2012- 2013 Acceptance Packets Are In The Mail!

2012-2013 Acceptance Packets Are In the Mail!

If you applied for admission for the 2012-2013 School year, please check your email! We have emailed all applicants notification of their admission status (we also mailed this information to you).

If your child was accepted, an Acceptance Packet has been mailed to you. If you have not recieved the packet by Friday, please contact the school. We will hold your child's spot until 5pm on January 22, 2011; you have until this time to confirm your intent to enroll by remitting the required deposit and a signed Tuition and Fees Contract.

If we did not have your desired schedule available, we have placed your child on our waitlist and mailed you a letter informing you of their waitlist status.

If you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you again for your interest in our program;

we look forward to working with you in the service of your child.

"What is man's ultimate purpose in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty."

-Shinichi Suzuki

Today was the Suzuki Violin Holiday Concert at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park. Our Suzuki families braved freezing temperatures and icy mountain roads to perform their holiday concert pieces.

The children played beautiful renditions of holiday favorites Jolly Old St Nicholas, Jingle Bells, and Wintertime in Russia, as well as several pieces from the classic Suzuki violin Book One repertoire, including French Folk Song, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and five variations on the Twinkle theme.

The children also provided rhythmic accompaniment, using small homemade drums, to pieces played by the older Longmont Suzuki Strings students.

While regular public performances give our young Suzuki performers opportunities to showcase their skills, provides additional motivation for practice, and develops their confidence and competence (as they learn to overcome performance anxiety), it also provides them with the opportunity to hear the older, accomplished Longmont Suzuki Strings children perform.

In what proved to be one of my favorite moments of the concert, two young girls made their way over to a Christmas tree that illuminated the corner of the chapel, where they quietly and spontaneously waltzed away to the beautiful music.

We would sincerely like to thank Erron Lacy, Longmont Suzuki Strings, and the YMCA of the Rockies for making this opportunity possible. We would also like to thank all of our families for making the trek, despite the inclement weather.

Happy Holidays!

Violinist in Residence: Liza Hein

Please welcome Liza Hein!

Liza Hein will be joining Bloom! Montessori as our current Violinist in Residence. Our Violinist in Residence program gives accomplished high school aged Longmont Suzuki Strings students a youth-friendly employment and service opportunity, exposure to the world of work, teaching experience, and helps them succeed in taking their first transitional steps from school to career. Simultaneously, the program helps to create a music rich environment in the school, allows our students to gain an understanding and appreciation of music, exposes them to the excitement of live performance, helps them with their own practice, and provides them with great young adult role models.

Liza Hein began her study of violin at age three. She attended Fairview Montessori school as a child, and is currently a sophomore at Faith Baptist School. She says that although there were many times in the course of her life that she temporarily lost interest in practicing, or felt frustrated and wanted to quit, she is very grateful that her parents supported her and encouraged her to continue in her studies. She currently studies with Barbara Barber of Longmont Suzuki Strings and was a featured soloist in the Longmont Suzuki String's Holiday Concert. In her free time, she also enjoys dance (ballet and tap), performs regularly with Longmont Dance Theatre (she will be performing in The Nutcracker this weekend), participates in 4H, and loves riding her horse, Ruby.

Liza is a cheerful, exuberant, patient teacher. Personally, I love standing outside the door listening to the strains of her beautiful playing (often the children come and ask her to play them songs and literally lie at her feet listening silently) and the children really look forward to having the opportunity to practice with her. They also love running into her at LSS concerts, where they are thrilled beyond belief to be able to talk to "a big kid" and often ask her to personally tune their violin. We are very fortunate to have her come and share her talents with us.

Liza will be coming to the school on Thursday afternoons to perform for the children and to give our Suzuki violin students an additional opportunity to practice. Please feel free to stop in and welcome her to Bloom!

Mindfulness Practices in Education: Montessori Approach

One of my favorite sources of Montessori inspiration shared this great article comparing Montessori and mindfulness education. It is written by Angeline Lillard, author of Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius. I highly recommend it and feel that it deserves to be passed around in the Montessori community. It is one of the most interesting research papers I have read in a while!

http://www.montessori-science.org/Lillard_mindfulness_in_education_montessori_approach.pdf

One of my favorite things...

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are working as if I did not exist."
-Dr. Maria Montessori

I have spent the last few weeks meeting with colleagues to discuss the importance of the mixed age group and the value of the Montessori kindergarten experience.

Dr. Montessori concluded that there are four distinct planes of development that an individual must pass through on their way to adulthood. In each plane of development, Montessori believed that children are instinctively drawn to those activities which meet their developmental needs; as a result, the Montessori method of education consists of removing obstacles to the child's development and preparing the environment with purposeful activities, from which the child is permitted to self-select. Dr. Montessori's genius was an anthropological insight- when given a choice among purposeful work, children naturally seek out lessons that are more challenging then what an adult might select for them and those lessons which are most appopriate to their own development. She also found that children perservere at those tasks for a longer period of time (they are driven to repeat them until they master them), with a higher degree of concentration, and take more joy in completing them, then activities which are assigned to them. In the Montessori philosophy, education is not viewed as the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the child, who assumes the role of passive spectator, but re-conceived as a spontaneous process which is directed by the child, who is an active participant in her own act of self-creation .

The mixed age group is crucial to this process. For the younger children, the mixed age group provides the child with experienced peers whose examples are worthy of emulation. For the oldest child (the kindergartners, in a primary classroom), the kindergarten year provides children with the opportunity to perfect their skills, consolidate their understanding, and to develop their character, as they serve as mentors to younger students and leaders in the classroom. This affords children the opportunity to learn the value of service to others, to become charismatic leaders, and to experience the authentic sense of self esteem that comes from making a meaningful contribution to a community. Since children work at their own pace, there is no stigma for any child associated with being "ahead" or "behind" their same aged peers in a specific domain. Children are not pitted in competition against each other; instead, they work collaboratively in freely chosen groups, and work toward their own self-improvement and self mastery, with the help of their peers. Because the Montessori classroom affords such an amazing diversity of motives to activity, and gives children large blocks of uninterrupted time to engage in self-directed learning, three years is necessary to achieve the "total possibility" offered by the classroom environment and the final year (in this case, kindergarten) is both the culmination of the child's achievements and a necessity to prevent academic loose ends, partially developed skills, and incoherent knowledge.

Think all of this sounds a little abstract? Wonder what that looks like in practice? Here is a five minute glimpse into what education can look like.

In this video, which is officially one of my "favorite things", a kindergarten age child teaches her companions about the pilgrims and the Mayflower (complete with her own commentary and supplemental explanation), discusses punctuation, and provides her companions with gracious encouragement for their own works. The kindergartner gets to practice her reading skills (developing her fluency and understanding of orthographic-phonological representations of highly challenging words- including sight words, silent e words, and phonograms) and perfect her own understanding of the history lesson. The other children listen with rapt attention to the story, learn about history and punctuation, develop their own auditory processing, comprehension, and inferential reasoning skills, recieve peer based literacy instruction, cultivate a strong interest in learning to read (absolutely every young child in the classroom wants to be able to read like this), and receive encouragement and constructive feedback on their own works.

This is individually differentiated instruction and educational reform at its best, and it was invented more than 100 years ago. No assignments, no homework, no grades, no standards, no assigned seating,no rewards or punnishments, no guided reading groups, no teacher instruction or direction. Montessori is magic!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup!

Most days, children at Bloom! Montessori have the option of purchasing delicious, nutritious lunches from Revolution Foods, a great company started by two mothers and former school teachers who wanted to improve the nutritional standards of American school lunches. However, yesterday was Veteran's Day, and Revolution Foods was closed. So, what's a preschool class to do? Make lunch ourselves!

For our Veteran's Day menu, we decided on a child-friendly classic- homemade chicken noodle soup!

If you have ever considered a cooking project with preschoolers, this is one I heartily recommend. The ingredients are simple, the result is delicious, and it is something that with a little practice, children can accomplish almost completely independently- children can chop the mirepoix, mix the pasta dough, and roll and cut the noodles themselves.

All afternoon, the fragrant aroma of garlic, herbs, and sauteed onions, wafted through the school as the ingredients reduced into a richly flavored savory broth. Meanwhile, our little brigade of sous chefs took to the important task of noodle making. The children learned the traditional technique of making a mound of 00 flour, adding the remaining ingredients to the well, and using a fork to incorporate the remaining flour. Then, they took turns expertly mixing and kneading small batches of the sticky pasta dough in their little hands.

Once the dough had rested for a few minutes, we were ready to break out the hand crank pasta maker. We apportioned the dough, so that each child got their own small ball, and demonstrated how to use the pasta maker.

First, the children learned to fold the dough and feed it through the two large rollers which would flatten it into a large noodle.

Then, the children learned to feed it through the smaller rollers which cut it into noodles.

The children took turns using the pasta maker to turn their little balls of fresh pasta dough into long, thin noodles.

Then the children took to carefully separating each pasta strand

and hanging them on the rack to dry.

All day, the delicious aroma of garlic, onions, and herbs wafter through the school. At lunch time, the children crowded around the lunch tables, to receive their reward of fragrant, steaming bowls of homemade soup.

Unfortunately, the batteries on the classroom camera ran out before lunch time, but the children absolutely adored the soup. They happily slurped the homemade noodles, picked out their favorite tasty bits, and drank the savory broth. Many of the children had three bowls of soup and by the time lunch was finished, the soup pot was completely empty!

Not surprisingly, many of the children asked if we could make soup again tomorrow. Perhaps, we will need to add a monthly soup making day to our menu!

Reminder: Parent Teacher Conferences

Parents: Please don't forget to sign up for your Parent Teacher Conference.

We hope that this will be a valuable opportunity for you to learn more about your child's development and the work that they are doing at school.

Parent Teacher Conferences times are available on:

-Monday, November 21, 2011

-Tuesday, November 22, 2011

-Saturday, December 10, 2011

-Sunday, December 11, 2011

Please sign up for your preferred date and time!