The focus this week in The Children’s House is all about Grace & Courtesy! This is one of the foundations of Montessori – to have respect for yourself, your classmates peers & elders, & your environment – it underpins everything we do in the school. To show young children how to do this, as well as role modeling for them, we teach lessons throughout the year on things such as greeting others, welcoming a visitor, how to walk in the classroom, how to apologise how to talk in a quiet voice, how to use activities appropriately, how to hang up coats etc…this year unfortunately we won’t be doing the lesson on shaking hands so much – we’ll be focusing on how to cough & sneeze into elbows & tissues instead!

This week we’ll be starting off by learning how to introduce ourselves, greeting someone else, coughing & sneezing, then moving onto using ‘please’ & ‘thank you’ & ‘excuse me’, turn taking, and then practising using soft voices indoors – by the end of the week we should have model citizens!!!

Manners (tune of: Twinkle Twinkle)

We say ‘thank you’, we say ‘please’,
We don’t interrupt or tease.

We don’t argue, we don’t fuss –
We listen when people talk to us.

We share our things & take our turn,
Manners are so easy to learn!