SHOW AND TELL
Bring a picture of a forest or wetland to go in our biome mural.
Topic: Plants
Learn about forests and wetlands
The value is frugality. We’ll talk about how to keep from wasting anything.
For manners we’ll learn about how to disagree, how to apologize, and how to report peer behavior
Outside we’ll play “can you do what I do?” and bridge across the river.
The songs we’ll be singing are Ants Go Marching, It’s a Small World, This Land Is Your Land, Mr. Sun, and You Are My Sunshine.
For creative dramatics we’ll be an animal that lives in the swamp or in a forest.
Our art activities are biome wall hanging, biome bookmark, pasta creatures, and floating art.
For motor development, we’ll work on flexibility by making huge circles with our arms. For bilaterality we’ll pretend to be skiers, we’ll roll balls around our bodies, and we’ll bump balloons.
FIT/ACTIVE/HEALTHY
Fitness improves not just the length of our lives, but also the quality of our lives. It’s so sad to watch a fat boy panting as he tries to keep up with his buddies or a fat girl distressed over body image. Critically, fat accumulates in the liver and can cause cirrhosis of the liver decades down the road. We can start now making sure our children never have to be in those situations.
The words fit, active, and healthy are almost synonymous. An active child will almost always be a fit child. As adults, we’re exhausted by trying to keep up with our preschoolers, but the Montessori admonition to “follow the child” tells us that if a child seems to need to jump, set up jumping situations – on a trampoline, down the steps, over the rope. If a child seems to want to run, let her run – after the ball, in a race, down the hill. For smaller children, the infant who protests the high chair and stroller is telling us he needs to be in his own small table and chair and to be allowed to walk. Infants should almost never be placed in an automatic swing or an infant carrier. They’re both about 98% bad for the child. (Manufacturers will never tell you this, of course.)
Don’t have time to always “play”, you say? No problem. Active is folding laundry, digging in the flowerbed, setting the table, and painting the refinished furniture. Your child yearns to be connected with you, to learn from you, and to be affirmed by you. Remember your own days when your parent was the most important person in your world?
Even quiet time has its own inner activity. Quiet time together is reading and talking about a favorite book or watching and analyzing a video program. Every TV program at the preschool level should be a together activity. If it’s a quality program, you’ll learn something. If it’s not a quality program, you don’t want all that junk going into your child’s sponge of a mind. Individual quiet time is a time for you to do your own reading, studying, or bookkeeping while your child is quiet beside you. We’re beginning to hear experts talk about how boredom (with freedom to move) is a key to creativity. Sometimes the best conversations are those when not a word was spoken.
The relationship of health to fitness means great food (low on the food chain, no artificial colors or flavors, etc.) and plenty of rest. These are doable goals. It’s mainly a matter of defining them all for your family. It’s a quality-of-life issue.
For Your Information
Luau – On Monday August 14, from 6:30 – 8:30p we are having a luau. Parents are asked to bring a dish that works well outside arrive in your swim clothes and enjoy. This year’s luau will be at Memorial forest Cub 12122 Memorial Dr. about four miles from the school.
Toddler Parents – We’ll be deep cleaning the cubbies over the weekend so we are asking only toddler parents on Friday July 28, to take home all items out your child’s cubbie wash and bring back on Monday.
Primary Parents - On Friday July 28, Eisa is saying goodbye to his classmates in the primary class with lunch from Chick-fill-A. Consider on not sending your child with a full lunch that day he’ll have chicken nuggets, fries and fruit juice.
Manners We’re Learning – The week we begin our Biomes series with Forests and Wetlands, we’ll also study manners, but not manners you might think. This set of manners is about how to disagree, how to apologize, and how to report peer behavior. Reporting peer behavior is sometimes called “tattling” and in the Montessori environment, we try to make sure we understand what’s going on with the children. We might ask “Why are you telling me this?” or “What do you want me to do about that?” The reason might be that the child is wondering whether she can do that, too. Or the child might need help in dealing with a situation that no longer is working for her. Ask to see our curriculum if you would like some ideas.
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