Hello Everyone,
The season of spring is all around us from the flowers we see around the campus, to the birds singing just outside our classroom window each morning. What an eventful month we have had with so much growth with our learning.
Springtime crafts are always of interest to young children. In Japan we are lucky to have beautiful cherry blossoms in full display. Using pink tissue paper we crumpled up the paper into small balls, which also strengthens our fine motor (small hand muscles) and helps to develop our eye-hand coordination to paste and stick the blossoms onto our branches. It’s also just fun to do with a friend!
SPRING CRAFTS
Decorating foam butterflies was also fun to do with a classmate.
Our theme this month is called, “Me on the map.” The children started this project by drawing themself at this moment in time in the world, then breaking it down to where they go to school (Saint Maur International), the street (Yamate cho), my city (Yokohama), the state/prefecture that Yokohama is in (Kanagawa) the country where I live now (Japan), the continent it is in (Asia). Then lastly showing that Asia is on planet Earth. It was a long project but the children seemed very interested to see how maps help to guide us and help us learn about the world and where we live.
Moving along with the concept of the Earth we did our part to celebrate “Earth Day” on April 22nd. We coloured, cut and folded paper to create our own Earth day decoration.
Folding was a skill in itself, but we all did well by observing and then trying for ourselves.
SPRING CONCERT
We were so happy to be able to practice and then record our Montessori Spring Concert on campus this year. Each day we would practice a little until we felt confident to put it all together. In total each child was given the opportunity to perform in three (3) dances. One with their class, one with their afternoon Language Arts class LA1, LA 2, LAB group and the younger 3 yr old children (who take a nap). Then we joined together with all the teachers to do our group finale dance. When it was all put together you can see according to your child’s age that each year the children’s abilities and skill level increases. The confidence to get up on stage to perform is a big moment for some young children, but you can see how much they bloomed for their Spring concert.
This is one of our sneak peak practice times on stage to learn where to be, stand and move around the stage with our classmates. We all did a wonderful performance!!
FUN DAY
On April 29th the Montessori school had a ‘Fun Day’ while other parts of the school enjoyed, “Spirit Day.” It’s a time when students come together to participate in and enjoy time together doing less formal activities. On this day we practiced once more for our Spring concert, we also came together to play with balloons in the interim gym one last time & then in the afternoon we enjoyed some fruit sorbet with our own class.
One of our school rules for health and safety during these current times is that we do not talk while we are eating. The children have done so very well with remembering the importance of showing each other that we care about each other when we do this. In most cases the children remind one another if they forget!
We have one more month of school and so much more to learn, make and experience with our classmates and teachers. Until next month!
\