October Fun

Wow, the month of October has really flown by and we can hardly believe that Halloween is already behind us! In the month of October, our classroom works have transitioned to reflect the festive fall season. The children have enjoyed reading the counting book “Ten Little Pumpkins”, and practicing counting with a basket of real pumpkins on our math shelf. On our walks to Grover Cleveland Park, we’ve enjoyed passing the “spooky house” and observing all the fun decorations. 

In the month of October, we’ve also introduced the children to a project that will be ongoing for the duration of the school year, their self-portraits. To create the self-portraits, Ms. Tasha has the children observe their facial features in a mirror and draw what they see. She will coach them through by asking questions like “okay, now where are your eyes?” Children who are not yet drawing representationally on their own are often able to identify and draw their facial features using the mirror. When they’re done drawing, we use a skin-tone color palette and ask the children to identify which one looks like them. The self-portraits are so beautiful and always incredibly telling; they really reflect the unique personality and individual development of each child as they grow over the course of the school year. 

This month, we read the story “Leaf Man” by, and talked about how leaves change color in the fall season, as it gets chilly outside. We capped that mini-unit with our own “leaf man” with real leaves that the children and teachers found in our park walks!

In other news, we finally have our “All About Me” books made, and the children have really enjoyed sharing their photos with each other. If you have not yet had a chance to send in your pictures please do! We would also like to kindly request a family photo from each family to make a “family tree” in our classroom. If you don’t happen to have printer access, you can simply email those to marijawbees@gmail.com and we can print them here at school!

In the last couple of weeks, the Sprouts have continued to enjoy fall-themed works with new works in the Practical Life and Sensorial areas. The children have especially enjoyed hammering golf pegs into a big pumpkin with our “pumpkin pounding” work, and have been introduced to multi-step practical life works with our “pumpkin washing”. Working through the multi-step process is not only calming, but it helps children create order by working through the ration sequence of the task from beginning to end. 

On our Sensorial shelf we’ve slowly started introducing the children to classical Montessori materials such as the knob cylinders, geometric solids, and color boxes. These Sensorial materials are the concrete representation of abstract concepts such as volume, gradation, geometric shapes, 2D versus 3D, and color matching and gradation. We look forward to discussing these concepts more with you all during our upcoming Curriculum Nights. 

The children have loved painting leaves and pumpkins. Some art projects that have been ongoing have been practicing “still life painting” at our art ease, working with watercolor, and gluing together tissue paper collages. These different mediums and projects are available for the Dogwoods to express themselves creatively.

In the last few weeks, we’ve introduced new friends Sofia and Barak to the Dogwood class. Welcome friends! We’ve also celebrated the 3rd birthdays of our friends Ruben and Nico! 

We hope everyone had a super spooky time this weekend! Since our Halloween parade got rained out this year, we hope our families got to attend the parent-organized Halloween event at Grover Cleveland Park. We look forward to a wonderful November together as we welcome some new friends Aviv and Amara this week!