Montessori School of Huntsville (Huntsville, AL)
"The Power of Nature" is a program to improve science education at the Montessori School of Huntsville by offering information and a variety of experiments about energy in general and the use of solar and wind energy in particular. The program will play an important role in teaching science as it will allow students to experience the sun and the wind as powerful energy sources and promising alternatives to fossil fuels. It will contain a variety of exciting hands-on experiments centered on building and using various solar powered devices as well as a wind turbine.

Thank you to Rashi Abbas and Katja Brade for writing the grant proposal and helping to improve our school!

A belated welcome to Mr. David Wencil, our long-term extended care substitute for Ms. Molly. David is a recent graduate of the University of Montevallo.  David lives in Huntsville with his wife Felicia and is also pursuing a career in voice acting.  In addition to providing extended care, Mr. David will be putting his BA in Theatre to use here at MSH. He is working on a short video promo for the school and helping elementary extended care students produce an in-house commercial for their food and clothing drive.  Please take time to welcome him to the school.

"This is a book about capturing the precious moments of parenting that otherwise are lost in the name of efficiency. It will guide you in taking the mundane, exhausting routines of parenthood and turning them into special parenting events. It’s all about redefining 'quality time.'"

Join us on February 18, 2013 to discuss the book No Regrets Parenting by Harley A. Rothbart.  (Time and location TBD)

We would like to thank all of the parents for making our Thanksgiving feast a big success! A special thanks to Tracey W., Molly R., Olga H., Rachel L., and Jay O. for helping set up and for serving food to the children at the feast. The children shared many things that they are thankful for and we are truly grateful that you share your amazing children with us!

A field trip has been scheduled to the Regency Retirement Center in December. We will post a sign-up sheet for cookie dough and pieces of fruit to be brought in for the field trip. During the visit, the children will share cookies and fruit, play bingo with the residents, and sing holiday songs. Priya K. has graciously volunteered to sing a solo (Away in a Manger) for the residents.

The elementary class will lead a can food drive to collect nonperishable goods for CASA of Madison County (Care Assurance System for the Aging and Homebound). We will also collect warm clothes and blankets for a local shelter. Children are so very compassionate. Giving to others is such a wonderful experience for them. (They are still talking about raising enough for the UNICEF school-in-a-box!) Please look for donation boxes in the lobby.

Alexander Martial Arts will make a 30 minute presentation to the elementary classroom and we would like to invite the kindergarten classes to the presentation. An integral part of the martial arts program is to teach students the importance of confidence, respect, focus, self discipline, self control, and self esteem. All of these elements are essential for the student’s growth as well.
WE WOULD LIKE TO WISH EVERYONE A SAFE AND HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON!

Welcome December! It's hard to believe but the end of the fall semester is upon us. This month will be full of fun in the Toddler classroom. We will cook latkes to celebrate Hanukkah, make corn necklaces for Kwanzaa and have our annual holiday book exchange on Friday, December 21st. If your child does not normally attend on Friday, they are welcome to come that day from 9am-11:30am to join the festivities. If they do usually attend on Friday then they will follow their regular school schedule. For the book exchange please bring one new book (costing no more than $10) gift wrapped. This is always a fun activity and the children love it. We will also be having a holiday sing-a-long on this day with Ms. Kathy; we will be recording this and emailing you the video.
Our children have truly blossomed during these past few months. It has been wonderful to watch them grow and learn since August. Thank you all so much for all of the help you have given to us and our classroom. We could not do what we do without amazing parents like you.

In November, the children enjoyed learning about leaves, why they change colors and why they fall. They also learned seasonal poems and worked on related art activities. Our Thanksgiving Feast went smoothly with help from all the parents. Thanks to everyone from other classes for sharing their delicious food with us. Also, thanks to all the parents who provided food and things for our feast. Special thanks to Bonita and Sarah for their help with our cooking class! We really appreciate your help. Thanks to Vanessa for helping with cleaning up after the Feast. Big thanks to parents for buying classroom materials fromFor Small Hands! We are very thankful for our wonderful parents.
December is a very short month. Along with Reading, Math, Geography, and Science, we will learn about holidays from around the world! So far we are celebrating a festival from India, Christmas in Poland, Hanukah, Eid from Pakistan, Christmas in Germany and Christmas in USA. We always have fun celebrating different holidays and learn a lot about different cultures, food, and clothing. We will also have holiday music program with Ms. Kathy on December 21st at 10:00 AM in our class along with Ms. Agnes’ class. Parents are welcome for this event. We all wish you happy and peaceful holidays and a wonderful New Year!

Thank you to all the parents for making the Thanksgiving Feast really grand and so much fun.  All the kids enjoyed the feast and activities. We enjoyed guessing and then counting the seeds out of the pumpkin, too. We celebrated and learned about Diwali, the festival of lights. Some children wore their traditional Indian clothes, and all the kids loved it. Thank you very much for Asha and Avi’s mom, Aruna, for sharing their Diwali experiences and food with us. We would also like to thank all the parents for the For Small Hands gifts that were purchased for our classroom. They are really useful. This month, we also learned about leaves and pumpkins.

In December, we will learn about Holidays and Culture around the World. Some parents are interested in giving presentations about how they celebrate their holidays and culture. The presentation schedule will be shared as soon we finalize it. More parents are welcome if they are interested in sharing their family traditions with our class. We will have our holiday music program on December 21 at 9:00 am in our classroom. We would like all our parents to join us for it at 8:45 am. On the same day we will have our book exchange. Please send one wrapped book with your child to exchange. We are planning to do some holiday cooking, too.

Have a Happy Holiday!!!

November was a month filled with fun art projects and cooking activities. Thank you to all of the parents who provided food for the Thanksgiving Feast. Thank you to Andy, Lindsay, Dalton and Caroline for buying our For Small Hands wishlist materials. We are so glad to have those for classroom use!

During the month of December we will learn about religious celebrations all over the world. To emphasize the idea of sharing during the holiday season, our children will exchange books among themselves. We will let you know more details about the book exchange soon. We will also study the seven continents and winter weather.

Once again, thank you for doing so much for our classroom. Special thanks to Hey Young (Amy's mom) for helping with cooking class and George LeVert (Caroline's dad) for helping us set our Thanksgiving table.

We wish all of you happy holidays. If you have any questions regarding your child, please let us know!

As 2012 comes to a close we naturally take time to reflect on the course of the year.  We would like to thank our MSH families for participating in the Parent Satisfaction Survey.  Your helpful responses have given us food for thought.  We look forward to having the rest of our academic year to continually improve our program here at MSH.

We were happy to see that you feel our teachers have a strong relationship with your children.  Teaching children brings so much joy to us each day. Your responses also indicate that you feel the classrooms are a rich learning environment filled with great materials for stimulating learning.  Here in the office Tinsley, Yolanda and I were pleased to see that you find us welcoming and accessible.  We want you to feel free to drop in, have a cup of coffee, and let us know how things are going.

According to you, we have some room to grow in a few areas.  You would like to see better communication from teachers and more organization in the office.  Consider yourselves heard! All teachers now have an easy to remember email address.  Each staff member’s unique email address consists of their first name@montessorihuntsville.org.  Feel free to email them with questions or concerns.  We know that mornings can be a hectic time and many families using extended care don’t have access to their son or daughter’s teacher in the evenings.  Hopefully, this will offer families an easier way to communicate directly with a teacher.

In the office, we are streamlining procedures and trying to find ways to make information available without drowning you in a sea of messages.  Some ways you can stay informed include logging on to www.montessorihuntsville.org and syncing your calendar with our google calendar or find out about upcoming events in the monthly newsletter and our school blog.  Don’t forget to check out the video monitor in the lobby for upcoming events.  We will continue to send evites when we need to get an accurate count of attendees for special events.  We hope you will join the school’s facebook group, Montessori Huntsville.  This is a closed group so it’s a safe way to share photos or connect with other MSH families.

As the holiday season swings into high gear remember that we at the Montessori School of Huntsville believe that being part of such a great school is a gift.  We are so grateful we get to share this gift with you and your child all year long.

As we enter December, it is hard to believe that we are already hitting the half-way mark
of our school year. We have made great progress this semester, and we are all thankful
for Alicia’s return. This December we will continue our unit on outer space, especially
space exploration, and the unit will culminate with the children building their very own
space shuttle. Since it is the holiday season, we will also be looking at holiday traditions
from around the world. If you and your family have a special holiday tradition
particular to your religion or your culture, please contact one of the teachers, as we
would love to share your traditions with the children. I would like to thank everyone who
contributed to the Thanksgiving dinner. It was a great success and I think the
children really enjoyed it. I would also like to invite parents and friends to our Holiday
Celebration on December 21st at 10 am. We wish you happy holidays!

We've had a beautiful beginning to the school year in music with all the classes. Toddlers and Pre-Primary classes have learned dozens of new songs, poems, and movement activities. Plus, they have learned how to use sticks, bells, scarves, and chickitas. Kindergartener students participate in the Pre-Primary classes and also have their own separate classes; Kindergarten students have had their glockenspiels several months now and are getting very proficient at using the mallets and reading the notes to all their songs. We also sing as we play the songs; sometimes we sing the note names, sometimes how the notes move from one to the next, and then we'll sing the words to the songs. We also study the Note Tree to learn more about rhythm, how the notes look, how long they last, etc.

Lower Elementary students are halfway through their recorder books, are making beautiful sounds, know the fingerings and how to read the notes from middle C up 9 notes to high D. We always sing the songs before we play them, so they're learning to sing the songs, the note names, the rhythm, etc., before they learn to play the songs. Upper Elementary has just started our newest music adventure: They are learning how to play the dulcimer! We got the kits several weeks ago, I put them together and glued on the fretboards, and then the students decorated their own dulcimer w/ markers and stickers. I tuned the dulcimers, and we've just started learning how to use the pick to strum the strings, and how to use the wooden noter to make melodies on the melody string, leaving the drone string open.

This year I'm using Musikgarten curricula for Toddlers and Pre-Primaries, and the public domain materials of Kindermusik for the glockenspiel (pre-keyboard) and dulcimer (pre-string), and the Suzuki book for the recorder (pre-winds, pre-brass.) My focus for Toddlers is to reinforce rhythm so the children keep their sense of rhythm and the steady beat that are innate in newborns and start to deteriorate at about the age of 2 (unless there is reinforcement at that age). For Pre-Primaries and Kindergarten students, the focus is on tonal memory, since these ages are right in the window of opportunity to learn how to match their voices to the pitches, and remember those sounds. Both levels of Elementary students are ready for the cognitive work of reading music, and we work on that as we're playing recorder and dulcimer.

All levels also are doing a rounded program of body awareness, stationary and traveling movement, vocal development, rhythmic development, and using various rhythm instruments. All senses--except smell!--and all areas of the brain are used in our music classes.

When I completed the inventory of the music program instruments and materials, we all were amazed that the total actual cost of the music inventory of the school is above $10,000. That speaks volumes to me about the value this school places on the music program, and it's to the credit of the parents and leadership that we've built such an inventory over the years!

I presented a program to the staff at the October staff meeting, with emphasis on music in the Montessori classroom; the first goal is to establish a listening center for each classroom, w/ a CD player or iPod and headphones, and to start putting together the 45 recommended musical selections, the instrument cards, the composer cards, the music history timeline, and the orchestra seating chart for use at the listening center. The second goal is to have musical instruments on the shelves along w/ the previously mentioned cards or sheets. The third goal is to have music at the circle once a month, with a lesson presented by the classroom teacher. All these ideas come from the bookMusic in the Montessori Classroomby Shelley Murley, which was presented to the school several years ago by Carol Howie. NOTE: All classes are desperate for good musical CDs, either instrumental or with good children's singing. We would especially love donations of classical music CDs!

All students are working on our holiday program, which will be December 21. There will be 3 separate programs to which parents and guests are invited, and 1 program which will be taped for later presentation to the parents. Parents are invited to the two programs by the Pre-Primary classes, and also to the program by Elementary students. The Toddler program will be taped for the parents. (Since there is no early dismissal that day, it would be too disruptive to the children to have parents come to their morning program and then leave. Thank you for understanding!) The Pre-Primary classes of Ms. Dola and Ms. Kelly and Ms. Shree will be combined for a 9:00 program; we will start at the stroke of 9 o'clock, so please be in place and ready to go by 8:45 that morning. We will tape the Toddler program at 9:30. The Pre-Primary classes of Ms. Agnes and Ms. Janaki will be at 10:00, and both levels of Elementary students will be at 11:00. Again, I start right on time, so parents who come to the Pre-Primary and Elementary programs should be in the classroom a few minutes before the time listed.

Thank you so much for your interest, feedback and support!

Since November is the month in which we celebrate Thanksgiving, our cooking class will be centered around a Thanksgiving meal that we will share with other classes. If you are willing to help with preparation for this meal, please let me know as we will need as many volunteers as possible. This year, I would like to encourage fathers or grandfathers to help us with the cooking classes in next months, too. Our recipes are easy and tasty, and my main goal is to show children that cooking is not only mom’s job. Please remember that every day we go outside. It is fall now, and it is getting colder every day, so please make sure the children have appropriate clothing for the weather. Happy Thanksgiving!

In November we talk about harvesting pumpkins, corn, and cotton. We also talk about Native Americans and their culture. We will make related art activities and find out from children what they are thankful for. We love their innocent answers about what they are thankful for. We are planning to cook corn and pumpkin pies together with Ms. Agnes' class and share with all the other classes. We will have Thanksgiving Feast together with Ms. Agnes' class.

We will also learn about the fall season, leaves, and trees and read about related poems and songs! Children will continue working on writing lessons. They are enjoying writing in sand, chalk board, pin-punch, and on paper. In Geography they will continue studying different regions of the United States.

We wish everyone a safe and peaceful Thanksgiving.

We are tracing and drawing lots of pumpkins and different leaves. We are also working on recognizing letters and numbers. Our kindergarten students are working on math and language work. Our study about the human body is going very well. We will continue to study our body throughout the month.

Fall is already here and it is the season to learn about the changes in nature. We will learn about the changing colors of leaves. Also, during the month of November we will learn about Native Americans and pilgrims and spend time talking about what we are thankful for.

As the weather is getting cooler, please check your child's extra clothes bag at school. We now need long sleeve shirts and pants. We want to thank Lindsay's mom (Brandy) for giving us a ride to the Botanical Gardens field trip. Once again thanks to everyone for everything that you do. We are thankful to have such a wonderful group of children with us.

Happy Thanksgiving.

If you are trying to find a way to get rid of some of your child’s Halloween candy the elementary class is collecting candy to send to the U.S. troops. This is a great project sponsored by a local dentist office. We will collect candy through November 7th.

Thanks to everyone that participated in the Trick or Treat Unicef program.

The upper elementary class started music on November 1st and they were very excited to learn to play their dulcimers and work with Ms. Kathy once again.

This month we are learning about the U.S. government and U.S. symbols. We will have a mock election in the classroom on Tuesday, November 6th. We will also teach a unit about North America including Native American tribes, animals, plants, regions, and history.

Pick up a little Trick or Treat for UNICEF collection box in the lobby for your child to decorate with their favorite Halloween character!

Please help your child ask family and neighbors to donate change to help children around the globe!

OK folks...buckle your seat belts and hold on because October is looking to be the busiest month of the year. There are so many things happening this month that it is going to fly by in the blink of an eye. For starters, We are going on our first field trip to the Botanical Gardens to check out all the scarecrows and the butterfly garden. This month we are learning about spiders and all their usefulness as well as their creepy parts. Also this month, we will learn about what is happening at night....yes, it is nocturnal animals!! If you have any special stories at home about spiders or nocturnal animals, please send them to school for our daily story time. The children really enjoy bringing in their stories from home.

Everyone is looking forward to our fall break...lets all get some rest so we can really get with it when we come back....because....when we get back we have conferences, parent sharing night, classroom pictures, Fall Festival, Tate Farms, and more!!! I told you it is going to be crazy...but fun!!

Oh, by the way....with the warm temperatures waning, you may want to bring in some cozy clothes in case we need to change at school.

My parting words to all you awesome people...... "The things he/she sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his/her soul." Maria Montessori Lets make all those moments beautiful!

With Much Love,Ms. Kelly, Ms. Shree and Ms. Molly(plus little baby)

During the month of October we will learn the changes of seasons. We will also learn about spiders, bats and pumpkins. We are going to start learning about the continents, Christopher Columbus and his journey to the new world. Our child sharing night is coming. Please come and observe your child in a Montessori environment. Parents' conference is on October 19th; please sign for your slot. It is always fruitful to learn about what your child is enjoying and doing in his/her classroom.

Once again thanks for sharing your loved ones. Have a great fall break. If you have any questions or concerns, email us or stop by.

Ms. Dola and Ms. Jayati

October is very busy month with lots going on! We have Fall break, parents sharing night, parent teacher conferences. We will be learning about spiders, leaves and pumpkins. We are also taking field trip to the pumpkin patch. In math and sensorial, we will estimate and count seeds in small, medium, and large pumpkins. Then we cut open all three pumpkins and count seeds and also feel and touch the stuff inside the pumpkin. Children are enjoying riddles and poems which we do everyday. Also, they are enjoying Spanish and Music classes as well. We will be starting cooking class this month. We will be cooking together with Ms. Agnes' class this year! We will let you know details soon.

Thanks to all the parents for bringing your children on time to school this year! And once again thanks to all our parents and staff for your cooperation and helping us to be able to help your children. We could not do such a wonderful job without any one of you!

Ms. Janakiand Ms. Monica

This month we will be learning about Trees and Leaves. If you have books or items about trees, please allow your children to share them with us. We will also learn about pumpkins. We would appreciate any parents who could donate two pumpkins (one large, one small) to help us with our studies. The children will be guessing the number of seeds in each of the two pumpkins. We also will be learning about the globe and the continents. We will tie that into our study of Christopher Columbus and his trip to the New World. Then we have the Fall Break - the children deserve to have a rest and relax after the hard work in the initial period of school. After Fall Break we will try to keep the Halloween excitement as low as possible, please no Halloween costumes at school. Children will be cooking for the first time in October. Our cooking class will be together with Ms.Janaki clas and we will need some volunteers! The children have also been enjoying Music with Ms. Kathy and Spanish with Ms. Carmen!

Please don’t forget to sign up for Parent/Child Sharing Night and conferences. It is a special time to share and experience what your child has been learning in a unique environment of the Montessori school. The Parents Sharing Night is also a good occasion to see and understand what we do in class during the day, so it may give you some ideas to discuss during the Parents-Teachers Conference.

Ms. Agnes

P.S. Please check yours children's change of clothes, they now need much warmer clothes.

 We encourage families to continue this special day at home by talking to their children about the meanings of peace and participating in activites that celebrate bringing peace to the world! Check out the following links for great ways to bring a little peace to your home!

• Make "Pinwheels for Peace"!
• Submit your artwork to the annual Peace Pals International Arts Exhibition and Awards!
• Create a giant peace dove to display in a public space
• Plant a rock for peace!