Dear Parents,
Warm greetings! Following last week's first snowfall of this school year, it's wonderful to see the children wearing their cozy seasonal outfits.
We are beginning our study of North America just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. At this time, we will focus on The United States of America. When we study a particular continent, we will cover a variety of topics such as animals, countries, flags, climate, food, and culture. Some key activities include the North America puzzle map which our children will build, trace or even pin punch to create their own map and the flags of countries in the orange continent. Our study of trees and leaves will also center around the flora in North America. In addition, we will also focus on the mammals of North America - moose, deer, bison, and brown bear. This dovetails into our study in Zoology about mammals.
For Thanksgiving, our Gimmel team will exercise their culinary skills to prepare a sumptuous meal and celebrate with a family style lunch with their peers and Morahs. Our older friends are creating a lovely menu and we are sure this event will turn out to be a special experience and it will also sharpen their food prep skills.
At this time of the year, there is an uptick in falling leaves due to the colder weather, which indicates that trees are conserving energy and water to last through the winter. In our Gimmel room, the children are sharing their fun fall activities such as raking leaves, jumping in the leaf pile and collecting colorful leaves. We took this great opportunity to present the Montessori leaf cabinet, which has 18 wooden leaf shapes.This lesson indirectly prepares children for botany by giving them the language to describe different leaf shapes. This activity stimulates the child’s interest in the study of nature and understanding the different types of trees, for example, evergreen trees who keep their leaves green all year and deciduous trees whose leaves change colors and fall off. During play time our young friends often collect their best leaves and bring them to their Morahs and we encourage them to match it to one of the leaf shapes from the cabinet. We included activities around this topic such as parts of a leaf, tracing the leaf and making their own booklets. While our younger friends enjoy matching, counting and coloring leaves, our older friends will learn the names of different leaf shapes such as spatulate, sagitate, elliptical, oblong, obovate, orbiculate, ovate, and cordate with Montessori control cards.
A gentle reminder: please label your child's snacks in a suitable container (instead of Ziploc bags, which children find difficult to reseal independently) and label water bottles with their names. Also, please label their extra set of clothes.
Have a wonderful week!
Morahs Uma, Kara, Kristy and Chaya