This month in Mountain Laurel Cottage...

Mountain Laurel’s March Newsletter 
Happy Spring everyone! I hope you are enjoying the great weather and the beautiful wildflowers, we for sure are doing so at Mountain Laurel. 
Coming back from the winter storms 'break’ was a little hard for many students, but in a matter of days we were all back on track. The classroom is now like a bee hive with many awesome working bees. Many students are getting a taste of the sweet result of working hard in following up with lessons. Most of the beginning cycles started working on long multiplication and long division through the Montessori Chequerboard and Racks and Tubes, respectively. They are excited and fascinated with the material. Luckily we received an extra set of both of these materials this month. It had been on back order since we ordered after the Thanksgiving turkey raffle. A few days ago I heard a student ask a group: Can I play Racks and Tubes with you?... What a fun way to learn, right? 
On the other hand many of the older students ‘graduated’ from materials and are now able to do long multiplication completely abstractly; they feel both fascinated and proud of themselves. 
Fun and interesting stories are being written everyday. Interesting research about animals, history, and geography have brought amazing opportunities to not only learn about the subjects, but about punctuation, capitalization, writing a paragraph, and presenting work to the class. At the end of some of these projects, Ms. Pat taught the students how to do felting. Felting is not only fun and beautiful but it helps the children to develop fine motor skills needed for writing. Please check out some of the pictures below. 
In geometry, children have been working on angles, polygons, geometric designed mandalas, and positions of lines. One day, the whole classroom and surrounding areas had post-it notes all over the place, as children were identifying perpendicular and parallel lines in the environment. 
As I mentioned at the beginning, we are taking advantage of the Spring season and our amazing campus to learn about how flowers ensure their pollination, the function of the flowers, seed dispersal and the stem. The winter storm broke many branches of our beautiful trees around the campus, some right in front of the classroom, and we were able to see the stem internally and learn about the parts and functions of the stem. Another way to enjoy the season has been by tracking bluebonnets from just leaves, to bud and flowers. The children become very excited when they notice changes in the plants, like when they started seeing flowers bloom and pollinators enjoying their nectar feast! 
The winter storm also opened the door to discuss the work of air, and discuss climate changes. We have also been learning about the planets of the solar system, the force of gravity and the composition of the earth. 
I’m excited to continue seeing your children’s progress and growth. It is a true pleasure! I also look forward to meeting with you next Month on our Parent Teacher Conferences. As always please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns. 

Warmly, 
Ms Maya
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