May Day Celebrations!

If your child was here at school yesterday (Friday April 29th) then you know about one of my favorite days of the year: May Day!
Yesterday we made May Day baskets and cut flowers to put in them.  Your work as parents is to continue with the plan when you return home....I'm quit sure your preschoolers will NOT let you forget!
The way it works is your child hangs their May basket on the door knob of a neighbor or friend, rings the doorbell and runs and hides.  We play acted this out at school yesterday and the kiddos were very excited to participate with you all at home.
To make a May Basket of your own:
Cut a large paper circle in half, use the half circle to form a cone shape (overlapping the straight side of the cut circle) next staple or glue your edges together, attach a handle by either again stapling or gluing or punch holes and thread a piece of string, ribbon or a pipe cleaner through to create a handle.  To see how click here:
May Day basket making

In a past Montessori Mama post I created a list of ways to enjoy May Day.  I thought you might like reading them.  Just click on the words: May Day Celebration List and it should open up.   

Enjoy your May Day friends, especially you Barlow!  Happy Birthday Little Guy.
PEACE
Jennifer

Spring Eggs!

Paper mache eggs I discovered how to do online, more fun to paint then to create. 

Look what Sam found!  The kids have LOVED finding and hiding plastic eggs around the playground!  This never gets old apparently.  The Friday before Easter Max hid the eggs for the kids to find and ever since then the eggs seem to be part of the playground.  I love watching the older children help their younger friends find eggs; it's very sweet.  

 Seed catalogs seem to arrive every day and what beautiful photos they have in them!  Perfect for spring flower collages.  This craft was simple and quick to pull together:
flower pictures to cut out
a marker to draw stems and leaves with
glue sticks
scissors
and a big piece of paper
When these beauties are finished I plan to mat them and hang them at our new school!

PEACE friends,
Jennifer

Summer?

Even though I am presently wearing a sweater, I'm thinking ahead to warmer days. Below are this summer's week long themes.  A child does not have to sign up for all five days to attend and the cost is the same per day as it is now. If you know of a family who might be interested in Helping Hands Family School, please send them my way.

 

1.) June 20^th ~ June 24^th Construction Week                                   

2.) June 27^th ~ July 1^st Outside the Cardboard Box

3.) July 5^th ~ July 8^th Dinosaur Week                                          

4.) July 11^th ~ July 15^th Once Upon a Time Week

5.) July 18^th ~ July 22^nd A Bugs Life Week                                     

6.) July 25^th ~ July 29^th Wonder Land Week

7.) Aug 1^st ~ Aug 5^th Under the Big Top Week                           

8.) Aug 8^th ~ Aug 12^th Let’s Splash Week

9.) Aug 15^th ~ Aug 19^th Space is the Place Week                        

August 22^nd ~ Sept. 5^th CLOSED

2011~2012 School Year Begins Sept. 6^th

For more information about our program please email Jennifer at zodijen@gmail.com

World Map Making

Two happy friends completed their continent maps this Friday!
This is a very big job indeed.  It takes much focus and concentration to complete and many breaks are needed.  Throughout the completion of these maps, days passed and many other activities were enjoyed. More photos of this process can be found, here:
Montessori Mama.  Enjoy~ Jennifer

Spring Has Sprung!

It could be the wagon rides and the shrill, joyful sounds children make that welcome the new season along....it could be the quiet appreciation of velvety flower petals found in a bed of last years leaves.....perhaps it's sitting in a lawn chair in the sunshine with a good friend that ushers in Spring?

Either way, I'm so happy Spring has arrived! My sincere apologies for the amount of MUD your children are bringing home in March. It just can not be avoided and it seems that preschoolers are drawn to mud. Speaking of March....a few belated birthday wishes to Sam K and Rosabella turned 4 this month!
In PEACE, Jennifer

Snow Much Fun!

click to enlarge photo collage

The spray bottles are filled with water and a drop of food coloring = instant snow fun!

March: In like a lion out like a lamb...

click on the image to see it larger

It has been a full and fun week! Many thanks to the Marshall family for their donation of flower bulbs this past fall. We have kept them cool and are now able to plant them in hopes of Spring.
The children are loving tending to their bulbs.

We introduced the month of March with lions and lambs, explaining the familiar saying and giving the leader of the day a choice between the two to stick on our classroom calendar.  Interestingly we have had the same number of "lion days" as "lamb days" so far. (see photo)

As our study about the world's continents continues we will begin learning about North America beginning next week.    Antarctica has been tons of icy fun to learn about especially the different types of penguins!  The children have enjoyed learning about penguins and for Ian and I, watching them pretending to BE penguins has proved to be very entertaining.

Did you know penguins often toboggan to get from place to place rather than walk (after all they have no knees)? Pictured above:
Marley, Esme and Rosie take off on their penguin bellies.

And, did you know, that penguins pass their eggs from penguin to penguin while standing in a group, to turn the eggs and keep them warm while they mature?  In the photo above, Oliver is balancing a plastic "penguin" egg on his feet while waddling to another penguin at circle, to pass his egg.  This is VERY hard to do, but tons of fun to try! The children enjoyed attempting to pass their eggs to a friend penguin.

This week we had a visit from Kim and Maddie Johnson, Drew's mom and big sister.  They visited Circle to share with us a book called: How to Make an Apple Pie and See The World by Margorie Priceman
While Kim read the book, Maddie pointed to the places around the globe that the little girl in the story visits, in her atlas.  The children enjoyed this story and the idea of it, traveling the globe for ingredients to make a pie, so much that we decided to create works in the classroom to illustrate the idea further.  That afternoon the children took turns representing the different continents, each with a crayon the color of the world map puzzle piece: Europe: Red, Asia: Yellow and so on.

Then other children visited the different places in search of pie ingredients, and the child with the crayon put a check mark on their shopping list.  They seemed to really enjoy this dramatic play extension. Today we continued with the idea and the children drew their own world maps, followed the directions in the book and glued pictures of the ingredients on to their map.

I'm running out of space and energy to write all that we did this week!  I hope all the kids had as much fun as we teachers did.  North America here we come!
Be well families,
Jennifer