Santa Cruz’s year started in a dramatic way with the incredible amount of rain that we received in early January. The children made the most of the inclement weather by making rivers in the sandbox, harvesting rainwater that collected in tires or plant pots, and joyfully running around in the rain. We are glad that things have calmed down for our community – we live in a very special city and it has been through such a lot in the past few years. Luckily children always find fun where they can….

Our teachers put some wonderful new work out to start the new year. A good Montessori classroom has some staple materials but also a well considered rotation of other work (for example ‘the phases of the moon’ seen below). The children can choose the comfort of familiarity or the challenge of something new.

The new year brought some new friends to school. We welcomed them and practiced how to introduce ourselves during our Grace and Courtesy lessons. These lessons form an important part of the Montessori curriculum and help children develop an awareness and responsiveness to those around them. Grace and Courtesy lessons are practiced using role play with teachers and peers and the ‘introductions’ lesson is a particularly fun and empowering one.

Throughout January we sang Wheels on the Bus, Button Factory, and everyone was excused from circle-time by matching words to letter sounds with different letters each day (“C” – cookie, cat, Chloe etc.). Montessori focuses on phonetic sounds over alphabet letter knowledge as sound recognition forms the basis of letter/sound correspondence and is invaluable at giving kids a head start when they are ready to begin learning to read.

If you have any questions about Montessori as a method or how Midtown follows it in the classroom please reach out. We give parent tours of the school on Wednesdays at 3pm and these need to be booked in advance.

Sarah

Ps. You are receiving this newsletter because you joined our wait list or contacted us through our website. It is a snapshot of the weekly emails that our headteacher Joe sends out to all parents at school, keeping them updated on life in the classroom.