This month in Mountain Laurel cottage...

It is hard to believe that we only have 4 more weeks of school! I look back in time and feel immense gratitude for having the opportunity to work with your children. We sure have had an unusual school year; first starting online, then transitioning to in-person learning and adapting to follow all the safety protocols. We are privileged to have such a wonderful campus that allowed us to be safely back in person. The children have been so resilient and adaptable, and your support as parents has been key to our community in our school.
April was a busy month in our community! I enjoyed visiting with all of you at our Parent-Teacher conferences and looking at your children’s progress. Throughout the month, we had the students moving up from primary visiting the classroom, as well as other children applying to Cedars. This was a great opportunity for our community to feel ownership of their classroom and learning experience. I enjoyed observing the children welcome their future classmates with such grace and pride. From full to beginning cycles they were all ready to be kings of the jungle ;-)
We continued to enjoy the awesome weather and the benefits of Spring on our wonderful campus. Last month tracking the wildflowers led to understanding the function of the flowers and learning about seed dispersal. Bugs, bluebonnets, and dandelions have been my allies for botany lessons. The tweeting of the birds has been our background melody when we  are working, inspiring the children to observe and identify different kinds. Some students have done an amazing job sketching the birds.
At the beginning of the month, a lesson on measuring length inspired a group of students to build a comparative model of different animals using their average length. The first research included the size and other characteristics of a Blue whale, a Killer whale, the Great White shark, and a child. Then, using yarn, they traced the silhouette of each animal, one inside the other. It was such an amazing job! Every classroom of our school came to Mountain Laurel to see the presentation. Also, Grace’s parent came with a drone to take an aerial photograph of the work, the picture of the model didn’t come out clear, but I’m sharing the ones from the ground and an aerial group photograph of the class ;-)
There is an explosion of geometry work in our classroom. Older students learned to measure angles, some are working on calculating areas, others with polygons, and many others have been working with the concepts of congruency, similarity, and equivalence. I have been impressed and inspired by the children’s work and how creative they are. Enjoy the pictures of an Egyptian city with pyramids, the Nile river, and a sphinx, which has an area of 776 square units ;-). The equivalence follow-up work has been amazing as well, from drawing a cat that is equivalent to a video game controller to embroidering pillows. 
April was Poetry awareness month, and the children enjoyed writing and reading poems. As a class we watched Amanda Gorman recite the Inauguration poem “The Hill We Climb”. We linked her poetry to our classroom and used some of the verses to inspire kindness, group and personal effort, and empowerment. I have been using our mindfulness practice to instill and reinforce the same messages throughout the month.
Beginning cycles have been making great progress with reading, and their handwriting skills keep getting better and better. Mid and full cycles have been enjoying writing stories and research reports. We have discussed basic writing skills like how to start a paragraph as well as punctuation, transition words, and how to keep the story intriguing for the reader. I sure enjoy their creativity.
If I had to use a word to describe April I would choose: “Abstraction”. Whether it is multiplication, division, addition, subtraction, or equivalence, the children have been using their power of abstraction to advance in their Montessori learning experience.
An exciting group of lessons that will be happening this month is the Work of Water. We will work with the model of a river and learn about the cycle of water. Please make sure your child has a change of clothes in the classroom, this will come in handy if they get wet during this work but also with all the rain we had this past week, many students used their change of clothes already. 
Don’t forget to buy your tickets for the classroom raffle. We made this beautiful piece of art a few months ago. Ms. Pat taught the children the marbling technique, everyone got to make a couple of marbling papers. We dried them, cut them, and then every student had the opportunity to glue a strip of marbled paper into the frame. I’m attaching pictures of the whole process. I know all of them want to win the raffle because they want the colorful frame to hang in their home ;-) Good luck !!!

Warmly,

Maya

​