As we enter December – where did November go???!! – the theme this week in The Children’s House is Winter & Christmas Art, so it’s going to be a busy, fun, art-filled week! To start the week we will be talking to the children about doing an outdoors Christmas concert with them, & choosing which songs we might do – we always involve the children in their learning & activities as much as possible, as it gives them a sense of involvement & motivation, & it is more appropriate than an adult choosing things for them to do without any input from the child.

We will be doing an Arctic snow hunt with Arctic animals on a tray covered in flour & a paint brush to help unearth them, making hand print winter trees using arms & hands for the tree & finger prints for the snow, & dressing snowmen in winter clothes & talking about winter clothes that we need to wear in the colder weather.

A Wintry Night (poem)

The sky is dark & the ground is white,
The world is peaceful on this wintry night.
No one around, not a sound to be heard,
Not a laugh, not a car, not even a bird.
For a moment, it’s just the snow and me.
I smile inside.
I feel so free.

by Lyndsey Kuster.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! We will be learning all about this lovely North American celebration in The Children’s House this week, as it falls this coming Thursday. It is a wonderful opportunity to focus on things that we are thankful for in our lives, and to encourage the children to be aware of the fact that not everyone in the world has food, or a home, or even a family, and to be grateful for all of those things – without getting too bleak about it!! It is a really positive celebration and we will be talking about the story of the first Thanksgiving, reflecting on all the things we have & why it is important to be thankful for them, and finally we will be making a thankful tree with leaves full of things that we’re thankful for on it – things we often take for granted but which are so important, and worth celebrating!

I’m a Little Turkey (tune of I’m a Little Teapot)

I’m a little turkey, my name is Ted,
Here are my feathers, here’s my head.
Gobble gobble gobble is what I say,
Run run run because it’s Thanksgiving day!!

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!

This week at The Children’s House we will be learning about Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights which originated in India, which falls this year on Saturday 14th November. This is a wonderful occasion which celebrates the victory of light over dark, and good over evil; we will be learning about all the different preparations and rituals that are practised at this time such as the lighting of lamps, the cleaning of houses to let go of unnecessary things and worries, and the wearing of new clothes to mark the beginning of a new journey by forgetting all the troubles of the past and stepping into the light.

During the week the children will make a version of rangoli (an Indian art form in which patterns are created on the floor or the ground using materials such as colored rice, dry flour, colored sand or flower petals, usually done during Hindu festivals), do yoga, and also make firework glitter art, at the end of this lovely week of art, craft and culture!

This Diwali (poem)

Let the firecrackers burn your sorrows
Candles light up your life
Colours make your life bright
With flowers filling in the fragrance
All day and night.

Welcome back everyone, we hope you had a lovely Halloween break!! It’s a busy week ahead in The Children’s House – we will be learning all about teeth as our topic is dental hygiene, so we will be talking about the importance of dental hygiene and why we look after our teeth and discussing what might happen if we didn’t do so. We will then be learning about the parts of the tooth and talking about healthy food that we can eat, like crunchy foods like apples and carrots, and calcium-containing foods which strengthen our teeth such as milk, cheese and yoghurts. We will be doing tooth brushing activities and talking about visiting the dentist, as well as counting our teeth and doing arts & crafts; at the end of the week we will be doing noodle dancing!!!

Here We Go Round the Apple Tree (tune of: Here we go round the Mulberry Bush)

This is the way we brush our teeth,
Brush our teeth, brush our teeth.
This is the way we brush our teeth,
On a cold and frosty morning.