Dear Community, Friends, Neighbors, and Parents,

2019 has gotten off to a WONDERFUL start here at Salado Montessori. 

Our kiddos have been enjoying flower arranging, working with movable alphabet, continuing their exploration of the table of Pythagoras (a tactile and preliminary multiplication material), beginning double phonogram work, painting, and of course all of the Practical Life activities. 

Just a quick reminder to our parents: 

Our first Spring Volunteer Day is February 9 from 12-3

These days are so vital to the health of our school and we love getting to see the connections made between parent participants.  Mark your calendars and see you there! 

You may have noticed a new employee in the After School Program.  We are pleased to welcome our first substitute, Ms. Lowden, to our team.  Please welcome her if you get the chance!  We are so grateful she has joined our community. 

Butterfly Garden - Dead or Alive? 

Have you noticed the dormant state of our butterfly garden?  Things may look like they froze right away, but just like the rest of Texas, our flowers are tough!  You can use this opportunity to chat with your kiddos about the winter season and hibernation.  Our flowers are all alive under there, just not growing right now.  Once we get some steady warmer temperatures the plants will grow and produce the beautiful butterfly-attracting flowers we all envisioned when planting last fall.  We've encouraged the kiddos to notice and observe the state of the garden now so that the miraculous transformation they will soon observe will be even more magical.  Do you have any gardening stories to share about projects from home?  We'd love to hear them!  Post yours here: 

Vocabulary Cards

"Bassoon"

"Cello"

"Trombone"

This semester we have started a new deck of

Vocabulary Cards - Musical Instruments!  Each day Ms. Webb gives small group lessons, and often they include the orchestral instruments vocabulary cards.  

"Vocabulary cards let children practice the first step to language development... spoken language. When we work with young children, we must train ourselves to offer them the names of everything in their environment (for example, table, tile floor, door mat). Then, we transform gently from the concrete to slightly more abstract, from three-dimensions to two-dimensions, by using photos of real objects: vocabulary cards. These are a great way for pre-readers to solidify the vocabulary they know and to add new words to their growing internal dictionary. Research shows that children's vocabulary skills are related to their self-regulation skills (Vallotton & Ayoub, 2011). So, this seemingly simple work of teaching children words has broad implications for their overall development."

https://www.maitrilearning.com/collections/vocabulary-cards

Click here to read a typical Vocabulary Card lesson plan:

 Birthday Celebrations

The Montessori Method has a very special way of acknowledging each child's birthday.  Instead of cake and presents, the Montessori birthday celebration gives a concrete way for young children to understand the months of the year and the earth’s revolution around the sun each year. It also is a way for children to feel special and to connect with their place in the world.  

"A candle, representing the sun, is lit in the middle of the room. Labels with each month of the year are laid out in a circle radiating out from the “sun.” The children and guide sit in a wide circle around the sun and months of the year, while the birthday child stands next to the month of his or her birth holding a globe to represent the Earth.  The child then walks around the sun one time for each year of his or her life. As the child walks, the class sings a song about the Earth going around the sun.  The child stops once per "year" at their month of birth and the guide talks about what the child was doing when he or she was that age.  Once they have orbited the sun the number of years they are turning, the child blows the sun candle out.

https://www.mariamontessori.com/2012/02/24/montessori-birthday-celebrations/

Here's the song, set to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell": 

The Earth goes around the sun,
The Earth goes around the sun,
It takes a year to go around,
The Earth goes around the sun

Have a lovely weekend!

Ms. Webb, Ms. Alissa, Mrs. Mayo, Ms. Ashley, and Ms. Lowden