “sad choice” and how to say “please and thank you” when they feel appreciation for something or someone. This practice allows the children to focus on the good, while also helping them cultivate an attitude of gratitude from an early age. We have been elebrating the winter holidays with new works on the shelves that reflect some of the symbols of the season. We have learned about the Nativity from a special book, and the children love to arrange the Nativity figures in a the manger.
Decorating a christmas tree
Sorting by color
We wish you a happy and healthy winter break! Ms. Eva, Ms. Mary and Ms. Pamela
MDO
Sticker work
Maria Montessori believed that a child’s mind is mathematical and the formation of this mathematical mind begins with practical life and sensorial materials, which help develop deep levels of concentration. Deep concentration can occur while mopping, dusting, digging in the sand, washing carrots, opening and closing, and doing a puzzle.
Fulton transferring, counting and sorting.
Math concepts are introduced to toddlers through integrated and natural experiences from their environment, such as seeing shapes and objects, language, in-hand exploration, spacial awareness, and visual discrepancy. Berkeley working with the triangle and green pegs.
The whole classroom sets the table for math, through simple daily activities centered around collecting, counting, sorting, putting things in order, classifying, comparing sizes and colors, carrying heavy objects by hand, setting the table, baking, and discovering relationships and patterns through these activities. Once a child has experienced basic concepts involved with practical life and sensorial materials the child will progress naturally to the beginning math activities.
Enjoy your holiday, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Mrs. Anna and Mrs. Andrea
Toddler 1
Clockwise from top: Jackson and Sawyer collecting, sorting, and counting acorns on the playground; Madison concentrating on open and close work; Lainey working on a rectangle shape puzzle.
Just like that, with a blink of an eye 2016 has come to an end. We are rushing around finishing up last minute plans so we can celebrate this Christmas season with family and friends. Let's not forget that toddlers can get overwhelmed very quickly. Though it can be very tempting and seem harmless to give our children our iPhones and iPads to entertain them while we finish up shopping, dining out, or cooking, young children who have way too much screen time aren't getting a chance to develop many social skills. Toddlers need lots of face to face interaction. This helps them develop their speech and language, develop empathy Matteo is hanging ornaments on our tree for others, problem solve, build patience, and build attention span. During this break try to spend some time outdoors letting your child explore nature. Some ideas; collecting leaves/acorns, taking a nature walk, or riding bikes. Try playing "what's that sound?" - making silence and then say what you hear. It is an excellent way to refine their listening skills.
Toddler 2
In the classroom we have kept busy with new Christmas work.
Barrett's favorite work is the flannel board, this month it is the birth of Jesus.
Connor focusing on decorating the felt Christmas tree.
We look forward seeing you in the New Year! We wish everyone safe travels and Merry Christmas! Blessings, April, Lily and Annabel Jack is creating the birth of Jesus.
'Tis the Season!! Christmas lights and jingle bells, ornaments, and pageant songs! All these things describe one thing in Toddler 3 right now: Christmas is coming! The children were so excited to walk in and see the Christmas tree in our classroom; they were even more excited to string ornaments to put on it! Decorating the tree has been a very popular work this year! Taking turns, sharing, and working together has become quite the focus in the Toddler 3 room. Normally, we encourage the children to choose their own work, but sometimes it is nice to have a friend's help while working. Once the children become aware that they are sharing they start to help each other make connections they were not able to make while working independently. Some works that have become “sharing� works are : building a train track, block building, reading a story (they like to read to one another), and the flannel board.
Vinny decorated our classroom Christmas Tree.
Toddler 3
The children have also taken it upon themselves to share the sink in the bathroom to wash hands
Avery concentrates on an ornament making work.
Isaac spoons jingle bells to practice his fine motor skills.
together (pumping soap can be challenging at this age). You also will find the children helping each other throughout the day: putting on shoes, cleaning
up work, finding one another's jacket or water bottle. The children are enhancing their grace and courtesy skills by the practice of sharing and helping one another. Although, the Montessori philosophy is independently structured, compassion for each other's work and being kind to one another is important when "growing a child". Happy Holidays, Toddler 3 team Jones pours green water from cup to cup.
Evelyn makes a flower arrangement out of holiday colored flowers.
Hello December! The children have enjoyed the cooler weather gardening and playing outside. Please remember to send your child with a coat. Even with cooler weather, we still go out to the playground. The children have also been working on independently putting their coats on. "Tag to your toes, and your arms through the holes. Flip it over your head and you're ready to go!" Have a wonderful Christmas holiday.
Mrs. Loree showing the children the parts of the poinsettia during gardening. Second year toddlers typically attend gardening.
Toddler 4
Happy 3rd birthday Lenna. Lenna walked around the sun three times during her birthday celebration. This is a special tradition we enjoy!
Cole working hard on egg shell crushing. Sprinkling egg shells on the plants help to keep bugs and critters away.
Gray and Logan enjoying a cool morning on the tire swing. Gray and Logan have mastered independent putting their coats on!
MERRY CHRISTMAS! Mrs. Amanda and Ms. Ashley
Toddler C
Christmas
Pageant & Parties
Primary Chri
istmas
Pageant & Parties
Dear Primary 1 Families, Our classroom has been filled with the joy of the season and upcoming celebrations! As this is the season of giving, the children have been busy creating cards, making decorations of stringing beads, and holiday metal inset designs. We have had great fun decorating our tree and room with their creative designs! We have been reading a lot of holiday books and singing Christmas songs. We have also enjoyed having"choir" with Ms. Maria and writing letters to Santa!
Primary 1
We are also still doing great works as well. Kindergarten as well as some second years have been working with the golden beads to add large numbers into the thousands. We have been working on the large moveable alphabet and writing more. Some of my younger second years and older first years have started working on maps. With all the children the Christmas themed practical life works have been a big hit, such as nesting Santa dolls and scooping ornaments! All in all it has been a great month with lots of fun and advanced works! May the joy and love of the season be with you all. Ms. Amaris and Ms. Anna
We have had a flurry of Christmas activities and works, along with all of the regular Montessori works, in our classroom. With the addition of the Christmas works, we have been very busy. And we have had fun busily preparing for Christmas. Stringing beads on pipe cleaners is a tradition in our classroom. The students string beads on pipe cleaners and hang them on our classroom tree. The older children start independently “patterning” the beads on the pipe cleaners. Their minds are very busy deciding which pattern and colors they want, then finding them in the bead basket. Our tree looks beautiful. The students take the “ornaments” home when we leave school for the holidays. Additionally we have Christmas coloring works, lacing works, sorting works, and a wonderful stash of items in our Art Cache to help with Christmas Art creations. Practicing the songs for the Christmas Program is always a favorite of ours. Listening to the students sing and learn the songs is just priceless.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Enjoy this blessed season with your children, families and friends. May we always remember to count our many, many blessings! Much love. All the best, Mrs. Barrineau and Ms. Sheila
Primary 2
Parents of Primary 3, Merry Christmas! We have had an exciting month full of love and celebration. We hope each of you enjoy the holidays and the precious time with your families. In January we will getting back into the swing of things and starting our new year off with new and exciting challenges! The winter months are a great time for focused work, as the children settle in and are ready to build on lessons they mastered in the fall. This past month we have had a chance to do some food tasting. The children got to try seaweed and got to learn about how it is harvested. They loved talking about the taste of it and every child in class was brave enough to try it. Tasting activities help the child to develop a sense of how to describe the foods they eat. The children have started to be introduced to more abstract extensions of
material - especially in the sensorial area of the classroom. They are enjoying our new sensorial cards where they get to combine activities to make more complicated designs with the material.
Next month we will be learning about some great leaders of our country such as Martin Luther King Jr. We will be talking about what it means to be a leader in our classroom and how each member of our class can be a leader in their own way. Our 1st year students will continue to expand their knowledge and develop their fine and gross motor skills. A lot of our second year children are beginning to read and are working on blending consonant-vowel-consonant words. We love seeing the joy in their eyes when they realize they can read on their own! Our kindergarteners will be memorizing their family phone number and continuing to expand their knowledge of the continents and cultures in each specific continent. We are looking forward to an amazing start of 2017. -Mrs. Eloise & Ms. Jaymie
Primary 3
Dear Primary 4 Families, The past few weeks have been busy, busy in the classroom! The room has been filled with the excitement of the holiday season. The hustle and bustle of the time has been very prominent in our classroom as we hear whispers and laughs of Santa, Christmas morning, and most importantly the birth of baby Jesus. If you were to take a glance inside our classroom any day during the month of December you would see the children decorating one of our Christmas trees, setting up a Nativity scene, stringing bead ornaments, or collaging gingerbread men. Our Kindergartners have been busy keeping track of the number of days until Christmas using the Advent calendar and using the colored bead bars as ornaments on Christmas trees to then be added together. Eva decorates our live Christmas tree
We are quite grateful we work at a school where we can not only celebrate Christmas with the children, but also have the opportunity to teach them the true meaning of the Christmas holiday through our chapel lessons or by simply reading the Christmas story. Anna Kate and Anna collage gingerbread men
Ms. Bianca and I absolutely love and cherish this time in the classroom with the children and we are constantly reminded by how wonderfully lucky we are to have this classroom filled with our Primary 4 children. We pause to reflect on last year as we move through the season as this is our second year with many of our Kindergarten and Second Level Keaton uses a pine branch students. We are constantly for texture painting amazed by how much they have learned, grown, and changed over the past year and a half. Our new first levels have made themselves at home in our classroom and we have quite enjoyed getting to know all of their different personalities. One of the most exciting opportunities as a Montessori teacher is getting the opportunity to know a child during the 3 year cycle and we are so thankful to have the chance to do that with your children.
Annabelle has an audience as she enjoys Christmas themed addition
Christmas Blessings, Ms. Sarah and Ms. Bianca
Primary 4
Liam uses play-doh to decorate
It's the holiday season! I hope you and your family have had fun preparing for the most wonderful time of the year. We certainly have here at St. James! In art class this month, the students have been working on Christmas tree projects. The Kindergartners painted a beautiful winter scene on canvas. They started the project by drawing a sketch of the horizon. Then the students decided if they wanted to paint a daytime sky or a nighttime sky. They got a lesson in color mixing by adding either white (daytime) or black (nighttime) to their blue paint. They painted the sky with their mixed color, and then they painted hills of snow. They also added falling snow to the background by watering down white paint and splattering it over the canvas. Next, they painted a tree (or trees) with just a simple brush stroke. Some children decided to add stars and ornaments to their tree, while others preferred to leave their tree unadorned. Both styles turned out beautifully! I hope this painting is something you will treasure and put out every Christmas!
The second level students also made a Christmas tree project. They started their project by gluing pieces of colored tissue paper to a Christmas tree cut out. Each student got three different sized trees to decorate with tissue. The students told me the trees look like they have Christmas tree lights on them! They are right - they do! After all the trees were covered in tissue, the students got a piece of paper and colored a sky and hills of snow. Then they took their tissue paper trees, and glued them on to the hills. The result is a beautiful and colorful Christmas scene!
In technology, we completed our digital image project that we have been working on for the past several months. The final project is a 2017 calendar! All of the images in the calendar were drawn by the kindergarten students. I took their individual images, compiled them, and turned them into a calendar. I am so proud of all the hard work the students put in to their drawings. I think the calendar turned out so well! I hope you all enjoy seeing your children's beautiful pictures every month next year! Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday break! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Art & Technology
Ms. Hanna
December in the Children’s
Garden
This month we have had lessons on some of the plants that prefer cold weather…snapdragons, Sweet William, Johnny Jump Ups and pansies to name a few. We’ve noticed some of our plants are beginning to die and have talked about the difference between annual plants that live a year and perennials that will return in the spring. We also had a lesson on the Parts of the Poinsettia- it’s always fun for me to share interesting tidbits about plants! Did you know the actual flower of the poinsettia are the tiny yellow bits at the top of the plant? We’ve also made some edible ornaments for the birds and squirrels in our garden.
I also wanted to share some of the rules of the garden since so many families love to go out and enjoy this beautiful space. I definitely want you to continue your trips to the garden, but please keep in mind that it is essentially an outdoor classroom.
The Children’s Garden Rules: • We use walking feet on the paths. • We can use different patterns of movement on the “Hopping Rocks.” • The rocks stay on the ground (the fish are scared of rocks being thrown into their pond). •We only choose a work in the garden with Mrs. Loree or a teacher. • We lay on our stomachs on the observation ledge to watch the fish. • You may harvest produce and herbs to take home as long as you leave some for the classrooms. Thanks for helping us keep our garden beautiful and your children safe! Mrs. Loree
It is hard to believe that it is already December, the year has flown by. I have enjoyed getting to know your children this year. They make me laugh at the end of the school day. Please remember to check the baskets at the end of the day for your child’s jacket. The white baskets in the hallway are for Mrs. Amaris and Mrs. Barrineau’s classroom. If you are missing a jacket or any other item, please check that the Lost & Found Basket that is by the back door to the playground. Speaking of winter gear, please make sure you label your child’s jacket and if the jacket had a previous owner, please write your child’s name in the garment as well. We always like to go outside in ASC and sometimes this can be the coolest part of the day because the sun is starting to set. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call me. Lisa Wilson
ASC
"Mary will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel " Matthew 1:23 We have been talking about the season of Advent in chapel which means "coming." We have talked about preparing for the coming of Christmas and what that looks like such as decorations, singing, presents and so forth. More importantly we have been talking about what Christmas is really about - celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and remembering what we have learned from his life and what that looks like. Loving others, helping others, feeding the hungry and taking care of the sick to name a few. It's such a pleasure to hear all of the children's thoughts on how we can be like Jesus. We also remember during Advent that there will be another coming. No one, not even the angels know when Jesus will return, but we must be prepared by continuing to do our best to live the way Jesus taught us. The Bright Morning Star, The Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords, our Hope and our Salvation is always with us! Thanks be to God! Merry Christmas to you all! Ms. Amaris
Chapel