October 21st, 2011

HALLOWEEN AT GLM!

Our Halloween celebration will be on Friday 10/28 from 8:30 until 10:00am. The children are invited to travel around the yards in costume and participate in various crafts and snack making activities. Please refer to the email sent by your child's teacher regarding the celebration. 

 

Grand Night Out 2011

Thank you for making Grand Night Out such a success!!

Grand Night Out 2011 was a FIRST in having an event on school premises with 200 people. The event raised over $28,000! The fundraiser to provide tuition assistance to as many families as possible fulfills our vision of making this Montessori learning community accessible and collaborative. All of the parents and teachers who helped were ROCK STARS. As one teacher put it, "Everyone worked very hard together with one heart."

The team of workers who showed up early in the morning was led by Gabby Rosi who led this event with incredible support from Tejal Patel, Alex Phillips and Amy Hillyard. They organized the event, the live and silent auction and wonderful food.

So many thank you's:
Gabby Rosi, Tejal Patel, Alex Phillips and Amy Hillyard
Jenn Phillips
Sarah Hope
Laura McDonald
Mary Aima
Nancy and Bill Haskins
Mr. Bill
Allison Leslie and her husband Kevin
Amanda Klein
Sonali Joshi
Jessica Kutash
Chris Hillyard
Kirby Sullivan
Laszlo Muhl
Shannon Riehl
Brynly Llyr
Lara and Jim Andrews
Grillers: Mr. Tien, John Campbell, Josh Burke, and Craig Kennedy
Marianna Bissonette for organizing kidfest   

Please enjoy a video slideshow of Grand Night Out 2011! Thank you to Brad Jefferson for helping us create it.

Also, here is a link to a photo album of the event.  

Thank you to all of your support at GNO. Weather is starting getting cold. Please dress your child properly (long sleeves, and a jacket). The children have been very busy in the classroom making bats, painting pumpkins, and reading Halloween stories. If you have time to do any reading with the children please contact the camellia teachers. We've been talking about our Halloween celebration next week. There are going to be a lot of friends in their special costumes.  

The Ginkgo Class is in full swing. Our Grace and Courtesy lessons happen daily. A wonderful and heart warming product of these lessons has been spontaneous moments of kindness. Our third years giving lessons, how to roll a rug, to first years. First years helping third years with clean-up. We are learning the importance of friendship, kindness, and being a cooperative member of the classroom society. Please sign up for Halloween volunteering if you can. It will be a Spooky Good Time!  

In Jacaranda we are enjoying the Fall season. The children harvested the last of our summer vegetables from the garden with Ms. Edington, which included some hidden (and dried) green beans that had been forgotten on the bush. The children have been shucking them in the classroom and we now have bean seeds to plant in the garden again! Thank you so much to all who supported the GNO! Congratulations and thank you to Zoe's family who bid and won the Jacaranda Bookshelf project!     

 The Juniper children enjoy learning Mandarin so much these days. Many of them are eager to learn the sounds of the Mandarin phonetic alphabet through tracing the sandpaper letters and match the corresponding sound objects afterwards. They are also encouraged to write down the sounds that they have mastered either on chalkboard or on paper. Some of the older children are learning Chinese characters and make small booklets. We have been singing Mandarin songs, reading several Mandarin children's books and played out the games from the books.         

The Live Oak children have been enjoying their study of fish this month. Ms. Craig brought in a whole fish and led small group discoveries around the parts of the fish. We also have some new (and temporary) living specimens in the classroom. Early this week the children went to harvest kale to make kale chips and discovered lots of garden snails, so they collected a few and have been observing them in a tank in the classroom. That's science, Montessori-style!

It has been a thrill to meet the many visitors in the Magnolia classroom. We are excited to greet our parents, allow them to watch us concentrate on our work, and also offer some of them a banana slice. We also welcomed Mr. Moody and Mr. Hoffman to demonstrate movement work, discuss instruments, and to teach us many new songs. As Ms. Vaasili is still recovering from her foot injury, Mr. Goodin and Ms. Sithi have been helping the children create "Get Well" cards and baking banana bread to send her.    

Mulberry class has been talking about Halloween. Language cards of Halloween objects (ghost, black cat, witch, jack-o-latern, spider, and candy corn) has been added to the shelf. We also have orange and black art activities as well as Halloween sticker work. In circle the children have been learning a Halloween Poem . We will be celebrating Halloween Friday October 28, 8:30-10:00. There will be a sign up sheet on our clip board if you are available to help.