Curating the photos and videos we've produced at CMC over the last four weeks has left me so proud of the 27 amazing little people and 7 adults that learn and grow at CMC each week! It takes a special mix of perseverance and support from the community to learn and grow — especially through mistakes, big and small!
These past four weeks, we said goodbye to long-time staff member Anna Strench (please see every previous post on this page for her many contributions to our little community). We also said both hellos and goodbyes to Red Nuss (an individual exploring work with young children for the first time who, unfortunately, discovered our work at CMC was not a good fit for them). In between these two departures, we also said goodbye to Children's House East community member David! We will miss David's warm curiosity and wish him well at his next "big kid school"!
At the same time, our hearts and hands have been busy welcoming three new little ones and their families to the CMC community: Chloe; Athena; and Noble Sage! In honor of all these departures and welcomes, I've added a new category to this post: community! It's a place to share events and happenings from birthdays to potlucks to farewell batches of Citrusade and everything in between!
Community
Four children and I celebrated our birthdays in Children's House East these past four weeks (the family of one prefers to stay anonymous here). We all grew in our ability to support walks around the sun (especially the day I walked around our little wicker sun 40 times)!
We also built up some muscle capacity carrying, squeezing, and pouring citrus and stevia to say farewell:
Avriel has taken particular pride in preparing our CMC Citrusade this year, here he is practicing opening our sticky stevia bottle lid:
We have also been working hard to develop the self-care skills needed to make smooth transitions throughout our days at CMC (which, especially in young children, require good nourishment and good rest). Check out our progress:
There's nothing quite like observing and helping growth in the natural world to aid the growth of young children!
We're looking forward to all the growth spring will surely have in store for us at CMC!
Outdoors
It never ceases to amaze me just how much a slack line, some little wheels, and piles of snow, leaves, and/or mud can support balance, perseverance, imagination, and community among our children! Just wait until all our annuals start sprouting again in the weeks ahead!
Practical Life
Of course, we could not offer 10 hours of consistently happy and productive daily care to our children at CMC without the structural support of the Montessori Method. At the Children's House level, our methods are girded by the concentration, coordination, independence, and specific skills each child develops through Practical Life work:
Chloe's first time holding scissors at CMC was an extra special moment:
Sensorial
In the Montessori Children's House, Sensorial materials are introduced with the direct aims of supporting children in exploring, categorizing, and communicating around all their sense experiences. However, children often find their own reasons as well as their own growth in their work with these fantastic manipulatives. Please start your exploration of our Sensorial work this month by taking a moment to reflect on all the perseverance and balance that stacking the Pink Tower this out of order must have required from the child who did it! (The smallest, 1 cm cube is hiding under the 9 cm cube!) Then reflect on all the self-regulation and collaboration that Avriel, Soraya, Syd, and Jiraiya must have exerted in constructing our Decanomial Square together. (In this picture, they're just shy of arranging all 100 squares on the mat according to height and width without a single misplaced hand or foot.)
In the next video, Ani happily shows Chloe and Athena the ins and outs of our Brown Stairs in Children's House East:
And here's Teddy and Jasper exploring rolling a marble down a combined Brown and Pink Stair:
And last but not least among our Sensorial videos, here's Jiraiya showing tremendous care in training Ani on clean up of Color Tablets Box 2:
Language
The high-level of interest and ability in reading and writing these last four weeks is one of the things that give me the most confidence in the strength of our Montessori implementation at CMC. This is the benefit of direct, individualized, and cohesive instruction in multisensory phonics starting at three!
Another year and another group of three and four year olds take joy in the early and affirming reading work of the Command Cards:
To help you follow along with Syd in reading this silly little book: Jen's pet hamster has escaped and Jen has set a trap.
Math
The children are all also making advances in numeracy from naming and writing the numerals to memorizing addition and multiplication tables:
I'll leave you all with this beautiful goof of Syd's as he tries to wear a pencil on his ear (as he's no doubt seen some cooler, older individuals succeed in doing)! 32 days until spring (and our Spring Equinox Potluck)!