A kind and gentle North Austin community school
Children love to construct, and to de-construct. This is part of the imaginary play in which every child engages. In a Montessori classroom, the building materials are specially-designed to promote future success in math and reading. The blocks and cylinders are built at proportional increments. A child working with these materials will intrinsically become acquainted with […]
Maria Montessori tells us to “Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.” So when our teachers recognize that some of our young scholars need some down-time, even on the playground, we respond. The photos below show the kids’ appreciation of their teachers’ efforts.
Our little scholars have returned from Spring Break and went right back to work. Our teachers couldn’t help but notice that the children themselves must be feeling the Spring Fever, as their choices of works seem to reflect the warm breezes that we are feeling outside….
With the awesome help of two of our parents, we now have a lovely new garden in the playground, surrounding our spritely young oak tree. In the spirit of the idea that you will take care of what you create, the students planted all of the new plants! One more from Friday, when we took […]
This morning we had a visitor–one of our Grandpas–and he shared his rock collection with us! There were lava rocks, crystals, fossils and even a meteorite!
Tuesday, Feb 16: We released the butterflies to nature this morning, and all five flew away! Saturday, Feb 13: While at school this afternoon, Rick noted the last butterfly has emerged! It’s the smallest of the five. Wednesday, Feb 10: This morning we arrived to the third butterfly and the fourth, the smallest one yet, secretly and […]
As any teacher at any level knows, one of the keys is to find ways to interest the students in the topic at hand. Who doesn’t love panda bears? For many of our students, our pandas help bridge from counting out loud to counting objects to “labeling” the sets with the number. For pre-school age children, […]
One of our favorite Montessori quotes is “The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’ ” Last week we welcomed back our young students from Winter Break, including three new faces to our class roster. Despite the time […]
We had a wonderful time this morning at our family sing-along. Special thanks to Mrs Laura for the wonderful work preparing our young scholars for the songs. Happy Holidays to all! Student art on our door for the holidays! Spinning dreidels while everyone else sings “Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel…” We’re sad to say goodbye to one […]
Earlier this week, one of our parents visited school to talk to our little students learned about Hanukah. We learned all about the story of the lights, and we lit all eight candles on two (yes, two!) menorahs.
The past few weeks we have been learning our colors en espanol. So far, we know well rojo, naranja, amarillo y verde. Makes for some nice Christmas tree collages, eh?
We regularly add items to our Amazon Wish List, and even though we do the “adding” it’s still a surprise when they arrive. Big thanks to everyone who shops for us. Check out our latest addition to the classroom: Five rollers that each form 16 different words for our young readers!