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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:
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: [email protected]
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