March News:

During March, the children will be learning all about the Rainforest and South America. On March 2nd, the children will be celebrating Dr. Seuss’s birthday by reading Dr. Seuss books and creating a special craft. It is also Read Across America month, which is a great reminder that children should be read to daily by multiple people to expose them to language, story progression, and to instill a love of reading! Be sure to wear green on Tuesday, March 17^th to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  Also, please mark your calendars for March 2, 2020 as Re-Enrollment packets will be due. We are also collecting Spring Recess tuition and paperwork for the week of April 6^th – April 10^th all due by Monday, March 23^rd, 2020.

 

February Recap:

In February, we hosted a successful Open House. We invited current families and prospective families to visit our school and learn more about our Montessori curriculum.  It was a great opportunity to showcase to our current families, specific jobs their child(ren) have been working on.  Each scholar had the chance to share with their families a specific activity from finish to end and explain to their parents what was expected of them during each activity.

February was filled with learning about different cultures and family traditions. Our scholars enjoyed learning about the continent of Asia and the Winter Olympics. Additionally, our classrooms learned about the Taj Mahal, the Great Wall of China, and the Chinese Terracotta Army.  Lunar New Year was celebrated in the classrooms. Our scholars learned it is the Year of The Rat from the Lunar Calendar and what makes this celebration special to so many people around the world. We also celebrated Valentine’s Day.  This is a fun celebration of friendships with others. It gives each child another opportunity to learn the gift of friendship and the gift of sharing. 

February enrichments, in art, the children will be learning about Yayoi Kusama. In music, the children will be introduced to different music from the continent of Asia introducing music from china, japan, India and Russia. In cooking, the children made “friendship” snacks. The children will continue working on ABCMOUSE.COM In computer class. As for Spanish, we learned vocabulary for familiar friendship greetings.

January Recap:

January was a great start to the new year! The students have settled back after the holiday break and are learning and growing every day! Our classrooms had fun exploring Antarctica and colder weather climates. The infants explored with ice and our Pre-Primary and Primary classrooms focused on Arctic animals. We have added Webby Dance to our list of extra-curricular activities. Classes take place on Thursday’s. Purple flyers are up at the front desk if you would like to sign up! School will be closed on Monday January 20^th for Dr. Martin Luther King’s Birthday.

Our book of focus for January was The Mitten by Jan Brett. It’s about a young boy named Nicki, who loses his mitten in the snow and his lost mitten becomes a host to a lot of different forest animals, eventually becoming a warm home for the winter animals. Our scholars love reading this book.  Each class created fun artwork that represented the mitten.  Our classroom curriculum also focused on Winter Animals and Hibernation. The children enjoyed learning about why animals hibernate, and which animals prefer cold weather.

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December Recap:

In December, our scholars learned about Seasons and Holidays. While learning about Seasons and Holidays; we also integrated a few cherished events. Each class from the youngest Toddlers through Kindergarten aged children performed a series of our favorite holiday songs in front of their families. The smiles were infectious and very proud parents enjoyed the show.

Progress reports were distributed to each child. Progress reports are meticulously completed by our lead teachers to show each scholar’s progress and what the focus will be moving forward for each child’s individual progress. To implement the virtue of giving; we adopted a local family in need through FAM, Adopt-A-Family program in San Clemente. Our generous families donated many gifts and gift cards to the family in need. The children really enjoyed seeing the Christmas gifts below our “Giving Tree” grow daily.

We partnered with See’s Candies to fundraise money for our school. It was a ‘sweet’ success! We also planned a fun event for families to get a couple of hours of ‘alone’ Christmas shopping. Families were able to drop off their child(ren) on a Saturday before Christmas to enjoy Pancakes and Pajamas with their friends at school. We had a special visitor…Santa Claus was in town and visited Montessori School of San Clemente! We provided Santa with a very long list of “NICE” children. Santa gave children high-five’s and brought a smile to each child.

November Recap:

In November we scheduled Parent-Teacher Conferences and they were a success.  Our staff enjoys getting one-on-one time with our families to establish a great rapport. It’s also a great opportunity to further communicate each child’s success related to academics and individual progress.   We also hosted a “Parents -Date-Night-Out” for our San Clemente Montessori families. The staff and children had so much fun craft-making, playing with other friends, and enjoying pizza!  It’s such a fun environment to play with children and their siblings.  

Our curriculum focused on Virtues and Values.  We learned about friendships, kindness, and being helpful. November’s curriculum was a great focus in tandem with the holiday season. It allows our scholars to focus on truly understanding the virtue of kindness and sharing.  In addition to what we are all thankful for each day.  Our Literature focus was reading Fill a Bucket – Empathy Program by Carol McCloud and Katherine Martin.  Our Thanksgiving Harvest Feast consisted of delicious food, sharing great times with our families and classroom friends. It’s such a great time to reconnect with our families. Each child was eager to share our turkey feast and all the fixings in a family style setting. 

Enrichments had a great variety of introducing new ideas to our daily routine. In music we learned about the world renown Beethoven. And how some of his greatest works were composed while he was going deaf.  We enjoyed creating many art projects related to Thanksgiving and the Fall season.  The children were also introduced to Jackson Pollock’s splatter technique, also known as his “drip” technique. Our little chefs prepared from scratch yummy sliced cinnamon apple chips, mini pumpkin pies, and delicious pumpkin pie smoothies. In Spanish, they were introduced to the months of the year, parts of the body, and Harvest food groups vocabulary.  Computer class is always fun. The children continued working on ABCMOUSE.com and continue to learn areas of Math, Language, and Reading.