SHOW AND TELL
Bring something that was made from using a needle and thread
Topic: Clothing
Clothes protect, cover, and adorn us.
The value we’ll be studying is compassion, which is to understand how others are feeling.
For manners, we’ll learn how important it is to stay cheerful and to help others.
Outside, we’ll play Simon Says.
The songs we’ll be singing are Ten in a Bed, We Shall Overcome, Let There Be Peace on Earth, Circle of Life, High Hopes, and Say, Say, Oh, Playmate.
For creative dramatics, we’ll practice good manners
Our art activities will be hats, sew a shirt, laundry, and cardboard looms.
For motor development we’ll work on flexibility with yoga postures. For proprioceptive skills, we’ll play push apart, statue walk, tug-of-war, and leg push.
PERSONALITY IS THE DIFFERENCE
This article appeared several years ago in the Gifted Children Newsletter. Today, more and more educational literature is focusing on the problems of traditional education. According to the article, it is the personality of gifted children, it is not their intelligence, that distinguishes them from bright children. Most of our children here at the school are genetically bright, and we love working with them. By definition, bright children “keep the systems going. They take music lessons, read books, join clubs, collect things, do their homework, enjoy group activities, play Scrabble and tennis, follow directions, get good grades, win and display trophies, and seek the leadership of adults. Bright children are willing to learn whatever their teachers deem important in order to achieve their major goals, which are to improve, to advance, and to fulfill their societal responsibilities.” Gifted children, on the other hand, while displaying many of the above characteristics, also “lead, dare, innovate, dream and solve problems. They sell lemonade, form clubs, make things out of junk, read comic books and Shakespeare, invent games, take apart their bicycles, enter contests, get erratic grades, make fantasy lands out of their bedrooms, and avoid adult-dominated activities.” Gifted children also learn easily, but they are motivated by “instrumental and esthetic values, choosing what they will learn in order to perform worthwhile tasks, solve problems, and discover meaning, order, and beauty. Getting ahead, pleasing and meeting the expectations of society are of secondary importance.”
The predominant model of education in which quantity and speed of learning are emphasized does not serve gifted children well. They’re not interested in quantity and speed, but in accomplishing a worthwhile task. “The phenomena of boredom and frustration, so often reported by observers, are not caused by too little quantity and speed but by the meaninglessness and constriction rampant in so many classrooms. What the gifted really need is to get school ‘off their backs’. Their individual goals and style should not be discredited, nor should their tasks be over-organized and their selective interest penalized. The recommendation in this particular article is a system of sustained and complex tasks that have a purpose, a context, a specified audience, and results. There are very few facts and symbols that are essential and these are easily learned as part of everyday life. Memorization must fit into a historical context, where facts make sense and can be recalled by association. This type of teaching fits the same democratic principles as those of the Founding Fathers:”. . . both the group and the individual are best served when people work together, contributing their special talents to projects they consider meaningful.” These concepts that develop giftedness are so evident in our Montessori classrooms. If you are the parent of a child who could easily meet the criteria of “gifted” with appropriate encouragement, you might want to be aware of these educational principles. If you are the parent of a normally bright child, you might want to encourage some of this out-of-the-box thinking.
For Your Information
Valentine Celebration – Remember that Valentine’s Day will be celebrated on Friday, Feb. 12. Your child will need a valentine for every child in his class.
Expanding Creativity – A part of being creative is being able to sense our world. Preschoolers are amazing at being able to see really wonderful details in their worlds; adults need a little practice. You can help your child by focusing “small”. Imagine an empty picture frame that you can lay around a space in the yard, at the park, or on a picture in a book. Focus on everything you can see in the frame; what are the colors, is anything moving, what lines go through the space? If you’ll give yourself some time, you’ll be amazed at what you get in the habit of seeing, like our little children do.
Show and Tell / Toy Day – Show and tell is every Tuesday. Some items for show and tell will require parents to talk with their child about the object they are bringing to school so the child can describe, to some degree what she is showing to her classmates. On Fridays students are allowed to bring a small toy to school. Toy day is designed to teach responsibility, students should be able to keep up with their toy and make sure it gets back home in the same condition it arrived to school.
Arriving after 9 A.M. – If you are arriving after 9 in the morning please note that we are having school in the far back classrooms and may not know you are at the front door. We asked that when you get to the front door or just before your arrival you give the school a call at 713 932 0126 and the teacher meet you at the front door.
Newsletter - There will not be a newsletter for the week of 02-15-2021 – When there are times the school does not put out a newsletter we will follow the same enrichment curriculum subject from the last newsletter and also have the same show and tell.
CLASSROOM NEWS
Kez, a past student has recently rejoined our school and seems to be adjusting easily back into the school routine. Kez enjoys working with the train track where he assembles the many parts to make a big circle like shape after working with the materials for a long period of time Kez puts the work away when the teachers announces that it’s “clean up time” and after he puts his work back in the same place he volunteers himself to help other classmate put their work away.
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