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October 1, 2016 Volume 30, Issue

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St. Andrews Montessori School

October Newsletter

“Do we believe and constantly insist that coop-

eration among the peoples of the world is nec-

essary in order to bring about peace? If so, what

is needed first of all is collaboration with chil-

dren… All our efforts will come to nothing until

we remedy the great injustice done the child,

and remedy it by cooperating with him. If we

are among the men of good will who yearn for

peace, we must lay the foundation for peace

ourselves, by working for the social world of the

child.”

~Maria Montessori, 1937

Welcome to our new staff members:

Tiffany Brennan– Administrative Assistant

Randi Ferina– Toddler Assistant Teacher

Taibat Adeniyi-Primary Assistant Teacher

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Celebrations of Life................ 2

Thanks You ................................ 2

International Day of Peace . 3

Calendar ..................................... 4

Coming Events ......................... 4

SPECIAL POINTS OF INTEREST

Miss Ellen/Miss Taibat’s room

Miss Eileen/Miss Chhabi’s room

Lower Elementary room

Miss Toni/Miss Melinda’s room

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“I beg the all powerful children to write with me for the building of peace in man, and in the world.” Maria Montes-sori’s epitaph

Your support is most appreciated!!!

For cleaning up our playground/nature trail before the start of school:

Alex Cuthbert, Taibat Adeniyi, Cindy Bonfim, the Walker family, the Huff-

stetler family, the Shafyaay family, Erica Colbert, Sadie Cooper, Jahkob

Thomas.

For pressure washing the toddler porches: Mary and Mac Huffstetler

For porch step repair and classroom maintenance: Jim Huffstetler

For being a morning door greeter: Rafat Karim, Paulomi Shah, Varsha Das, Katie

Terrell, Tiffany Brennan, Sarah Fripp

For Lower Elementary silent reading help: Martha Roddenberry, Katie and Zeke

Terrell, Lydia Sutherland, Rafat Karim

For assisting with lunch and rest time: Sarah Fripp, Cyndy Goodson, Rafat Karim,

Meagan Laurens, Lindsey Johnson

For honoring the teachers with a “Back-to-School” Breakfast: Ashley Thillianathan,

Jaynah Morgan, Katie Terrell, Lydia Sutherland, Mary Huffstetler, Lindsey Childs,

Sarah Fripp, Paulomi Shah, Martha Roddenberry, Alex Cuthbert

For volunteering to be room mothers: Marina Cole, Mary Huffstetler, Katie Terrell,

Ashley Thillianathan, Lindsey Childs, Sarah Fripp

For being our Parent Volunteer Coordinator: Lydia Sutherland

For being school ambassadors for New Parent Orientation: Rafat Karim, Mary Huff-

stetler, Ashley Thillainathan, Lydia Sutherland, Katie Terrell

CELEBRATIONS OF LIFE

THANK YOU!

September

Vibhu Kallu 9/12

Yujin Martinez-Sung 9/13

Miss Lindsey 9/16

Miles Fripp 9/16

Kay-Lynn Carver 9/20

Outhmaan Chafyaay 9/20

Khloe Wideman 9/21

James Noland 9/22

Chaseton Godwin 9/23

Freida Gerrity 9/25

Miss Ellen 9/29

Catherine Minick 9/29

October

Seaborn Roddenberry 10/10

Miss Melinda 10/11

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INTERNATIONAL PEACE DAY

On September 21, we gathered

around our Peace Pole to sing

“Light A Candle For Peace.”

We joined Montessori children

from around the world who did

a similar celebration. To view

these videos, visit

www.lightacandleforpeace.com

FUNDRAISERS

KROGER-$45.91

RECEIVED

Boxtops for Education:

Remember to clip and

save the “BoxTops” la-

bels on your General

Mills products. Put

them in an envelope or

plastic baggie and send

to school. Each one =

$$ for our school.

Celebrating International Peace Day

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USBOURNE

BOOK FAIR

October 26 & 27

We have a new Bookfair

Rep. with wonderful

books for all ages. The

Bookfair will be held in

the fellowship hall from

8:30 AM-4:00 PM.

This is a fundraiser to

build our school library

collection. Please encour-

age friends, neighbors,

and grandparents to

come shop. On-line shop-

ping will also be available.

30th Anniversary Picnic

It’s our birthday and we are celebrating all year long. Come join us for a

picnic, cake, snow cones, and musical entertainment on Saturday, Octo-

ber 8 from 5PM-7PM. Bring your own family picnic food and drink,

blanket or lawn chairs, yard

games, etc. and meet us on

the front lawn.

PICTURE DAY

COMING EVENTS

This year our photographer will be Amie Groover. You can view some of

her work on Facebook at “Images by Amie Photography.”

Picture Day will be:

Wednesday, Oct. 19-Toddler class and Lower Elementary

Friday, Oct. 21-Primary Classes (Miss Ellen & Miss Eileen) and sibling photos

*Note: For sibling photos, your children may need to come “dressed” twice.

Photos will be taken outside in the natural environment. We will reschedule if it is rain-

ing.

Make-up day for any children absent on Wednesday or Friday will be Oct. 26.

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October 2016 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 30th anniv.

picnic

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Montessori

Conference

16 17 18 19 Picture Day

20 21 Picture

Day

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23 24 25 26 Picture Day

Makeup

Book Fair

27 Book

Fair

28 Staff

Planning,

school

closed

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30 31

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Please update your Student

Directory with this updated

information:

Patel, Suri

124 Stoney Creek Dr.

Macon, GA 31220

Parents Sagar and Avani

Email:

abp83931@gmail.com

MISS ELLEN AND MISS TAIBAT CLASS

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The beginning of a new school year is always such a bustle of meeting

new friends, greeting old ones, filling out forms, and setting new routines!

It is a relief to have five weeks behind us, and to be setting down to some

work.

Learning everyone’s names and learning classroom ground rules occupied

our line times for the first few weeks of school. The children learned how

to roll a mat and carry it, how to walk carefully through the room, how to

hang up an apron, how to roll a towel-the list seems endless. Now, though,

they know what to do and what not to do and the classroom is beginning

to run more smoothly.

In preparation for the peace pole ceremony on Sept. 21, we

spent a few days talking about what we can do to achieve a

peaceful classroom and playground. We learned the song “Light

A Candle For Peace”, too. Colors and the shapes of circle,

square and triangle were discussed. We heard about every-

ones’s pets! We also learned some facts about dogs and cats. If

you have a pet, we learned you must give it food, water, and love

and attention every single day.

We began discussing the continents, and some time during Oc-

tober some work will appear on the geography shelf about Europe, the first

continent we will study this year. On the science shelf, we have some work

with bats (note the Halloween connection!) and wherever you look on the

practical life shelves there are pumpkins.

We still have some Thursday mornings available for moms, dads, grandmas

or others to come do crafts with the children! Just let us know when you’d

like to join us. Thank you for all you do for our school.

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Welcome back to old friends and new. We are remembering many lessons and how to take care of our

room. We are sharing them with new friends and looking forward to a great school year. We are spooning,

pouring, tonging and keeping very busy in our Practical Life area. We also have a food preparation area that is

very popular with making oatmeal or cereal or even cutting an apple to share with a friend. The clean up is a

big part of these lessons and a big responsibility. We change our food preparation every month. October is a

time for pumpkins so we will do spreading on a pumpkin shape bread. Our art shelf has also been busy with

coloring, cutting, pasting and painting. We talked about a famous artist, Wassily Kandinsky. He loved painting

geometric shapes and lines. And so do we! We have made our own Kandinsky art and have given it our own

title.

We began our school year with a study of dinosaurs. We learned all about herbivores and carnivores.

We sang dinosaur songs, played games, matched pictures of dinosaurs and counted them. Some children made

dinosaur books and even tried drawing a dinosaur. We read many dinosaur books and learned that dinosaurs

are EXTINCT! What does that mean? Ask your child what they know about dinosaurs. Books are so important

and we have talked about how to take care of them and turning pages carefully. We have also talked about if a

book is fiction or non-fiction.

Our sensorial area is filled with lessons on shapes-circle, triangle and square and the

primary colors-red, yellow and blue. We made many shape collages and worked on our felt

board and magnet board.

We love learning about our world. We introduced our sandpaper globe which teaches us where the

land and water is on our globe. We also put out land, air and water with animals. It’s fun sorting these animals

in their habitat. We love singing the special song “The Earth is made of land and water and the air is all around.”

We will learn how this land is called continents. We learn all about our own continent North America.

We will soon begin our sound of the week and your child may bring something to school to share that

begins with that sound. We will also be sending home a special dinosaur to spend the weekend with you and a

journal for writing all about your adventures with “Little Dinosaur” and also any pictures you want to add. Please

be prompt in returning “Little Dinosaur” because the next child is waiting anxiously for their turn. We will also

begin our Wonderful Wednesday projects and we thank you for volunteering to help our children in art, writing

or cooking on that special day. The children look forward to this day every week. We will be sending home

more information so… CHECK THOSE BAGS! Very important work and papers come home every week. We are

looking forward to a fun school year.

Miss Eileen & Miss Chhabi’s Room

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We began our 1st week playing games and learning new dances. We

played the “Twister” game and laughed at the tangling and falling. We played ABC bingo and

on our 1st Kindergarten Wednesday project, we painted and made a frame to hang our picture

of us in Kindergarten for a remembrance. We have learned all about our Solar System and the

names of all the planets. We made yarn covered planets to layout and help us remember. Now

we are learning about our own planet Earth with 1 sun and 1 moon. We know that the sun is

what makes the phase in the moon. We punched out the phases and made our own poster.

We talked about gravity, day and night and that was the time to talk about the clock. We are

learning how to tell time on the hour. We are reading and writing in our journals about our

week. October will be a fun month with more telling time and learning about land forms and

oceans. We will learn about money and values.

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LOWER ELEMENTARY

Maria Montessori called the elementary curriculum “cosmic education” because its goal is to expose the child to the whole range of human knowledge in an integrated approach to learning. The context for the elementary curriculum is established in an overview of the history of the universe. As we study ancient civilizations, the chil-dren discover that mathematics, language, history, botany, geography, music, and art all developed from basic human needs, This understanding fosters in children a love for learning and an eagerness to take their place among the community of learners.

We began our year together with an introduction to the 5 Great Stories: The Story of Creation, The Coming of Life, The Coming of Man, The History of Writing and the History of Mathematics. We made collages to depict the Creation Story. This will lead us to lessons on gravity, electricity, magnetism, states of matter, the won-ders of the universe (planets, stars, nebulae, comets and more) during the month to October.

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We have been having such a blast in our Toddler Class. All of our boys and girls are coming in with Smiles on their faces and ready to get their day started. It doesn’t seem as so when they step out of their cars, but as soon as they step in the classroom it is so apparent that they are happy to be in school. It won’t take long for all of them to give a big wave and to say a sweet “Goodbye…Have a Blessed Day” to their rides to school. They are all trying hard and we are so very proud of them. The first month of school was a time for all of us to get to know one another and hear about eve-ryone’s families and interests. We feel that we got that taken care of in the first couple of weeks. We all are the best of friends and it wasn’t long before we were ready to “GET STARTED”!! We have been talking about our primary colors and soon we will discover what happens when we mix them. We have also been counting and talking about a few of the first numbers and even a few shapes. Some of our children already know these very well and that’s great. It gives them an opportunity to share what they know with their friends that don’t and also share that in an appropriate way. We have a responsibility chart for our little ones. YES!! Toddlers have responsibilities!! Some of the responsibilities include taking out the trash, gathering dirty laundry, folding clean laundry and putting it away, watering plants, feeding classroom pets and holding our flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. We have classroom lessons that are also good responsibilities, such as scrubbing a chair or table, polishing shoes, sorting sil-verware, washing windows and we will learn many, many more. There’s not much that they can’t do. The children love having responsibilities and should have them at home. :) The potty training is going very well. All of the children show interests and participate in some kind of potty training experiences and practices. Most of them want to do it all by themselves and we let them! Sometimes it is not perfect and some clothes may end up on backwards or twisted but the children are proud of what they have done and so…We are also. :) One of the best things ever is hearing about what your child says about us at school. We love

knowing they are happy. We have said many, many times that we have a sweet class and the children are

just precious. They are so friendly and say the sweetest things to each other. Thank you for being a part of

our class. We are excited about the New Year and can’t wait to really get going.

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ST. ANDREWS MONTESSORI

SCHOOL

UPDATES

Please update your Student Directory with this updated in-

formation:

Patel, Suri

124 Stoney Creek Dr.

Macon, GA 31220

Parents Sagar and Avani Patel

Email: abp83931@gmail.com