We had a wonderful first week back at school. It was definitely a hot one, but the kids were wonderfully patient with the heat. Here's to hoping that next week will be a bit cooler.
We spent the week reviewing classroom procedures and establishing ground rules for our peaceful classroom. The students create the rules for how they would like their classroom to function. We reviewed behavior expectations around the school and talked about our school's motto: PEACE, which stands for Patient, Encouraging, Accountable, Courteous, and Environmentally Aware. During the month of September, we will be focusing on patience, which will be supported by patience-themed read alouds/discussions.
We also did some classroom team-building and the students were assigned a buddy for the year. If your child came home wearing a friendship bracelet, it matches the one their buddy has. The pairs of buddies designed and built paper boats and were only given one piece of paper, a crayon, and a piece of tape.
The boats were set in a tub of water one at a time, and we counted to see how many marbles they could hold before sinking. The kids were very excited about this! One boat held 94!
We also did an activity where we learned that fairness isn't sameness, another about how the words we speak can affect others, and did lots of sharing circles to get to know each other.
We read the most beautiful book called, Our Peaceful Classroom, which was written and illustrated by Montessori children around the world. After reading, we wrote our own "Peaceful Classroom" book.
We also celebrated the first birthday of the school year. Birthday celebrations are very special in our classroom. We use the Celebration Sun material, which shows the months of the year. We light the candle in the middle to signify the moment the child was born and the child then walks around the sun the number of years they have been alive. We sing a special song, share a snack, look at the student's picture timeline, and they get to make a birthday wish. On birthdays, the students also write "birthday compliments" for the birthday child. These are the children's gifts to each other--a thoughtful compliment and illustration.
We also began with some academic work and small slices of work cycles. The first years began some handwriting practice and also got a lesson on the Hundred Board. The third years started working on an ABC book about themselves. Our class also worked on decorating a "peace bunting" for our classroom. And all of the students are working on creating their self-portraits to be hung outside of our classroom.
It was a great first week and we have such a sweet group. Looking forward to the year ahead.
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