To close our Winter Sports season, Brighton Resort would love to host an MCS Family Ski Day. Tickets are at a reduced rate and can be purchased from the MCS Office. When purchasing your tickets, please ensure to make checks out to MCS.
“Children will be smarter, better able to get along with others, healthier and happier when they have regular opportunities for free and unstructured play in the out-of-doors.”
—American Medical Association, 2005
Spring has arrived! I can’t help but be excited by the thought of sunshine, hikes, water and fresh air! This article written by Jane M. Jacobs, M.A., a Montessori Educational Consultant at Montessori Services spoke to me in considering how outdoor time is such a powerful tool for our children. In the article, Jane offers a variety of ideas for making the best of your outside time with your little one.
Enjoy!
Were you told to “go out and play” when you were a child? Now, as a parent, do you give your children the same instructions? Perhaps not, but even for the urban, over-scheduled family, there are ways to give our children more opportunities to explore the outdoors.
For centuries it was common wisdom that children needed several hours of outdoor activity daily. As Dr. Benjamin Spock said, “It’s good for a baby (like anyone else) to get outdoors for two or three hours a day.” Some say we now suffer from “nature deficit disorder.” Children spend more and more time indoors with bright toys, beeping computer games, and flashing screens. A more contemporary pediatrician, Harvey Karp, similarly tells us that “there are exhaustive studies showing that time outdoors, particularly in nature, benefit us in myriad ways… while staying inside is over-stimulating and at the same time boring for children.”
Click here to read entire article.
Spring cleaning? It’s that time again to bring in all of your children’s gently used clothing that is too small, or unworn and swap it for something that fits. Please drop off your gently used items in the bins located in the MCS gymnasium. You may drop off items March 16th – March 20th.
Then, during school hours, March 26th and March 27th, you may come browse the tables in the gym. Clothes will be separated into size and style. If you are looking for volunteer opportunities, please contact the office, as the Green Committee would love help sorting, folding, and displaying the clothes.
Your child’s education in Montessori is different – so different that it makes you shake your head in wonder and say, “Is this something my child is really learning?” As parents we want our children to excel at reading, writing and math. Yet their Montessori education leads them through strange and esoteric materials. (At least they are foreign to most adults.)
Why would a three year old need to be versed in geometry? Fine, a nice circle, a square and maybe a triangle but what purpose for an isosceles triangle, parallelogram or a rhombus? Then if that is not enough esoteric learning, your child moves on to the botany cabinet. How many three year olds need botany? They are introduced to leaf forms like spatulate, orbiculate, sagitate and reniform. Most of us adults can’t even pronounce them let alone know what they are.
If that is not enough diversity in the curriculum, Montessori education then introduces them to the whole world of art. They meet Picasso, Monet and Rembrandt. What in the world was Dr. Montessori thinking? And where is the math and reading?
There is a unique method (no it is not madness) in this approach. Your child is absorbing a tremendous amount of learning and stimuli and beginning to gain the skills of observation and visual discrimination – which is the ability to see differences. The Montessori child is effortlessly gaining a lifetime skill – the ability to see. Yes, we are born with sight but sight is passive where all the images come to us. When we observe, we actively focus our sight. But even focusing our sight does not always let us see what is there. For example, we have all seen pictures that if you look at them long enough the image changes into something else – like the two faces and the goblet or the old woman and the young girl. Skills and even talents need to be trained and refined. A Montessori classroom provides an unending panorama of activities that train and refine the ability “to see”.
Though education is primarily reading and math based, life is about having a clear vision of what is present (and what could be). And though the introduction to geometry (rhombus), botany (reniform) and art (Rembrandt) is rudimentary, it is absolutely foundational to clear-eyed success. For your child everything is new and exciting. To be able to put a name with a form or a shape not only gives great intellectual satisfaction but is the beginning of power to organize, define and categorize the world that is seen.
Enjoy the voyage of discovery as your child, with bright new eyes, sees the world for the first time. It is this power of visual discrimination that gives strength and focus to the power to read. It is also this power that breaks the world of math into distinguishable pieces with the ability to see patterns and processes.
Montessori truly gives your child the gift of sight!
Edward Fidellow
Please find Spring Camp registration forms on the credenza by the stairs in the lobby. Spring Camp will run Monday, March 30th – Friday, April 3rd.
During Spring Camp, the students will learn all about the moon! Please look over the daily schedule above.
Download the forms here:
Montessori Community School sponsors the above beautiful girls. These girls have been growing up right before our eyes! We are so proud of their accomplishments and continue to support and encourage their goals and dreams through the COEEF Program.
Our girls have written lovely letters we would love to share with you. COEEF-GIRLS-2014.pdf. Please watch for our fundraisers this spring to continue supporting these amazing girls.
There will not be any Winter Sports this Wednesday, February 25th. Instead, enjoy this video of the last 3 weeks of our Winter Sports Program.
Parent Teacher Conferences will be held on Friday, February 27th. There will be no school that day. Sign-up sheets for the conferences are on a table in the lobby, arranged by class, from Toddlers to Middle School (please check the top of each page for the name of the class). As we do every year, we ask that you observe the following requests:
· Please sign up for one meeting time per child.
· Please be on time for your conference.
· Please help the teachers to stay on time.
· Please arrange for childcare during Parent/Teacher conferences.
We have had parents make requests for child care during the conferences. Unfortunately, as our staff is busy meeting with parents and all of our classrooms, along with some other spaces in the school, are being used we have not been able to accommodate this request. Please note that our playgrounds and our Outdoor Classroom are closed during conferences for safety and liability reasons. In order to accommodate parents who arrange to exchange child care during conferences we will make our lobby available and will provide coloring pages for the children.
We have included some additional tips that might be useful in having a successful Parent Teacher Conference:
We thank you for utilizing this opportunity to learn more about your child’s experience here at school and appreciate your time. Please feel free to visit your Montessori Compass account prior to your visit so that you can see what your child has been up to!
With warm regards,
MCS Teachers and Administration
MCS Lower Elementary student Diego Reyes-Lisieski recently appeared on KSL’s Good Things Utah where he shared his talent and passion for cooking as a representative of the Salt Lake Culinary School which he attends. Diego has shared this talent with his classmates at school as well. He has been a student at Montessori Community School since 2010 and has enjoyed his cooking hobby since he was very young. Nice work, Diego!
