News From the 3-6 year-old Classrooms
by Mrs. McDonald

Happy New Year to you and your families.  We are so excited to back to school.  The classrooms have been cleaned and prepared with many new and interesting activities for yourchildren.

January is definitely the perfect time to explore winter.  Throughout the room much of the work placed on the shelves reflects this.  The children can practice putting on gloves, watch ice melt, play with snow, learn about penguins, count snowmen, and enjoy making winter crafts.

With the observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Day in the month of January, the children will be making a Friendship Wreath.  Each child will have his hand traced, and then he will cut it out.  All of the hands when placed together will form the wreath.  The children really love to identify their hands and enjoy seeing our Friendship Wreath each day as they enter their classroom.
  
Our Friendship Wreath will help to give the children an understanding of people and how we are the same and different all at the same time. We will learn about the some of the many people that inhabit the world with us.  The geography area of the room is rich with many materials - flags, maps, culture boxes, pictures - that the teachers will help the children explore.

Many of the children have received all of the initial sounds for their Sound Book and are now a "Blend Friend", having started their Blend Book.  It will be exciting for them to take the initial sounds and use our movable alphabet to spell three letter words.  This is called Word Building.  When the process clicks for a child, words cannot express the moment for both the child and the teacher.  It's a beautiful thing!  The Montessori classroom is truly and amazing place.