WINTER NEWS - January 2010

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News From The Classroom

We welcome back all the children and their families and we hope you had a relaxing winter break. We hope you had a wonderful time at the Christmas parties and enjoyed yourselves as much as we did. We would like to wish you all a very happy and healthy new year and look forward to working with your wonderful children once again.

The children have returned to school with energy and enthusiasm and are eager to learn new concepts and work with new materials.

We are working on the longer, more advance materials in the Practical Life area. In the first term the 3 year old children were doing simple one step activities, now they are learning activities with several sequential steps. They are doing well and you can see the confidence and control of movements growing in them. The older children are learning activities with many steps like washing a table, taking care of a plant, flower arranging and many more. The children are thoroughly enjoying this and take pride in maintaining the classroom.

In the sensorial area we continue to work with shapes, colours, size and texture. The children are learning how colours have different shades, how different textures feel how to discriminate between different sizes and many names of two dimension shapes like quatrefoil, curvilinear triangle, trapezoid and more. Many of the older children are learning the names for three dimensional shapes like sphere, cone, cube, pyramid, rectangular prism, cylinder etc. They are having a lot of fun working in small groups and learning new three dimensional shape names on a regular basis.

The younger children are practicing hard with the sandpaper letters and love to think of words beginning with specific sounds. Try playing the “I Spy” game at home with them and see what words your children can think of that start with a specific sound.

In math, children are working on numbers, practicing on a daily basis and writing the symbols on chalk boards. They are learning the decimal system 1, 10, 100, and 100, linear counting and the older children are doing the operations of addition and subtraction.

In the coming months the extended day children are going to learn about provinces and territories of Canada and some distinctly Canadian animals like the beaver and Canadian geese. We will be reviewing oceans of the world and be learning about amphibians and animal behavior during the winter (hibernation, migration, adaptation).

- Mrs. Whitley and Mrs. Muqtader

Vancouver 2010

The Olympic Games will be here before we know it and we are aiming to make it a great learning experience for the children. We have made some cards with all the different winter sports on them and we have been talking about and tracking the journey of the Olympic torch. Once the Olympics begin we will keep a medal chart and track Team Canada's victories.

If any of you were lucky enough to get tickets to events then we look forward to hearing about your exciting experience. I have friends attending the open ceremonies and Miss Whitley will attend an ice skating event. Be sure to check out all the free events happening in town and try and take the children ice skating at Robson square.

New Students

We would like to welcome Amna Qureshi to our morning class, and Anayka's brother, Imaan Atwal and Taren Sandhu to the afternoon class. Everyone is settling in very nicely and making lots of new friends.

Snack/Laundry/Flowers Sign up

Thank you once again everyone for your contributions to snack & flowers & for helping with the laundry. We appreciate the effort you all make to bring healthy snacks and beautiful flowers for the children to arrange. We also appreciate you helping to clean the cloths so we can keep extra garbage bags out of the landfill each year.

Christmas Richmond Fund - Sponsor Family

During the holidays we delivered lots of Christmas goodies to the “Williams” family. We donated $200 in Canadian superstore gift cards, London Drug gift cards for mum along with chocolates and bath products. The children each received several gifts, including a Baby Alive doll, art supplies, Barbie clothes, a wiggles CD, and a lamp for baby's room, baby clothes, duplo blocks, cuddly toys and more. The family was very thankful and the mum gave Blue Spruce a piece of her native art, which we will display in the classroom for all to enjoy. Thank you all for making a difference to a family in our community this holiday season.

New Classroom Materials

We have purchased some new materials for the classroom with the funds we raised at the silent auction: a new map of Canada and a control map (on order), a Lee Valley tumbling compost so we can make our own compost from the snack scraps, new geometric solids, (on order) various cards for language and culture (on order).

Professional Day

A reminder that school will be closed Monday, February 1st. Miss Whitley and Mrs. Muqtader will be attending an AMI Montessori refresher course at the Montessori Training Center of BC and Miss Crowe will be observing other Montessori schools and lesson planning.

Valentines Skating

Friday February 12th we are booked into the Richmond Ice Rink for an hour of skating. The Rink is booked from 10:45 a.m. until 11:45 a.m. for morning and extended day children and 1:45 - 2:45 p.m. for the afternoon children. Classes will finish earlier both in the morning and afternoon. Please mark this on your calendar; letters with more details will be handed out at the end of the month.

Valentine Cards

If children would like to exchange Valentine cards with their friends at school we are asking for your help to make it easier to sort them. Please arrange cards for am/pm/ex day children and put an elastic band around each separately with a label for which group. If possible please sort cards in alphabetical order by the child's surname.

If your child will give cards to all the children in the class then please just have your child sign his/her name instead of naming all the cards individually.

If you can have all cards at school no later than Wednesday February 10th this will give us time to sort all the cards and have them in bags for the children, to be handed out on Friday Feb. 10th. I will send everyone an updated class list.

“Gung Hay Fat Choy”

Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentines Day, February 14th, and this year is the year of the Tiger. Miss Whitley will prepare some items on the observation table for the children to enjoy.

Re-registration

September 2010/11 registration for families currently attending Blue Spruce will take place during the week of February 8th through until February 15th. Morning, afternoon and extended day spaces can be secured on a first return basis. Registration packages will be handed out at the beginning of February.

Open Houses

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 12th, 4:30 P.M. - 6:00 P.M.

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 16TH, 4:30 P.M. - 6:00 P.M.

We will be holding two public open houses for September 2010/11 registration, please inform friends whom may be interested in enrolling their child/ren for September of these dates, we would love to meet them and discuss with them how Blue spruce can meet the educational and developmental needs of their child/ren. We are currently taking applications for the upcoming school year and booking classroom observations.

Tax Receipts

Tuition receipts for the 2009 school year will be handed out by the end of February.

Late Arrivals

We really appreciate the effort everyone is making to arrive at school on time. Just a reminder: that after 9:00 a.m./1:15 p.m. students will not be admitted into the classroom. If you have a legitimate reason for arriving late please notify us by telephone, we will be empathetic and accommodating. It is very difficult for everyone when there is a constant stream of late children, especially your child who misses out on connecting with other children as they arrive.

We look forward to everyone arriving on time and having a great term.

March Break

School will close on March 12th for a two week spring break. School will reopen on Monday March 29th.

Family Evening

Math in the Montessori classroom can be roughly divided into three main areas: preliminary math, the decimal system and the operations.

Children are exposed to math at roughly the age of 3 and a half when they learn the concept of numbers 1 - 10. They do this by learning to count first the quantities of 1 - 10 through the use of our number rods. They then learn the symbols for these numbers. When the children understand both the quantity and the symbol, they work with a number of activities that help them to associate the two.

In the decimal system, the children learn all the quantities of the decimal system from units to thousands, and eventually all the way up to one million. They then learn the symbols for these quantities. Much concrete practice is done to associate both the symbol and quantity. At this stage, the children also learn the teens, tens and how to form complex numbers into the thousands.

The operations are introduced in a highly concrete way, with the use of beaded material that is physically added together, subtracted, or whatever the operation calls for. They are then worked with in increasing abstract ways as the children learn to memorize the tables.

- Miss Whitley

Books / Finger Plays / Poems

Books We Are Reading:


Finger Plays:

This is how my goldfish swims
And birdies fly like this
Spiders Crawl right up the wall,
And elephants walk like this.

Zoom Zoom Zoom
We are going to the moon
Zoom zoom zoom
We will get there very soon
If you want to take a trip
Climb aboard my rocket ship
5, 4, 3, 2, 1 BLAST OFF!

These are grandmothers glasses
And this is grandmothers cap
And this is the way she folds her hands
And puts them in her lap

Stand up high
Spread your arms wide
Fly like birdies fly

Bend down low
Touch your toes
Waddle like the old duck goes

Slippery Fish
Slippery Fish
Swimming the water
Slippery fish slipperfy fish
Gulp gulp gulp
“Oh no, he's been eaten by____”

Open shut them
Open shut them
LAY THEM IN YOUR LAP
ROLL THEM
ROLL THEM
Just like this
Wave them
Wave them
And blow a little kiss

Our Poems

I'm Glad The Sky Is Painted Blue

I'm glad the sky is painted blue
And the Earth is painted green
With such a lot if nice fresh air
All sandwiched in between!

Mrs Moon

Mrs Moon
Sitting in the sky
Little old lady
Rock-a-bye
With a ball of fading light
And silver kneedles
Knitting the night
- The Usbourne Book of Poems For Young Children