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The Walnut Farm Fall Newsletter
Montessori Grace and Courtesy, October 2022
As the leaves begin to change color and cool temperatures are in the air, we celebrate the classrooms' adjustment to the new school-year. As most of you know, Dr. Montessori coined this phase of children adapting and finding their love of the classroom environment, normalization. As families and outside observers peek into a classroom, many marvel at the amount of activity, yet calm concentration they see. The child's love of work and purpose in the classroom is one aspect of this marvelous environment. Another is the unseen work the teachers have done to instill expectations of care for each other and the classroom. Staff inside and out work tirelessly at the beginning of the year to patiently present, observe and repeat lessons of grace and courtesy. In this fall newsletter, each level speaks to some aspects of this work. You will also find updates from our Outdoor Classrooms and other Specialists.
We hope you enjoy and learn a little something new!
Lynette Goss
Head of School
Toddler News
By Whitney Kimbro and Kendyll Murray
There is a natural need in every human being to find one’s place in the world by finding fulfillment both inside and outside oneself. Maria Montessori believed that it is the duty of every person to work toward and be a part of something great, which not only serves individual interests but those of all humanity. To understand this great relationship, children must be nurtured in the ways of grace, courtesy and service in order for it to flourish and grow throughout their lives.
Grace and courtesy lessons are practiced each day in our environment. They help children to connect with others, in and out of school, and to build a harmonious and productive community together. They also offer children the tools they seek to be both independent and successful.
Ways to model and practice grace and courtesy at home:
• Be intentional in your behavior and actions. Your child is like a little sponge. They soak up everything you do. Show them the same courtesy and respect that you want them to show to you and others.
• Say please and thank you regularly. Remember to thank your children and spouse for the small things they do each day. If your child does something special or sweet, take a moment to thank them, comment about what they’ve done, give them a hug, or whatever feels right at that moment.
• Use indoor voices when speaking to the family. Try not to yell. It can be a challenge, but try to maintain a calm, steady voice, even when upset. This can help the child learn how to deal with their emotions in a positive way.
• Teach them to cover their mouths when they cough. If they’re doing it already, thank them for covering their cough or sneeze. A little positive reinforcement can go a long way.
Other ideas:
Greet someone by shaking hands
Apologize/excuse oneself
Watch and observe others
Practice waiting and taking turns
Speak in a polite tone
Model blowing nose and washing hands
Invite a partner or playmate
Respect others and their space (if they do not want to share their work)
Walk around people and objects/Say excuse me
Model caring for works, books, and the environment
Many of these lessons are not found on a shelf. Some are demonstrations, while others are simply absorbed through the child’s observation of their world. Positive models of grace and courtesy provide the example and environment for the development of peaceful young citizens. Focus on treating your child how you’d like to be treated and you will naturally model Grace and Courtesy. Lead by example and your child will follow.
“A child who becomes a master of his acts through repeated exercises [of grace and courtesy]…is a child filled with health and joy and remarkable for his calmness and discipline.” – Dr. Maria Montessori
pictures from the toddler classrooms
A note from the Toddler Outdoor Classroom
The air is crisp and the leaves are falling. It is fall in the outdoor classroom! The children had a few hot weeks enjoying the water tables and the mister. Now, we are on to fall. Recently, some of the children raked and spread some hay down in our muddy areas. Many of the children have also enjoyed riding bikes on the new bike path.
Primary News
So Much More Than Manners
By Ms. Stephanie and Ms. Jennifer
Grace and courtesy are foundational in the Montessori classroom and real life. Imagine if we all walked around without any manners. Manners make us civilized and make the world function. They are how we create a peaceful and cooperative classroom. Grace and courtesy lessons teach the details of simple procedures that we adults take for granted. Still, we must explain and demonstrate to the children so that they can become kind and contributing community members. We guide the children to use manners, taking every opportunity to help them practice these lessons. In the classroom, we take the time at the moment to model what we want to see. “Can you please try coughing in your elbow?” Taking a moment right then helps the child see; if we wait and say it later after the moment has passed, we have missed the opportunity, and with it, the chance to learn. Through these lessons, the children learn:
The customs of the classroom (or any community), which develop into self-discipline
To behave in a manner that is acceptable to society
To respect yourself and others
To be a kind and caring person
To be confident in social situations
That everyone is important and should be treated equally
When objects are not treated with the care they can be broken and never replaced
These lessons are practiced at every opportunity. We explain to the children the basic why of the work. Here are a few examples of children practicing Grace and Courtesy lessons.
At the circle, we sit criss crossed with our feet so everyone has space and can move safely around to share. We also keep our hands in our laps so our friends can be safe and listen. This lets everyone enjoy what is being shared.
When we need help or have questions, we wait our turn in the question chair. This allows our friends to focus on lessons and teachers to be ready to help us. Sometimes waiting is hard, but it shows others we value their focus and time.
We cough and sneeze in our elbows. We love to share things, but germs, no thank you! This shows our community we care about their health.
When we observe others working, we stand with our hands behind our backs and our voices off. We keep our bodies off their table. This shows our friends that we value their concentration, but we are interested in their work. We only offer help if they ask us. Not telling them the answer is hard, but we can practice the work on our own, and this is their chance to learn it.
We tuck our chairs in when we are done with them. Helping keep walking ways open with more room to carry the work carefully helps everyone be safe. This also shows others that we are done with this table, and someone else may use it now.
Pictures from the primary classrooms
A note from the Primary Outdoor Classroom
The Outdoor Classroom has had an exciting start to the new school year! New students have had fun exploring all the opportunities for working outside and returning students have been enjoying spending time in nature. Lately, some of the children’s favorite activities to do are collect walnuts and acorns, go on nature walks on our hiking trails, work on hammering nails, and of course catch bugs and frogs! The recent rain was much needed and has provided opportunities for students to see mushrooms and how rain can affect the plants growing in our garden. With even cooler temperatures on the way, we are excited to see the changes that are happening in nature and continue to watch the leaves change colors.
Elementary News
Grace and Courtesy for the Second Plane Child
By Ms. Sally Davis
In Dr. Montessori’s book, From Childhood to Adolescence, she writes about the shift children experience from the first plane of development (0-6 years old) to the second (6-12 years old) and how we must look at the significant changes the child undergoes during these transitions. When we look at the Primary student, their education significantly involves “Practical Life” and “Grace and Courtesy” lessons. They concretely learn specific steps for movement in the classroom, cleaning, organizing, and caring for themselves, all through pointed instruction and repetition. As they reach the second plane (our Elementary children), the abstract development of the conscience and sense of moral responsibility within the classroom society takes flight. Now that the students are independent (a valuable aim in the first plane), they must explore their roles within a social setting, following agreed-upon expectations and building moral relationships. Dr. Montessori wrote, “The continuation of these exercises would be useless now that the child is independent; that is to say, he knows how to devote himself to an activity for which he will no longer need to ask help of the adult and for which he has coordination of movement. But the acts of courtesy which he has been taught with a view to his making contacts with others must now be brought to a new level…If, up to the present, it was important not to bump someone in passing, it is now considerably more important not to offend that person.” (Pages 7,8).
Grace and courtesy in Elementary require a commitment from the individual to the group. Dr. Montessori taught how important it is for children to strengthen this morality in practice while in the sensitive period for social connections. You will see this play out when you observe the students in Lower Elementary. They are an empowered society because every member participates in the social construction of the class. Teachers facilitate more early on in the school year, demonstrating the role of “Class Leader.” Students and guides ponder the group’s “Rights and Responsibilities” and agree upon those various points. They begin to take more and more responsibility as leaders, mentors, and teachers themselves. This is evidenced by how they work together, being considerate of those around them, and also by how they conduct their jobs, finding satisfaction in their contributions to this small society. They offer support and begin to anticipate the needs of others. They delegate tasks, find solutions when they discover areas for improvement, solve disputes, and hold one another accountable. They practice peaceful or non-violent communication. They build one another up daily by sharing affirmations or checking in. These are children who are learning about their emotions, triggers, consequences, and coping skills or strategies, all while sensing the impact they have on the peers who they come to respect.
We (students and teachers) give formal “Grace and Courtesy” lessons. There are times throughout the year when they must be reminded about their agreed-upon responsibilities and rights to learn, be safe, and care for the environment. For example, they may demonstrate in a group meeting walking around someone’s floor work, standing in line, how and when to interrupt, procedures for observing, how to respectfully make requests instead of demands, etc. During these “lessons,” students more importantly discuss the “why” for these procedures. Individuals share how they are impacted, and their courage to speak out grows stronger. They learn to be assertive, honest, and constructive. They know it is ok to make mistakes; we all do. We learn and grow together. The principles of grace and courtesy are woven into the fabric of our day.
pictures from the elementary classrooms
A note from the Elementary Outdoor Classroom
By Joe Love
Elementary Technology
By Nikole Townsend
Elementary PE
By Joe Love
Care of the Living World
There have been a variety of activities done during Care of the Living World. The program is one-part service to the school's outdoor spaces, and one-part naturalist-focused. Our service to the school has included the filling to raised garden beds in the Primary Outdoor Classroom, weeding in preparation for school-wide events, and making playgrounds safer by collecting large rocks and using for habitat-building. The naturalist-centered lessons include lessons on invasive plant species and the collection of the invasive perilla mint from our back pasture, and sitting in a secluded wild area and focusing concentration on living and nonliving things contained inside a small wire hoop. Each of those lessons has been integrated into our Outdoor Classroom time as well - and kids have enthusiastically chosen to rid invasive plants and study small wild spots.
Art!
Students in primary have spent the last several weeks painting in lots of different ways. Using white crayon and watercolor, primary students have created their own unique water color resist of a jellyfish. They have used watered down neon acrylic paint in spray bottles, making a colorful abstract painting. Finally, our primary students in art used bubbles dyed with food coloring and blew the colorful bubbles onto paper.
Students in lower elementary have been learning the elements of art and using these elements in their first few art projects. After focusing on value and line, students learned how to trace shapes, fill them with pattern and also understand positive and negative space in a pencil drawing. Students went on to create a color-wheel using colored pencils and only using the primary colors to crate the secondary and tertiary colors. Student used that knowledge to make a drawing of a planter, filled with color and pattern and also learned to draw a cactus.
A note from Music
By Briana Cooper
This year has been a blast in music so far! With toddlers, we are practicing moving our bodies in sync with music, listening to musical cues for movement, dancing with scarves, and practicing fine motor skills by playing rhythm sticks.
Our primary students have been learning about composers who were alive over 1,000 years ago and getting to hear music by Stephen of Liege, Hildegard von Bingen, Barbara Strozzi and John Dunstable. We’ve been learning about the string family of instruments and are soon going to make some of our very own! We’ve been playing many games that focus on following a leader and practicing leading. One of the coolest things we’ve been working on is the ability to audiate! This is a skill that is not easy, but they’ve been working really hard at singing songs only in their heads and still ending up on the last line together!
Our elementary students have been working on much of the same lessons as the primary children! Our elementary students have also gotten to do sound experiments with a tuning fork and experience how sound waves work on different surfaces. Many more experiments are in the works for the upcoming year! Elementary has also gotten to play our newest instruments, the boomwhackers! Those colorful tubes are incredibly fun and can make for some incredible music! We’ve also gotten to see how stories and books influence the music we hear today. We learned of an opera called Orpheus in the Underworld composed by Offenbach and then read a book about the same story!
I am so excited to see what all we get to accomplish and learn together in our music classes this year!
El Comentario de Espanol
By Yesenia Villaron
Primary: At this level, I work with a group of 4-6. Right now, we are learning about the shapes and reviewing the seasons. Last week I had talked about seasons and just like in Elementary, we read the book about migration. Towards the middle of September, we learned about numbers, and I read the book 3,2,1 Vamos, 3,2,1 Go! By Sarah Schutle. In the book we counted the objects in Spanish. The kids seemed to enjoy this book since I get asked about it frequently! We also counted teddy bears and each child had a certain amount and we all shared how many we had and counted together for repetition and memorization. Since Primary didn’t start Spanish until the beginning of the month we learned about greetings, emotions and people in our family. I created flash cards about emotions to give the children a visual representation while they learned.
Toddlers: Since toddlers are smaller, some of them decide to participate and others don’t. However, in September we were learning about our family members, greetings and emotions. We recently started learning about shapes and numbers. There was an easier book for toddlers that I read to them about shapes and numbers where they could touch the book. I realized they loved to count and were also engaged in the book 3,2,1, just like in Primary. I also brought my flash cards from emotions and people, and they loved to share about their family members!
A note from your Family Association
A look ahead:
Our next Family Association meeting is Tuesday, November 8 at 8:30am. We would love to see you there!
Campus Clean Up is Saturday, October 29. Please look out for an email for more information.
We are also already planning our holiday float for the Bentonville Holiday parade! The theme is "Color of the Seasons" and our vision is to have the colors of each holiday that is represented at our school on the float!
If you have any questions or ideas, please email us at walnutfarmfa@gmail.com