Montessori in Bloom

2012- 2013 Acceptance Packets Are In The Mail!

2012-01-01T21:12:00.006-07:00

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.

2011-12-03T17:29:00.017-07:00

"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

2011-12-03T17:00:00.006-07:00

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

2011-11-23T08:45:00.007-07:00

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...

2011-11-12T17:47:00.010-07:00

"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!

2011-11-12T11:39:00.032-07:00

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

2011-11-07T07:44:00.005-07:00

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!

David Elkind's Giants in the Nursery

2011-11-06T17:40:00.006-07:00

"To forget the past is to forever remain a child."'

-Cicero

"If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."

-Issac Newton

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to hear David Elkind discuss his new book, Grandmasters in the Nursery. David Elkind is an American child psychologist and Professor Emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University. He was the former president of the American Montessori Society and the National Association for the Education of Young Children. He is also the author of more than six books on early childhood education, including Miseducation and The Hurried Child.

Prof. Elkind appeared as part of a lecture series hosted by the Montessori Center Internationale (Denver, CO).

The lecture summarized the research Prof. Elkind has undertaken for his forthcoming book Giants in the Nursery: Grandmasters of Educational Reform.

I have reproduced my lecture notes from this lecture here; any errors or omissions are my own.

_______________________________________________

David Elkind began his lecture with an anecdote about a young composer coming to Mozart for advice on writing a symphony. Mozart suggested that the composer should begin with something simpler; the frustrated young composer observed that Mozart had written his first symphony at eight. "But I didn't have to ask how," responded Mozart.

Talent is a gift that cannot be taught, Prof. Elkind observed. Elkind uses the term "grandmaster" to refer to those individuals who had the vision to see beyond even the best. In terms of early childhood education, he applies it to three philosophers: Locke, Comenius, and Rousseau; four practitioners: Froebel, Pestalozzi, Steiner, and Montessori; and three theorists: Freud, Piaget, and Erikson.

Learning is the modification of behavior as a result of experience. Psychology traditionally focuses upon behavior because it is the objective, measurable, aspect of learning.

One of Professor Elkind's central arguments is that early childhood education should serve as the model for all education (not the other way around- by determining standards for the education of older children and working backwards to determine appropriate standards and experiences for younger children). Early childhood education offers a more robust philosophy, a stronger experiential basis, and stronger theoretical underpinnings.

To understand the theoretical basis which supports early childhood practice, his book will examine the lives and theories of these influential savants. He identifies four main commonalities among these individuals.

1) All were dominated by a single idea or mission.

Pestalozzi: Learning only occurs when you re-present an experience. Practical education must combine the social and the natural.

Froebel: Disagreed with Pestalozzi. Founded kindergarten. Believed God is the creator and people should emulate God; therefore, people should work to be creative. He believed people create through play. He was trained as a crystallographer and believed that physical development follows the same process as organic development. He created beautiful materials for children (which famously influenced the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright).

Rudolph Steiner: A polyglot who famously founded the first Waldorf school in the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory. He experienced an ongoing stream of spiritual and extra- sensory experiences throughout his life which he believed were spiritual in nature. He created anthropsophy and the Waldorf philosophy of education because he believed he could train people to see differently and to access this spiritual dimension; he developed anthroposophy to deal with a talent that he couldn't understand in any other way. He was very concerned with the over-intellectualism of education and highly valued fine arts (music, dance, and art). Where Pestalozzi, sought to bring the social and the natural together; Steiner sought to unify the personal and the social. Art is the boundary between that which is personal and that which is social.

Maria Montessori: Montessori was the first person to bring the modern scientific perspective to bear upon education. She was the first femal doctor in Italy and encountered a great amount of discrimination and significant obstacles to her achievment. She famously began her career working with special needs children in the Orthophrenic School, before developing her method. She took from Seguin the system of sensory education (finding that special needs individuals were often not learning well through their senses and required sensory training, a belief which modern science supports- due to neural pruning, children who cannot process information well often lose the ability to even receive the sensory data over time). Dr. Elkind expressed that her philosophy holds great promise for contemporary education of children with special needs, particularly autism.

Sigmund Freud: Introduces the idea of the affective unconscious experience. Many of our behaviors are caused by unconscious experiences. He begins by examining hysteria and parapraxis as examples of reflecting unconscious experiences. In early childhood education, many behaviors (children's enjoyment of peek-a-boo, separation anxiety, relationships with teachers as substitutes for parents) can be explained by postulating the existence of unconscious experience.

Jean Piaget: Piaget discovers the existence of unconscious reasoning through famous examples like conservation of number tasks. He found that unconscious reasoning dictates behavior and that verbal explanations may not accurately capture and explain the actual thought process used. Humans possess mental structures that cause them to assimilate external events. He develops a system of genetic epistemology to explain how an individual develops cognitively and to link the validity of knowledge to its model of construction.

Erik Erikson- Introduces the idea of the social unconscious, the importance of the life cycle and stages of life. he argues that children gain experience through cultural and social influences, of which they are unconscious.

2) All were extremely hard workers. They tended to be obsessive, compulsive, with a tremendous capacity for hard work and a compulsion to do it.

3) All were fairly nomadic. Most moved around frequently.

David Elkind spent a lot of the lecture telling stories and anecdotes about these grandmasters that he uncovered during his research: Rousseau had five children that he sent to orphanages as soon as they were born, he loved changing things into their opposites; Freud smoked 10-12 cigars a day; Erikson became a Montessori teacher as the suggestion of Anna Freud, he developed the basis for naturalistic evaluation in family settings.

4) All considered deeply what type of experiences are key for learning and the sequence/scaffolding required. Many discuss the importance of matching or adapting the educational experience to the child's level of experience (the first discussions of individually differentiated education).

Comenius believed simple ideas must be presented before complex ideas. He also believed that children needed one hour of play for every four hours of instruction.

Locke believed sensory experiences precede ideas.

Rousseau conducted a thought experiment of what a child might be like without social impositions and constructions. He discussed the importance of nature in education. David Elkind discussed Rousseau as a precursor to theorists like Richard Louv, who coined the term "nature deficit disorder" in this context, and the fact that television is decreasing parental interactions and the opportunity for children to develop focused attention and concentration.

Steiner believed in the importance of combining the personal and the social. While he though socialization was important, he also valued the importance of the individual (after all, one of the key aims of education is to teach children to think for themselves). Art accomplishes this, as it is both for our own pleasure and to others. He believed art experiences were integral to education, not incidental.

5) To become a student of any of these "grandmasters" is to become a defender or disciple of them.Elkind argues that research is difficult because, not surprisingly, those closest to the grandmasters are the most biased (so accounts and works written about them by people who knew them best are the least objectively valid).

He believes this fact is interesting, because all of them explicitly state that they don't want carbon copies of themselves; they encourage their students to think for themselves.

At the conclusion of the lecture, Elkind addressed the question of why he chose to bring these "grandmasters" together by stating (without additional explanation) that he believed their philosophies complement each other and that it is by combining them that one would create a comprehensive system of education.

______________________________________________

Yet again, I would like to thank Montessori Center Internationale for providing the local Montessori community with the opportunity to hear renowned speakers in the field of early childhood education, and for continuing to provide an excellent series of continuing education lectures (it is seldom that one gets to take continuing education hours listening to someone whose breadth and depth of knowledge rivals that of Prof. Elkind).

Although I genuinely look forward to reading the book when it is available, and felt that his knowledge about the subject and the biographical research was impeccable, I couldn't help but leave with the feeling that the central thesis had not yet been completely thought out. How these specific theorists had been selected (why not include Freire? Dewey? etc)? What is the significance of the similarities he found in the biographies of these theorists- are these similarities merely the characteristics of giftedness, or do they speak to something more essential about the nature of education? How could these different philosophies (with completely different epistemologies) be combined into a coherent system of education ? Was Elkind's project directed at something other than providing a summary of these philosophies of education and a biographical sketch of these theorists?

I could tell that many of the audience shared this sense of unease as to the central premise. "What was the point?" someone at my table asked. Although this could certainly be taken as a flippant criticism of the speaker, it occurred to me that given the nature of his endeavor, it might not be insulting to take this question seriously. Is the book intended to be a survey of the philosophy of early childhood education (a more focused and biographical version of Amelie Rorty's Philosophers on Education)? Why choose these "grandmasters"? Why mobilize all of these resources? Why address a group of practitioners with so much biographical information? What is the value in modern practitioners studying these "grandmasters" of the past?

For a moment it occurred to me that this might be an example of the danger of reducing a system of thought to mere psychology and biography, particularly given some of the observations made in the lecture (the relationship between long hair and revolutionaries, etc), but the more I thought about it, I thought that perhaps autobiography is the central point. There is certainly a danger in trying to "shrink the shrink" so to speak, but I'm willing to hasten a suggestion. Nietzsche says all philosophy is always the biography of the philosopher and what unites these grandmasters is their place in the philosophy (and the biography) of David Elkind.

To take a stab at the unspoken central tenet of Professori Elkind's argument, I would submit that masters are necessary both to every discipline, and to every individual who goes beyond merely learning about a discipline to dedicating his or her life to it. That is the both the common thread among these philosophers- each shared the conviction that their ideas were not worth an hour of toil if they did not reverberate, clarify, and ordain their entire life with a sense of purpose and meaning- and their relation to the speaker. As someone who has dedicated his own life in pursuit of these ideas, these are not merely "grandmasters," they are David Elkind's masters. The point of understanding history, consciously examining our assumptions, presuppositions, and conceptual frames, and retracing the lines of thought of the past is to arrive at the present and to understand both the discipline that we practice and to understand our relationship to it. That is ultimately the purpose of all education. Montessori calls this "our cosmic task."

"I shall inhabit my name. That is why we mobilize so many resources. That is also what our monotonous biography can be used for: to constantly begin again the search for the conditions by which the proper name of each one of us can be inhabited."

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T16:08:00.019-06:00

Happy Halloween!

"Frost bites the lawn.

The stars are slits

In a black cat's eye

Before she spits.

At last, small witches,

Goblins, hags,

And pirates armed with paper bags,

Their costumes hinged

On safety pins,

Go haunt a night

Of pumpkin grins."

-John Updike

Today was the Halloween celebration at the school. In true Montessori fashion, the children spent the morning baking and decorating their own homemade treats for the classroom party.

In the afternoon, the children assembled outside to enjoy a perfect fall afternoon and some delicious refreshments. The children shared some apple cider, pumpkin loaf, fruit, and sugar cookies.

No sooner were the tables cleared and their little faces washed clean of frosting then it was time for the children to put on their costumes for the Halloween costume parade.

Let the rumpus begin...

There was barely a witch, ghost, or spook in sight; instead we were overrun by a motley crew of beautiful princesses and mermaids, Greek gods and goddesses, exuberant cowboys, ticklish space explorers, spirited unicorns, fierce werewolves, and an eclectic mix of wild beasts.

My assistant, Katie, put together one of the best costumes I have ever seen for an early childhood classroom- she came as an injured monkey (that fell off the bed!)- the children got the joke right away and were very amused!

Happy haunting!

2012-2013 Enrollment Information Coming Soon!

2011-10-30T20:28:00.001-06:00

Stay Tuned...

Our 2012-2013 Enrollment Season begins on Tuesday, November 1st. Our website will be updated on Tuesday with the 2012-2013 Application, Open House Dates, and Enrollment Information.

Bloom! Montessori is Bicycle Friendly!

2011-10-30T18:43:00.006-06:00

Bloom! Montessori is Bicycle Friendly!
One of our long-standing facility improvement wishes has been the installation of a bicycle rack at the school. We envisioned the rosy cheeked children happily riding to school with their parents, locking their bikes to the rack, and then riding home at the end of the day. Well, that vision is finally a reality!

I ordered this pretty bright yellow rack a few months ago, and after months of waiting, it was delivered this week, right in the middle of a snowstorm which dumped 8-10" in town (naturally!). So, I waited patiently (until the weekend); then, prevailed upon my very tolerant husband to go dig some 12" holes in the freezing ground and install it before Wednesday's storm.

Not long ago, children routinely moved around their neighborhoods and traveled to school by bicycle. In 1969, 48% of children aged 5-14 walked or rode their bicycles to school; by 2009, that number had declined to 15%; however, the percentage of children who lived within one mile of school has remained fairly stagnant. To understand the decline, the Centers for Disease Control conducted a nationwide survey of parents and students to identify the most common barriers; most parents cited distance to school, traffic related danger, weather, crime danger, and opposing school policies (schools that do not allow children to bike to school) as the main factors. Many of these concerns work in concert to create a self-perpetuating cycle. For example, as motor vehicle traffic increases, parents become increasingly concerned that it is unsafe for children to walk or bicycle to school; as a result, they begin driving to school, thereby adding even more traffic to the road and sustaining the cycle. In fact, 25% of morning rush hour traffic is comprised of parents driving their children to school!

We are fortunate to be a little neighborhood school and we want to do our part to encourage parents to consider this mode of transportation. Bicycling with your child is a wonderful way to spend some quality time with them, to become more physically active as a family, to support your child's gross motor development, and to positively influence your child by setting a healthy example. Bicycling is excellent exercise- the average 170 pound person, biking for an hour at 10 mph, will burn 300 calories! There is also a potential for a completely different workout every time you hop on your bicycle- you can vary your speed, distance, route, intensity, and ride up or down hills. Additionally, unlike motorists, cyclists see more of nature, save on travel costs, have better health and more energy, and reduce the pollution caused by vehicle emissions.

We ask that cyclists park their bicycles in the middle of the rack, leaving space at the ends for parents who wish to lock Burley trailers to the rack. Because there may be more commuting cyclists than available spots on the rack, we also ask that bicycles are not stored at the school overnight. We also ask that bicycles not be locked to the fence, or parked in a manner which impedes the sidewalk or access to the building.

Need some additional motivation? Here are some of our favorite bicycle links:

- A great site describing the factors that have contributed to the decline in children walking and cycling to school by an organization which advocates for safer routes: Safe Routes to School Program, The Decline of Walking and Bicycling, http://guide.saferoutesinfo.org/introduction/the_decline_of_walking_and_bicycling.cfm

-A local nonprofit dedicated to making bicycling in Longmont safer and more enjoyable (their site includes maps of local bike paths and popular routes): Bicycle Longmont, http://bicyclelongmont.org/content.aspx?page_id=51340

-One of the coolest bikes we have ever seen for transporting children: Madsen Bucket Bicycle, http://www.inhabitots.com/a-bike-bucket-for-your-brood/

-A lovely blog written by Dottie Brackett, a Chicago attorney, about her adventures in bicycle commuting: Let's Go Ride A Bike: Life on Two Wheels, http://letsgorideabike.com/blog/

-A great blog written by a Canadian mother about bicycle commuting: http://www.girlsandbicycles.ca/

-A beautiful blog that combines European fashion and cycling: http://www.copenhagencyclechic.com/

Our favorite bicycle shops (anywhere!):

The Seattle Dutch Bike Company, (Seattle, WA), http://www.dutchbikeseattle.com

The Mindful Bike, (Denver, CO), http://www.mindfulbike.com

Great Bicycling Resources for Children:

-Strider Bikes: Want a painless approach to teaching your child to ride a bicycle? The stryder method teaches children balance and coordination before pedaling, helping your child to experience success. Visit their website at http://www.stridersports.com/

-Boulder Indoor Cycling: Teaches fundamental cycling skills to children aged 2-10; offers camps on days when schools are closed! http://www.boulderindoorcycling.com/

We hope that you will enjoy this new addition to our facility!

Field Trip to Ollin Farms

2011-10-21T18:54:00.085-06:00

On Friday, the children went to visit Ollin Farms, and their favorite farmers Mark and Kena Guttridge, on their final trip to the farm for the CSA season. While visiting the farm serves the important purpose of teaching the children about where their food comes from, how it is cultivated, teaching them valuable concepts in nutrition, botany and science, and encouraging children to develop an appreciation for a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, this trip served another very important purpose- the children were going to select their pumpkins from the Ollin Farms pumpkin patch.

The trip began in the same fashion as most of our field trips- with excited children rousing their parents at first flush of morning, sharing a hearty snack with their friends, and situating themselves in front of the fence to anxiously await the first glimpse of that icon of American public education, the big yellow school bus.

The children were entertaining themselves by singing The Wheels on the Bus, when our favorite bus driver pulled up, overheard their singing, and surprised them by tapping the horn just in time for their "horn on the bus goes beep beep beep" refrain. SVVSD bus driver, Daniel Grove, is what every bus driver should be- kind, patient, and visibly fond of children. We had been fortunate to have him as our driver on our last field trip to Fiske Planetarium, where he reminisced about his own children, who had also attended Montessori schools, and remarked upon how well mannered the children were.

The doors to the bus slid open and our merry little travelers set off on the short trip to the farm.

Our bus had arrived at the school early, and the children are so used to the routine of finding their seats, buckling up, and traveling with polite manners, that we got to the farm earlier than expected. We were in the process of considering where to wait until our host arrived, when Bruce passed by and invited the children to help him feed the sheep. The words had barely escaped his lips and the children were off and running at full speed toward the sheep.

Of all of the field trips the children go on, I must admit that the trips to the farm are my favorite. As the children are racing about these wide open spaces, experiencing nature, caring for plants and animals, hunting for highly prized rocks and sticks, rambling through marshes, delighting in fortuitous encounters with frogs, turtles, insects, or crayfish, and testing their strength and agility with a variety of impromptu physical challenges (balancing on rolling logs, hopping from stump to stump, climbing up fences, and heaving heavy vegetables), something quintessential to childhood, and maybe to humanity, is revealed.

Interestingly, despite their different modes of investigation, most disciplines recognize this phenomena and attribute importance to it. In the positive sciences, Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson calls this biophilia, the tendency of humans to affiliate emotionally with other life forms, to develop a love, abiding curiosity, and an attachment to nature, and to spontaneously assume the responsibility for caring for the natural world. In the social sciences, Dr. Montessori calls it "normalization," the peaceful and joyful state which children enter when their environment meets their needs, obstacles to their development have been removed, and children are free to pursue their own purposeful endeavors. Philosopher Martin Heidegger calls this "the Saving Power," or the experience of standing amazed, astonished, and inspired before an experience which is so full, and beyond complete description that it it reveals nature as something which surpasses our own institutionalized thinking of it and inspires the care and concern for other living things which is the basis of ethics itself.

No matter what you chose to call it, it is certainly the case that our emotional and affective love of nature develops long before, and is even more integral to childhood, than our logical, abstract, or rational curiosity about it. The timeless love children have for unhurried afternoons spent exploring natural surroundings, is immediately evident, completely contagious, and extremely important to human development. In fact, contemporary research is beginning to understand just how important these experiences, and regular interaction with nature can be. In one ground breaking book on the topic, Last Child in the Woods, journalist Richard Louv coined the term "nature deficit disorder." Louv argues that the increasing trend of children spending less time outdoors (due to a loss of natural spaces, over-groomed pea gravel play areas, increasing electronic media consumption, and parent fears about children's safety) is disrupting the ability of modern children to connect with nature. Louv persuasively argues that regular connection to nature is so integral to the human experience that a lack of time spent outdoors can be directly correlated to increasing rates of juvenile depression, anxiety and mood disorders, obesity, and ADHD. Indeed, a 2009 study by the University of Illinois, one of several studies which Louv cites in his book, found that "regular exposure to ordinary natural settings in the course of after school and weekend activities was more effective then both attention restoration therapy and medication in reducing attention deficit symptoms in children."

But I digress... the children made their way to the sheep pen just in time to discover another wonderful use for pumpkins- as a tasty treat for a herd full of friendly sheep!

The well trained little flock of sheep came running out of the barn as they saw the children approaching, anxious to see what vegetable delicacy lay in store for them. The children were elated to find Lluvia, who had visited the school last December when she was only a few weeks old, was now a large black ewe with quite formidable horns. The flock now contained a new little black lamb and an ewe who would probably deliver this winter.

The children contented themselves with hunting for natural specimens (some wool, a few interesting insects, and some interesting lichens which one girl proudly explained were "fungus that partner with plants" to our amused host), trying to balance across a large fallen log, and climbing around and looking for sticks in a large wood pile.

A few moments later, Farmer Mark and his preschool aged daughter, affectionately named "Farmer Coral" by the children, appeared.

Farmer Mark is a passionate advocate for both sustainable farming and education; he is also one of the hardest working people I know. When he is not busy running his successful farm, preparing CSA shares, planning Farm to Table dinners, planning summer programs, and making the rounds at the Longmont and Boulder farmer's markets, he can be found creating internship opportunities for high school children, sharing his knowledge of sustainable food production with visiting groups from Africa through the CSU Extension Office, and preparing educational outreach programs for the Longmont Museum and the Wow! Children's Museum; nevertheless, he still made time to personally oversee our tour of the farm.

The children were thrilled to see him. They are used to seeing the familiar white van he drives drop off the weekly CSA shares at the school, and the minute it turned down the dirt road leading into the farm, there was an immediate chorus of little voices whispering "Farmer Mark is here!"

The children set off scampering after Farmer Mark and Farmer Coral. They stopped to see the fields of vegetables and to listen to Farmer Mark explain about winter crops, and how some different vegetables have different growing seasons.

He showed the children the greenhouse and told them about how floating row covers can be used like blankets to provide extra insulation for crops.

Then, he invited the children to see the creek. The creek is one aspect of the farm which neither the children nor I had seen previously. The children's interest was immediately piqued. They raced off, not even sure where they were going,

pausing only for the obligatory log rolls down a perfect little sledding hill which they found near the apiary,

until they reached what would be an amazing picnicking spot on the bank of the creek. The crystalline water softly gurgled around them as our little explorers set about making little leaf boats to send down the stream, finding great big sticks and branches to pretend to fish with, prying stones and plants from the water, pouring water with cups that the Guttridge children left strewn about the bank for their own play, wading about, and examining a crayfish.

A few of the children had been fortunate enough to come to the farm dressed in waterproof wellies, and they were the envy of all, as they waded around in the cold water.

The children would have been completely content exploring the creek for the rest of the day; in fact, I daresay that it would have been nearly impossible to drag them away if it had not been for one thing- chickens!

They love chickens! About ten months ago, the children completed a unit of study about birds, incubated some eggs, and raised Maran and Arancuna chickens. Initially, we had planned to give the chickens to the farm when they were old enough, but the children enjoyed them so much that we bought a little coop and kept them. In the last three months, the chickens have begun laying eggs and throughout the day one of the children's favorite past times is to go gather the eggs from the nesting boxes and carry their beloved (and quite tame) pets around the garden.

Ollin Farms has a large flock of chickens- consisting of many different breeds (some amazingly beautiful birds), a few roosters, and a large hen house. The excited children left the creek with barely an argument and followed Farmer Mark to a large pile of pumpkins that the squirrels had been feasting upon. Then, they helped Farmer Mark carry the pumpkins to the chicken pens.

They watched the hungry chickens devour the pumpkins and looked with interest at the roosters and a couple of turkeys that were sharing their pen.

The children, who are used to their tame pets at the school, wanted to hold the chickens. They were quite surprised to find that these chickens were uninterested in being carried about like dolls. Luckily, little Farmer Coral had tamed a cute little chicken named Charlie,who volunteered to allow the class of preschoolers to pet him.

After a while, the reluctant children were willing to leave the chickens and make their way down to the pumpkin patch to select their pumpkins.

Each child selected their own pumpkin and labeled it with their name.

Then it was time for a little Autumn refreshment. We assembled to share some apple cider and fresh Gala apples from the farm with our hosts.

All too soon, it was time for the children to load their precious cargo onto the bus and depart for the school, ending both a memorable field trip and an amazing CSA season.

We would like to sincerely thank Mark and Kena Guttridge for their hospitality and for an amazing CSA season. It is impossible for me to imagine a better Farm to School experience for our children. We adored the fresh fruits and vegetables supplied by the farm, and the children developed an interest and understanding of good nutrition, botany, science, and sustainable farming. Thank you for everything!

We would also like to thank St. Vrain Valley School District Busses and Transportation for providing us with the transporation for our field trip and Daniel Grove, the kindest, most patient, bus driver I have ever met.

Finally, our thanks go to Lianne Tengler for lending an extra hand during the trip!

Longmont Times Call: Bloom! Preschoolers Perform at Ollin Farms' Fall Festival

2011-10-11T07:55:00.004-06:00

In case you missed it, this photo and article about the children performing in Ollin Farms' Fall Festival appeared in the Longmont Times Call on Sunday (scroll down to the forth item):
http://www.colo-news.com/submittedcontent/indextc.php

Longmont Times Call Launch Day Article

2011-10-10T07:45:00.003-06:00

You can read Longmont Times Call education reporter Victoria A.F. Camron's article about our Launch Day Party here (the online version has an additional really cute photo too!):
http://www.timescall.com/news/longmont-schools/ci_19078490

Launch Day Video

2011-10-09T22:08:00.004-06:00

Here is a link to a great video of our launch party taken by Longmont Times Call photographer Joshua Buck:
http://timescallmedia.com/20111009/multimedia/bloom-rocket-launch/

It's Rocket Science!

2011-10-09T19:06:00.032-06:00

Today was the first ever Bloom! Montessori School launch party!

Sorry for the crazy formatting... still fighting with Blogger.

For the past few weeks, the children have been learning about forces- gravity, thrust, and drag. To provide students with a concrete understanding of these principles the children have also been constructing their own Estes Generic E2X model rockets. This afternoon marked the long waited date of their maiden flights.

The hobby of model rocketry was born in 1957 in response to the launching of the Soviet Sputnik satellites and the beginning of the Space Age. Professional rocket engineering companies (like Estes, which began in Denver in 1957) developed quality control procedures which elevated the model rocket motor to a professional level of safety and reliability (in fact, one study found that the safety precautions and operating codes that were put in place have made model rocketry the safest of all hobbies studied, with the exception of stamp collecting).

If the idea of making and launching model rockets with preschool aged children sounds unconventional, I understand. However, model rocketry is a wonderful hobby for young children. Model rocketry is an outstanding, safe, inexpensive parent-child activity- in fact, it was reminiscing about some of my personal memories of building and launching model rockets with my dad that made me want to include this activity in the classroom and I heard several parents telling similar stories about sanding and painting model rockets as children. Model rocketry is also a learning tool in disguise! Model rocketry fosters an understanding of science and technology, while combining craftsmanship, creativity, and cooperation, in pursuit of a goal with some healthy outdoor activity. It also provides children with a great sense of accomplishment and self esteem- if the child follows simple rules and instructions, a successful flight is a certainty (and what could give a child a greater sense of accomplishment than building something that can go up 550 feet!).

Still skeptical? "Can preschool aged children construct their

own model rockets?" you might ask. Absolutely. Estes makes a series of E2X rockets which are practically ready to fly. Use glue to attach some plastic fins and a plastic nose cone, and you are ready to launch. No sanding or special tools required! "Can preschoolers understand the scientific principles involved?" Absolutely! One of my favorite moments of last week was hearing a four year old boy, explain to his mother in perfect detail, how the gas moving out the bottom of the rocket would generate thrust to move the rocket in the opposite direction.

So it was, with great excitement and anticipation, that our aspiring engineers convened at Sunset Middle School this afternoon. We were fortunate to have perfect weather (after a weekend of cold rain, the winds ceased and the sun came out this afternoon just in time for the launch).

T minus twenty minutes: parents began helping to prepare the model rockets by packing them with wadding paper (to prevent the ejection charges from burning the parachute) and packing the parachutes (it is recommended that this be done as close to the time of the launch as possible to prevent it from sticking).

T minus five minutes: the giddy children and their parents made their way to the launch site, where they received some last minute safety instructions, reviewed the parts of their rockets, and reviewed the forces involved in their flight.

T minus two minutes: the children stood in line, clutching their rockets, awaiting their turn to launch.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Lift Off!!

One at time, the children went to stand near the launch pad, begin the countdown, and press the button which would launch their rocket into the air. For our launch, we used Estes A8-3 rocket engines, which generally result in altitudes of 250- 300 feet. There was a lot of cheering, and even a pair of bald eagles which passed overhead, as the rockets went soaring into the air without one mechanical failure (we had a few parachutes that didn't deploy, but not one ignition or ejection charge failure).

After the launch, the children raced off into the field to collect their beloved model rockets. In one of my favorite moments of the day, a little boy told me "I almost didn't come because I was afraid that the launch would break the fins off my rocket, but I am glad that I came." Not one rocket was lost or damaged as a result of the launch!

At the end of the party, we celebrated with (what else?) astronaut ice cream and the children received gift bags containing NASA stickers and NASA coloring books. More than one child was overheard asking when they could launch their rocket again, and several parents inquired about where to purchase launch pads and controllers and which retailers were most likely to be open on a Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps the next generation of aerospace engineers were standing in that field this afternoon... or, the next generation of adults who will have fond memories of enjoying model rocketry with their parents at least.

We would like to thank everyone for coming out to celebrate, and sharing in an afternoon that your child will likely remember for the rest of their lives. Your child's rocket is re-useable. If you would like to further your child's exploration and enjoyment of this activity, you can purchase an electrical launch controller (about $20), some wadding paper (about $6), and Estes engines (about $7 for three) from Hobby Town (1935 North Main Street- very knowledgeable and helpful staff), Hobby Lobby, or online retailers.

We would also like to sincerely thank Hobby Town for purchasing our rockets and engines and for their assistance in finding a good launch site, Susan Green (our real rocket scientist!) for supplying the NASA coloring books, and Tobin Munsat and Mei Lai for jumping in and taking the photos that appear in this post (I would have been so sad if we didn't have pictures- thanks for your help and thoughtfulness!).

Want to read more? There is a hysterical, and informative, report on model rocketry entitled Forty Years of Model Rocketry written by the National Association of Rocketry available at http://www.apogeerockets.com/education/downloads/40years.pdf

Astronomy

2011-10-08T16:07:00.036-06:00

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do."

-Galileo Galilei

I sincerely apologize for the formatting errors in this post. I have been fighting with Blogger for several hours, and I have lost.

The children have been studying astronomy. Astronomy is one of the more difficult units of study for pre-school aged children, because it does not lend itself as easily to concrete experiences with the subject matter. I wanted to begin our unit of study with as concrete an experience as possible, and for that, we needed to schedule a field trip. Now, the idea of undertaking a field trip three weeks into the beginning of the school year might sound daunting to anyone who has taught young children, but one of the virtues of our year-round schedule is that the majority of our students are returning students who attended during the summer. As a result, we are largely able to continue our studies, without requiring a significant re-adjustment or review period at the beginning of each year. We believe that this continuity and sustained academic engagement is an significant benefit to our students.

To begin our unit of study, the children took a field trip to the University of Colorado campus to visit Fiske Planetarium and the Sommers Bausch Observatory. Fiske Planetarium features a Zeiss Mark VI optic star projector, under the largest planetarium dome between Chicago and Los Angeles. Sommers Bauch Observatory features a 24" diameter research grade telescope, 16" and 18" computer controlled telescopes, a solar telescope, giant binoculars, and the world's largest star wheel, beneath a retractable roof which rolls off to expose the public viewing area.

After a short bus ride to Boulder, we arrived at the planetarium. None of the children had ever viewed a star show at a planetarium before; so the children were very excited. The children were viewing a program entitled Kids in Space.
The anxious children piled into the planetarium, admired the projection equipment, and took their seats. The children learned why the moon appears to change its shape, took an imaginary trip to each planet in the solar system, calculated how much they would weigh on the surface of the moon, learned about asteroids and comets, and learned about the electromagnetic spectrum and how astronomers use x-rays to learn more about the universe.

Afterwards, the children visited Fiske's interactive science museum. The children were particularly interested in the large meteorite, which they learned had been part of an asteroid that was likely to have been the size of a building and large enough to have volcanic activity. They were also very interested in learning about the dark volcanic maria and prominent impact craters on the moon and they really enjoyed interacting with this sculptural relief of the surface of the moon.

The children also had the opportunity to view several telescopes, and to learn about their role in the observation of remote objects. They were particularly delighted with the observatory, and the idea that the roof could retract. I only wished that we could return as a group for one of the evening open houses!
At the conclusion of our visit, the children convened on the lawn for a "special treat" of astronaut ice cream, which they enjoyed while reading Max Goes to the Moon, a book in an amazing series written by a former University of Colorado PhD candidate in astrophysics.

All too soon, it was time for the children to pile back into the bus and return to the school for lunch.

The children continued their scientific explorations in the classroom, where they used orreries and planet cards to learn about the general characteristics, relative position, and the motions of the planets. The children also learned to identify some basic constellations using these constellation matching cards.

The children ordered planet cards based upon their relative distance from the sun,

and performed visual matching activities in which they matched identical pictures of planets and objects from the solar system.

Children who can read non-phonetic words, read and matched labels to cards with their corresponding pictures.

The children used models to understand how the rotation of the Earth on its axis creates the phenomena of day and night.

The children worked on a challenging 180 piece puzzle showing an image of the Earth taken from space.

Children made labeled diagrams of the solar system,

read high-quality, age appropriate literature about astronomy, and even made some books of their own. One girl came up with the idea of using Metal Insets and the circle drawer of the Geometric Cabinet, to produce her own nice little booklet about the solar system,

which she proudly shared with the rest of the classroom in the Author's Chair (an opportunity for children to read their own compositions to the class).

An older child, conducted her own research project, in which she read several books about the solar system and produced her own book report. This page reads "Solar is Latin for sun. Everything in our solar system orbits the sun. The sun is a star. "
In the coming weeks, we will continue our inquiry into astronomy by learning about the history of space exploration. As part of the unit, the children will be learning about rockets and forces. Children will learn about gravity, thrust, and drag. They will be introduced to the personage of Issac Newton and have the opportunity to construct and launch their own single stage model rocket.

We would like to sincerely thank Fiske Planetarium and the Bausch Sommers Observatory for their hospitality and their commitment to educating young people. To learn more about Fiske Planetarium, and upcoming star shows, please visit their website at http://fiske.colorado.edu/

To learn more about Bausch Sommers Observatory, please visit their website at http://lyra.colorado.edu

Bausch Sommers Observatory conducts free public open houses on their observing deck on every Friday night that the University of Colorado is open, beginning at 8pm. We encourage our families to take advantage of this amazing, free opportunity to enjoy stargazing with your child. More information about their open houses can be found at http://lyra.colorado.edu/public/openhouse.html

We would also like to thank St. Vrain Valley School District Transportation for supplying the transportation for our field trip.

Reminder: Tomorrow is our Launch Party!

2011-10-08T16:05:00.004-06:00

5, 4, 3, 2, 1... Lift off!

We wanted to remind everyone that tomorrow is our first ever Rocket Launch Party!

The children have spent the last few weeks learning about forces and building Estes Generic E2X model rockets. You are invited to join us at tomorrow at 2pm behind Sunset Middle School for their maiden launch. Each child will have the opportunity to launch his/her model rocket and celebrate with some astronaut ice cream!

We expect the launch to take about an hour. We will be launching from a field, so wear appropriate footwear and bring a jacket. The weather calls for some early morning showers, but it is expected to be 54 degrees and partially cloudy by launch time.

Bloom! Violinists Perform at the Ollin Farms Fall Festival

2011-10-02T15:39:00.026-06:00

This afternoon the Bloom! Montessori Suzuki violin students had the good fortune of playing their fall solo recital pieces in the Ollin Farms Fall Festival. The occasion marked the first solo concert of the 2011-2012 school year.

Ollin Farms is a beautiful, family owned, sustainable farm located about a mile from the school. We are fortunate to participate is a Farm to School program with the farm, in which the children have the opportunity to tour the farm during the year, consume their fresh, nutrient-dense produce, use their produce in practical life activities, and learn about the animals that live on the farm (with visits from baby lambs and by incubating and raising chickens); additionally, many of our parents purchase personal CSA shares from the farm. Research has shown that the age of birth to five is a formative period in which young children develop life-long nutritional habits and attitudes about food, and we share Farmer Mark and Kena Gutteridge's passion for helping young children to develop sophisticated palates and an appreciation for a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. It is also important to teach them the importance of supporting sustainable community agriculture.

It is difficult to imagine a more enjoyable event for a three to five year old child. The farm had everything a child could ask for: fields of huge pumpkins, an assortment of delicious desserts (pumpkin bars, pumpkin cookies, etc), farm tours (in which children could feed the sheep and chickens and gather eggs), hayrack rides, wide open spaces in which to run with their friends, a wide variety of interesting plant and animal specimens, and the opportunity to perform for their favorite farmers!

Farmer Mark and Kena are something in the way of celebrities at the school. There is always a little cluster of children at the door trying to get a glimpse of Farmer Mark when he drops off the weekly CSA shares, and there is seldom a week which goes by when a delighted child doesn't tell me about seeing them at the farmer's market or at their farmstand. So, when I told the children that they had been invited to perform at the Ollin Farms Fall Festival, the children were elated.

There was a second cause for celebration. This solo recital concert marked an important rite of passage for many of our students- the one year anniversary of our Suzuki violin program and the "graduation" of many our students into the Suzuki Book One program.

One year ago, we began partnering with Erron Lacy of Longmont Suzuki Strings to begin an integrated Suzuki violin program at the school. As part of the program, children attend a weekly individual lesson at the school (with their parents), a monthly group class at the school, additional group classes with Longmont Suzuki Strings, and have the opportunity to practice their violins with Bloom! Montessori staff during the independent work times (just as Montessori children have the option of choosing among other lessons).

The Suzuki method was developed by Shinichi Suzuki, a Japanese violinist who wanted to bring beauty to the lives of the children after the devastation wrought by World War II. Like Dr. Montessori, he was amazed by the ability of young children to learn their native language and master complex linguistic systems effortlessly, but with a level of precision that cannot be duplicated later in life.

The Suzuki method shares many affinities with the Montessori method of education:

Both methods place a great importance upon indirect preparation. Before a Suzuki child ever tries to play a piece on the violin, they begin a consistent program of listening. Just as the child who eventually learns to speak is surrounded by the sounds of spoken language, so should be the child who will eventually learn to play be surrounded by the sounds of fine music.

Both methods view education as a spontaneous process in which highly trained guides create a carefully prepared environment for the young child. Like Montessori, Suzuki believed that the success of his method depended upon the power of the environment, and that this early exposure ultimately determines the nature and extent of the child's future accomplishments.

Both educators observed that young children have a strong desire to imitate the activity of adults. As a result,Suzuki parents instruct their child at home and provide an example which the child can imitate; children also benefit from playing in a mixed age group in which they can learn from the example of other more accomplished performers.

Both methods utilize brief, individual lessons to teach children to master increasingly complex tasks. Both educators recognized the importance of performing a movement analysis, and breaking a complex activity into its parts and presenting the child with no more than one significant difficulty at a time. For the beginning violinist, this consists largely in participating in a variety of coordination and rhythmic games which allow the child to master the physical skills necessary for playing the violin (holding the bow and violin with the correct stance and positioning, improving finger strength, dexterity, and fine motor coordination, and learning to operate fingers independently) without having to simultaneously concern herself with pitch, tone, rhythm, and dynamics.
Once the child is ready to start playing, Suzuki created a brilliant technical progression in which the child moves from performing open-string exercises, to playing the first rhythms within a bounded area of the bow, to learning to cross strings cleanly, to learning to move fingers independently and place them precisely in the initial finger patterns, to performing the A major scale, to playing the pitches of the first phrases of the first variation with rests between the notes, and, ultimately, to playing the entire piece in time.

Both methods base their progression upon the principles of movement analysis and empirical observations of how children actually learn. He reduced complicated varieties of bowing to two basic bow techniques, he observed that children find quick movements easier to execute then small ones (and arranged the variations accordingly), and he helps children build control of the bow using a preliminary bow hold which takes into account that children naturally transition from a palmer grasp to a pincer grasp.

Additionally, both Montessori lessons and Suzuki activities also include clear control of errors (footprints on a rug to promote correct stance, bounded playing areas on the child's bow, finger markers on the fingerboard, markings on fingers, etc) which enable auto-education, or make it possible for the child to recognize and correct errors independently.
During the initial formative period of instruction, which takes the better part of a year for most children, the Suzuki student is considered a "pre-twinkler." For five of the Suzuki violinists who began in our inaugural semester last year, this concert marked their passage from being "pre-twinklers" to official "Suzuki Book One" students. All of the indirect "pre-twinkler" preparation, culminates in the children's biggest accomplishment to date: the ability to perform five variations and the theme of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. This is an amazing accomplishment! By the time a young child reaches this point, she has learned a piece of music 72 bars long (from memory), lasting six or seven minutes, using three fingers, and some very complicated rhythms. Needless to say, we could not be more proud of our five official Book One Students!

After the huge mountain of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, a plateau is reached. The children will begin learning a series of pieces- French Folk Song, Lightly Row, Song of the Wind, Go Tell Aunt Rhody, etc in which she will consolidate what she has learned in Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Each of these pieces will pose one new difficulty, but always a very small step up, so that the new piece is learned very quickly. This will be a nice change of pace after the long time it took the children to learn Twinkle and the basics of violin performance.
So, it was with great excitement that the children took to the stage and performed their fall solo pieces. We were treated to sixteen beautiful solos and duets from the Bloom! Montessori students and four other Longmont Suzuki Strings students.

Then, the crowd was treated to an inspiring performance of Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Longmont Suzuki Strings' newest violin teacher, Lisa Hollis. Lisa has been studying Suzuki violin since the age of five. She has a masters degree in violin performance, Suzuki and Kindermusik certifications, and has performed professionally with the Bermuda Philharmonic, Bermuda Festival Orchestra, Josh Groban, Smokey Robinson, Quincy Jones, Kenny Rogers, John Ingram, Patti Austin, John Legend, and Michael McDonald. Originally from Longmont, she has returned to join Longmont Suzuki Strings after teaching violin at the Bermuda School of Music. She is currently accepting new students.

Afterwards, the children performed some of the pre-violin balancing games and bow calisthenics that they learned to help them become comfortable, relaxed, and secure when holding their violin in the correct position.

All too soon , the concert was over and the giddy children raced off to get in line for facepainting and hay rack rides, to pick pumpkins and haul them back to the farm stand in little wagons, and to sample the local fare with their friends.

We would like to sincerely thank Mark and Kena Gutteridge of Ollin Farms for allowing the children to perform. You can find them at the Longmont Farmer's Market on Saturdays (only 2 weekends left!), at their farmstand daily from 10-6, and online at http://www.ollinfarms.com/. Additionally, Ollin Farms is introducing an eight week Fall CSA Share program (which will run October 26- December 18); the application is available online.

We would also like to thank Erron Lacy and Lisa Hollis of Longmont Suzuki Strings, for sharing their expertise with us. You can learn more about their studio and the Suzuki method of instruction, at http://www.longmontsuzukistrings.org/.

Finally, we would like to thank our assistant teacher, Katie Dirrim, for volunteering three hours of her weekend (and supplying the materials) to provide facepainting for the event, Mei Lai for supplying the glitter tattoos, and Deborah Reuter for use of her keyboard for our rehearsals.

Thank you all for your kindness and support!

Ollin Farms Fall Festival is this Sunday!

2011-09-30T07:43:00.005-06:00

We wanted to remind everyone that this Sunday is the Fall Festival at Ollin Farms, our Farm to School Partner and CSA Farm.

The Bloom! Montessori Suzuki Students will be performing their Fall Solo Recital Concert beginning at 11am. The festival will feature farm tours, facepainting, pumpkin picking, Chef Dale's fabulous pumpkin pie to sample, music and activities for children.

The festival is free and open to all members of the community (you do not need to be a Bloom! Montessori family, a CSA member, or a Longmont Suzuki Strings member to attend).

We hope to see everyone there!

Visit from Fire Station Six

2011-09-23T16:40:00.016-06:00

Today marked one of the highlights of Autumn at Bloom! The children were treated to a visit from the Station Six fire fighters, who came to the school as part of our annual unit on fire safety.

While many children revere firefighters, it is not uncommon for some small children to be very frightened of them. As a result, we consider it very important to begin each school year by teaching the children about fire safety. For our youngest children, preschool may be the first time that they have ever seen a fire fighter in uniform or participated in monthly fire drills; for older children, this unit gives them the opportunity to acquire a more sophisticated understanding of fire safety and what to do in the event of an emergency.

We strongly encourage our parent community to use this annual visit as an opportunity to review your own emergency preparedness (to check the batteries in your smoke detectors, review your household evacuation plan with your child, and to reinforce the information conveyed by the fire fighters during their visit).

For their part, the children could not have been more excited! Many of the children came to school clasping prized fire engine replicas for show and tell, or clad in full fire fighter costumes, and there was a general sense of euphoria as the children anxiously awaited their arrival and spent the morning running about the yard pretending to put out fires and rescue people.

At last, the engine pulled up alongside the gate!

Fire fighters Travis, Jason, and Roger began by giving a brief presentation about fire safety. The fire fighters taught the children about smoke detectors, how to activate 9-1-1 (and only to use it in an emergency), what to do in the event of a fire (they were told to go outside and wait for their parents at their family meeting spot),what to do if they found matches or lighters (to leave them alone, get an adult, and ask the adult to store them somewhere safe), how to avoid smoke inhalation by crawling outside if necessary, and, in the event of a fire at night, to touch their bedroom door to determine whether it is hot before exiting (if it were to be hot, children were told to stay in their room with the door closed, open their bedroom window, and call for help).

As part of the presentation, Firefighter Travis offered several important tips for parents as well:

Ensure that your child's bedroom is equipped with a smoke detector. The City of Longmont Fire Department feels so strongly about the importance of this that if your child's room is not equipped with a smoke detector, you can call the fire department at 303/651. 8437 to receive a free smoke detector.

Test the smoke detector monthly to ensure it is functioning (preferably by conducting a fire drill).

Replace the batteries in your smoke detector twice a year (daylight savings times are a great time to do this).

Make an evacuation plan and discuss it with your child. Make sure your child knows to evacuate and where to meet you in the event of an emergency.

Teach your child his/her phone number and address so they can activate 9-1-1 in an emergency.

Encourage your child to sleep with their bedroom door closed. In the event of a fire, this will give them more time to escape.

Teach your child to evacuate their bedroom in an emergency by touching the door to determine if it is hot. If the door is hot to the touch, teach them to keep it closed, open their bedroom window, and scream for help. Tell them that firefighters would put a ladder against the house and climb up to rescue them.

Keep matches, lighters, and other flammable materials out of reach.

The children listened to the presentation with rapt attention, and asked some great questions (What kind of fire engine was the truck? What made them want to become firefighters? What should they do if smoke comes under their bedroom door?). The firefighters were notably impressed with their attentiveness and intelligence (initially, they had expressed that children this age might be too young to understand 9-1-1 and detailed evacuation information, but after a few minutes of interacting with the children they decided that they could handle the full elementary presentation).

It is very important that young children learn not to be frightened of firefighters and to recognize them as people who are there to help them. Due to their bulky uniform, mask, and the distortion of their voice due to their oxygen tank, firefighters can seem very frightening to small children and, unfortunately, there have been several very sad instances where children run or hide from the very people who are there to help them. As a result, in what I consider the most important element of these visits, Fighter fighter Roger dressed in full regalia in front of the children (on a day which got up to 80 degrees) so that they could see that what might appear to be a frightening figure, is merely a person dressed in a special uniform.

The children learned that firefighters keep their clothes ready at hand so they can just step into their boots and pull up their pants.

They got to see their self-contained breathing apparatus, hear the sounds that it makes, and how it distorts the fire fighter's voice.

And, they got to come up and verify that beneath all of that thick, flame-retardant clothing, the kind and obliging Firefighter Roger was still safely sweating inside (just in case they had any doubts).

Then it was time for the highlight of the children's day... the tour of the fire engine!

Our obliging guests opened every nook and cranny of the fire engine so our curious little brood could peek inside. They fielded questions about how they cut cars apart, where they each sit int he fire engine, and numerous tales of the children's encounters with fire engines.

The firefighters also gave the children an exciting demonstration of how the lights work and how the siren sounds.

Finally, they awarded the children their Junior Firefighter badges, and allowed them to resume playing firefighter in the yard until lunch time. The industrious children busied themselves with fashioning sandbox buckets into helmets, making sifters into oxygen masks, organizing their tools in the fire station, and saving their beloved chickens from multiple fires in the chicken coop.

We would sincerely like to thank Firefighters Travis, Jason, and Roger of Station Six for their incredible patience, enthusiasm, and kindness. We really appreciate their willingness to take time out of their day to educate the children about fire safety and for their service to our community.

Happy Ramadan!

2011-08-20T19:53:00.018-06:00

The children have been learning about Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar during which practicing Muslims engage in a time of introspection, self reflection, and worship. During the month of Ramadan, healthy adults fast from sun up to sundown. In the morning, families share a a hearty meal called suhoor; then, they abstain from eating and drinking until iftar, the fast breaking meal which is consumed after sunset. The meal begins with the eating of three dates, followed by the Mahgrib prayer, and a lavish meal.

Fasting provides an opportunity to practice self control, sacrifice, empathy for those who are less fortunate, and encourages acts of charity and generosity.

This year, the children were fortunate to have a member of our parent community, Dounia Mouhouche, volunteer to come and teach the class to prepare kesra, a traditional flatbread. Kesra is an amazingly tender whole wheat bread.

Dounia began by teaching the children about Ramadan. She explained that it is a time for self-reflection- to think about your life, what you are doing well, and what you could improve upon. She explained that it is a time to make promises to yourself about things that you might try to change, to do good deeds, to help those who are in need, and to consider people who are less fortunate (those who are hungry, without family, etc). The children were very interested in hearing about Ramadan, and considering what it would be like to go all day without food. When it was time to begin cooking, Dounia began by expertly mixing whole wheat flour, salt, yeast, oil, and water together, without the need for measuring devices, until the mixture reached the desired consistency. She allowed the mixture to rest for about fifteen minutes until the dough had risen and divided it into equal portions (so each child could have one ball of bread dough).

Then, she taught the children how to carefully roll their ball of dough into eight inch circles (full moons!). Several of the children aptly remarked to Dounia that she was "a good teacher."

Then it was time for the children to try. They absolutely loved rolling out the tender dough and shaping it into perfect orbs.

Once the dough had been formed, the children assembled to hear some Ramadan books, while our gracious volunteer busied herself with baking the kesra on a flat griddle pan until they were golden and brown.

The children dined on warm kesra, golden dates, and milk. Dounia explained that a conventional Ramadan fast is broken with the consumption of dates and milk to quickly restore blood sugar levels after the long hours of fasting (by providing food that is rich in calcium and potassium).

The children absolutely adored the kesra! In an amusing moment, one boy observed that the smell of the kesra reminded him of street vendors on the Pearl Street mall! In fact, we could barely keep up with the demand! No sooner would kesra come off the pan, have time to cool, and get cut into small pieces, then a child would report that the serving vessels were empty. It was hands down one of their favorite treats.

When the meal was complete, the children took home some kesra to share with their parents. One excited four year old girl proudly reported to her mother that "I love African food; it's delicious!"

In a world which is all too often marked by intolerance and ignorance of other cultures, it was particularly wonderful to see a young child beam with pride as he told his companions about being taught to make kesra by his grandmother during a trip to Africa, and have the opportunity to share an amazing culinary and cultural tradition with his appreciative and enamored friends. It was also an amazing opportunity for these young people to gain an understanding and appreciation of a different culture, and to learn about a beautiful celebration of the human desire to live, to love, and to serve others.

We wish to extend our sincere thanks to Dounia Mouhouche for sharing her time and talents with us, and for sharing her cultural traditions with us.

Bloom! Violinists Perform at the Ollin Farms Tomato Festival

2011-08-14T14:46:00.042-06:00

This afternoon, several of our families convened at Ollin Farms to enjoy their tomato festival and to entertain the passerbys with their fiddle tunes. Ollin Farms is a local, family owned, sustainably run farm located a few minutes from the school. This year, we were very fortunate to participate in a Farm to School program with the farm, in which the children had the opportunity to visit the farm and the school purchased produce from the farm to use in practical life and food preparation activities. Additionally, many of our families purchased CSA shares from the farm and had the option of picking them up at the school. The children absolutely adore the farm, and especially Farmer Mark, Kena, and Lluvia, the baby lamb that came to visit them at the school. In fact, it is a rare Monday when one of the children does not run into the school and excitedly tell their friends about seeing Farmer Mark at the farmers market over the weekend. So, when our Suzuki students were invited to perform at the Annual Tomato Festival they could not have been more pleased. Naturally, the Tomato Festival featured tastings of many beautiful varieties of fresh, local, heirloom tomatoes. There were beautiful Green Zebras, Black Crims, Brandywines, Cherokee Purples, and equally beautiful heirloom cherry tomatoes.
And, of course, there were the regular Ollin Farmstand offerings- assortments of beautiful fresh eggs, carrots, beets, turnips, eggplants, basil, squash, peaches, onions, and Kena's amazing tamales and salsa.
There were heirloom tomato tastings, cooking demonstrations (showing both fresh preparations of the vegetables and food preservation techniques), a delectable spread prepared by local chef Dale Lamb, and activities for the children.And, of course, there was music! The Bloom! Montessori Suzuki students assembled under the music tent with their violin teacher, Erron Lacy of Longmont Suzuki Strings. After tuning was complete, the children performed a set including the pieces Cowboy Ride, Jumping Beans, Mississippi Hotdog Twinkle, Biled Cabbage, and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star for a kind and appreciative crowd.
The Tomato Festival was a great opportunity for the children to perform. In what proved to be one of my favorite moments of the afternoon, the children cheerfully and spontaneously volunteered to perform solos. As I watched the tiny children confidently get up in front of the crowd, without a hint of stage fright, tell the audience what song they would be performing,

and play their most beautiful impromptu renditions of the songs, I felt so proud of the confidence, presence, and verve demonstrated by these young children. Their love of music, performing, and life was palpable. And, like any good hoedown, there was dancing. After taking turns performing their solos (some children electing to play as many as three!), the happy children demonstrated their fervid square dancing.

There were one or two obligatory minor square dancing injuries, and then the delighted children took to sampling the local produce (for which, to my great amusement, they insisted upon saying a little blessing before eating), and racing after Farmer Mark for a tour of the farm. The children fed the sheep and chickens, collected eggs, found some interesting insects and a small toad, and spied the fields of vegetables (as you might imagine, the growth of the pumpkins was of particular interest to them). During the tour, Farmer Mark explained his philosophy of farming in which healthy soil amendments, crop rotation, and and the use of organic fertilizers are used to grow delicious, nutrient dense vegetables, and to prevent the topsoil degredation which plagues so many industrial farms; he also discussed the innovative drip irrigation system used by the farm to conserve water.
We wish to sincerely thank Mark and Kena Guttridge and Ollin Farms for their hospitality and for their commitment to educating our students about the value of good nutrition, local farming, and sustainable agriculture. You can find Ollin Farms, and sample their delicious produce for yourself, every Saturday at the Longmont Farmers market and daily from 10-6 at their farm stand. For more information, please visit their website at: http://www.ollinfarms.com/
Additionally, Ollin Farms will be hosting a dinner at the farm on August 26th at 6pm; proceeds benefit Slow Food Boulder County. You can register for the dinner on their website.
We would also like to thank Erron Lacy, of Longmont Suzuki Strings, for sharing her enthusiasm and expertise with us. For more information about Longmont Suzuki Strings, please visit their website at http://www.longmontsuzukistrings.org/.
Finally, we would like to thank Tobin Munsat for providing the guitar accompaniment for our performance.

Preschool: The Best Job Training Money Can Buy

2011-08-12T20:25:00.005-06:00

What is the value of a high quality preschool education?

That was the question put forward on NPR's All Things Considered this afternoon.
You can hear Alex Blumberg's article, or read the full story, at: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/12/2011/139583385/preschool-the-best-job-training-program

NPR concluded their month long feature on child rearing with a piece on early childhood education. As part of the piece, they interview James Heckman, a Noble Prize winning University of Chicago economist and staunch advocate for the benefits of investing in early childhood education. Initially, Heckman's interest was not early childhood education, but researching the effects of job training programs. His research took an interesting turn when he discovered that for many participants, job training programs are ineffective because they lack a whole set of foundational skills, which are so basic that most people don't even consider them to be skills- the ability to focus and concentrate for an extended period of time, an attitude of abiding curiosity and interest in the world, the ability to resolve conflicts with others in a socially acceptable manner, and basic emotional regulation skills (the ability handle frustration, disappointment, and anger, to inhibit behavior, delay gratification, and modulate levels of arousal). Heckman calls these executive functioning skills "soft skills." His research shows that these skills serve as the foundation of future academic endeavors, and that if these skills are not acquired in early childhood, it is increasingly difficult to learn them later in life.

Preschool is where these skills are optimally acquired, and evidence suggests that providing children with a high quality preschool education confers benefits which can be seen forty years later. The most famous of these studies is the Perry Preschool study. In the study, 128 African-American three and four year old children from disadvantaged homes were divided into two groups. The experimental group attended a 2 1/2 hour preschool program, which (much like Montessori) engaged children in activities which required decision making and were child directed (not teacher directed); the control group did not attend preschool. For the rest of their education, the children attended the same public schools.

Twenty seven years later, the results were pretty staggering:
-There was a 44% higher rate of graduation amongst the children who attended preschool.
-There was a 26% lower rate of out of wedlock births among those who attended preschool.
-There were 50% fewer teenage pregnancies among those who attended preschool.

Forty years later, the effects continued:
-Those who attended preschool were 46% less likely to have served time in prison.
-Those who attended preschool had a 33% lower rate of arrest for violent crime.
-Those who attended preschool had a 42% higher median monthly income.
-Those who attended preschool were 26% less likely to have received government assistance.

Heckman's conclusion: Preschool is the best job training program money can buy. Put another way, as Dr. Montessori surmised more than 100 years ago, "The most important period of life is not the age of university studies, but the first one, from birth to age of six. For that is the time when man's intelligence itself, his greatest implement is being formed. But not only his intelligence, his full range of psychic powers... At no other age has the child greater need of intelligent help, and any obstacle which impedes his creative work will lessen his chances of achieving perfection."

To read more about James Heckman's research, you can visit his website at:
http://www.heckmanequation.org/content/advocacy-favorites

To read more about the Perry Preschool Project: http://www.evidencebasedprograms.org/wordpress/?page_id=65

Join us this Sunday at Ollin Farms for their Tomato Festival

2011-08-12T07:50:00.003-06:00

Sunday, August 14th is the Ollin Farms Tomato Festival!

The tomato festival is a great opportunity to meet the school's CSA farmers, tour the farm, and enjoy some fresh, local produce. It is also a great opportunity to hear the Bloom! Montessori School Suzuki Students perform their new fiddle tunes!

The Bloom! Students will be taking the stage at the music tent from 12:00 - 12:45, followed by local musician Scott Voss. Suzuki students need to be at the farm at 11:30 for tuning and set up.

Ollin Farms is located at 8627 North 95th Street (about six minutes from the school). For more information, please visit Ollin Farms website at: www.ollinfarms.com

Bon Appetit!

2011-08-09T14:52:00.011-06:00

Are these pictures from an end of summer garden party?

No. It's a typical school lunch for preschoolers.

Today marked the first day of the Bloom! Montessori School hot lunch program.

For the 2011-2012 school year, we are fortunate to be partnering with Revolution Foods to provide the children with approachable, nutritious, hot lunch options. Revolution Foods was founded in Oakland, CA in 2006 by Kirsten Saenz Tobey and Kirsten Groos, two mothers who wanted to reverse the growing tide of childhood obesity and the poor eating habits that proclaim America's youth. To date, Revolution Foods has served more than 23 million meals to school children and serves more than 70,000 meals daily to school children in more than 600 programs across the country. Revolution Foods serves meals that are appealing, delicious, and nutritious. Their meals consist of lean proteins, whole grains, a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats. They utilize whole, not heavily processed convenience foods, in age-appropriate portion sizes. Their mission is to instill life-long nutritional habits which will support student health and the maintenance of a healthy weight. All of their ingredients meet Whole Foods Market's stringent quality standards.

Revolution Foods meals never contain:

-NO rBST or hormones in milk
-NO fried food (including flash fried food)

-NO high fructose corn syrup

-NO trans fats

-NO artificial colors, flavors, or sweeteners

-NO flavored milk or juice.

If the idea of "school hot lunch" conjures images of worn cafeteria trays, hair nets, and hamburgers, think again. The excited children participated in the ritual of setting the communal tables- carefully laying out the muslin tablecloths, setting the tables with a full place setting of china, and adorning the tables with their beautiful flower arrangements. When the preparations were complete, the children politely passed the serving vessels around the table, chatted politely about the day's events, and practiced using their best table manners. The children dined on all natural bean and cheese burritos, steamed carrots, salad, and fresh, local, peaches. Our meals are served with the child's choice of Horizon Organic Nonfat DHA Omega 3 milk, Silk Soy DHA Omega 3 with Calcium, or filtered water.

By the time lunch was over, practically all of the children had taken second helpings (interestingly, the steamed carrots and fresh peaches were the first to go) and the serving platters were completely empty! Everyone was very pleased with the quality, flavor, and appearance of the meals;

however, the main point of interest for the children was the ambiance. They were absolutely delighted with the embroidered tablecloths (embroidered place settings allowed them to set the table by matching the plates and silverware to their corresponding outlines), and they spent the majority of lunch practicing their table manners and mastering the skill of cutting food with a knife and fork (this was a new skill for all but one child- and I suspect the reason that the carrots disappeared first-they were the perfect food to practice cutting and eating).

As I watched the elated children learning to use knives and forks, I could not help but think of a recent Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution episode which addressed the subject of giving knives to young children: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOLTGT1Aexg

Just as Jamie Oliver surmised, it took the children less than one meal to have the basics down, and taught them a valuable skill that they will use for the rest of their lives.

We would like to extend a sincere thanks to Revolution Foods, especially Jenny Herman, Jacqueline Gleason, & Pat Donovan, for their commitment to the revolution and for making this wonderful program available to our small school. For more information about their program, please visit their website at: http://www.revfoods.com/

We would also like to thank St. Vrain Community Montessori School. We were too small to serve as our own "drop off site," and SVCM has graciously allowed us to use their location during the school year. Thank you so much for your kindness!

Finally, I wanted to thank my husband, Josh, for spending the weekend installing the new stove at the school and doing the vent and HVAC work to make this possible.

Thanks!

Visit from the Butterfly Pavilion

2011-08-03T18:35:00.020-06:00

This afternoon, the children were treated to one of the highlights of our summer arthropod unit, a visit from the Butterfly Pavilion. The Butterfly Pavilion has the distinction of being the nation's first stand alone non-profit invertebrate zoo. It features more than 1,600 free flying butterflies, more than thirty five species of arthropods, and a tide pool showcasing other invertebrates.
For our classroom, Dorothy, a volunteer with the Butterfly Pavilion's acclaimed Outreach Program, presented their Summer Bug Safari program to the children. Spirits were high all morning in anticipation of the impending visit. When it was time to gather as a group to view the insects, the children sat with rapt attention as Dorothy reviewed the basic characteristics of all arthropods, explained the difference between carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, and explained the terms habitat, decomposer, and scavenger. Then, she showed the children some amazing examples of preserved exoskeletons.
The presentation began with a visit from a reticent hermit crab,
followed by the largest centipede I have ever seen.

Then, the children were treated to a visit from a gregarious millipede with forty legs,

and several Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The children were allowed to touch the cockroaches, to feel their hard exo-skeletons and hear the unique hissing sound they produce by forcing air through their spiracles.

While our study of arthropods concentrated heavily upon insects and their important role as pollinators, the predictable highlight of the presentation is always the arachnids. The children were treated to an up-close view of a Black Widow Spider and a scorpion- the latter was met with stifled gasps and a refrain of "I've never seen a real scorpion before," (to which our amused and gracious guest guest responded "How lucky that I brought one then").

Finally, it was time for the appearance of Rosie, the Chilean Rose Tarantula (or one of her numerous doppelgangers), the star of the show.

Ask any child who has been to the Butterfly Pavilion before for the highlight of their trip, and you are likely to get one answer: holding Rosie the tarantula. Unfortunately, when the Butterfly Pavilion came to the school last year, Rosie was in the process of molting and feeling too temperamental to be safely fondled by a classroom of preschoolers; this year, we were in luck- Rosie was amenable. Dorothy gave the children some quick instructions as to how to safely hold Rosie and tried to alleviate any fears the children might have had.

Then, to the great surprise of our guest, every child in the classroom willingly invited Rosie to crawl across their little palms and give them an arachnid "high five" with her furry little legs.

At the end of the presentation, our thoughtful guest took a few moments to ask me about the school and inquire into Dr. Montessori's theories about behavior and guidance. "The children were so well behaved," she remarked (to my visible delight). "Dr. Montessori believed strongly in the importance of instructing children in grace and courtesy," I explained proudly. We spent a few moments discussing how little attention is often given to these skills, despite the fact that most research shows that impulse control, the ability to delay gratification, and teaching children pro-social behaviors are among the most important skills we teach them, and the very foundation of future academic success.

For my part, I couldn't help but think, the presentation embodied the ideals of a Montessori education: our job is to present the world to children in a way which will arouse their interest, curiosity, and admiration.

We would like to sincerely thank Dorothy, our kind and knowledgeable guest, and the Butterfly Pavilion for bringing this amazing program to our school. For more information about the Butterfly Pavilion, please visit their website at: http://www.butteflies.org/.

First Annual Camping Trip to Union Reservoir

2011-08-01T20:24:00.025-06:00

What is more fun for a young child then spending a beautiful summer day outside riding their bike, swimming in a lake, playing in a playground, fishing, hunting for insects and natural artifacts, making s'mores, and sleeping in a tent? Doing it with fourteen of their closest friends.

This summer marked the first annual Bloom! Montessori School family camping trip. To commemorate the event, forty three students and members of our parent community convened at Union Reservoir for an afternoon of summer fun. For many of our students (and some very brave parents) this was a very monumental occasion- their first camping trip ever.

If you have ever taken young children camping, you know the importance of having some family-friendly amenities and a convenient escape route; it was with these thoughts in mind that we selected Union Reservoir as the perfect location to experiment with the concept of a classroom camping trip. Union Reservoir is one of the gems of the City of Longmont parks system. It is a naturally occurring 736 acre body of water located a mere three miles from the school. It features a sand beach, swimming area (with a lifeguard), wakeless boating, fishing, picnic shleter, camping, and bathroom facilities all in close proximity to the parking lot.

To be honest, when I discussed the idea of taking an entire class of preschool aged children camping with some teaching colleagues, the idea was met with some minor skepticism to say the least. Nevertheless, we decided to maintain our attitude of cautious optimism and persevere.

After equipping themselves with some important group camping trip necessities (matching t-shirts, flashlights, a compass, sand pails, and insect specimen jars), the children were ready to set out on their adventure.

They quickly made themselves at home at the park, enjoying the company of their friends and the plentiful good eats found at the BBQ

Then, they spent the afternoon swimming in the lake, erecting sand castles on the beach, playing in the playground, and fishing for Pumpkinseed Bluegills.

As anyone who frequently enjoys the company of young children knows, one of their best qualities is the unabashed delight they take in acquiring new skills and abilities. The children took turns enthusiastically showing their friends how far they could swim under water, how they had learned to pedal their bicycles, and how to cast a fishing line like a pro.They taught each other how to float on their backs, use a bicycle bell, and reel a fishing line. And, they explained to the adults that were present, with all the precision and seriousness of a medical examiner, what they could do "now, that I'm big and four and a half," as compared with what they could do a few months ago.

After a long afternoon spent enjoying the perfect sunny weather, we knew the children would be hungry. Having gone to college in Georgia and being big fans of both good BBQ and local small businesses, we could not have been more pleased to have our camping trip catered by Georgia Boys BBQ (a local business born out of necessity when two old friends met up in Colorado with the goal of raising $100 to finance an afternoon of skiing) who graciously supplied us with a delicious supper of brisket, cole slaw, potato salad, and Mee Maw's banana puddin' to nourish our famished brood.
After supper, it was time to make our way over to the campsite, for the arduous task of stripping the children of their swimming clothes and pitching tents. There was a flurry of activity as children furiously pedaled their bicycles up and down the path, investigating every inch of the campsites, and literally racing from campsite to campsite. The children were consummate hosts, graciously inviting their friends to come and see their tents, testing out each others sleeping bags, trading flashlights and assisting each other in subduing any small insects that warranted closer scrutiny. That is, until "it" arrived.

"It" was a pop-up camper brought by one of the members of our parent community. There was spontaneous silence throughout the campground as the young children raced over to the camper and stood in silent amazement until the unsuspecting parent opened the door.

The excited children inundated the small space and were delighted to find beds, sinks, and other furnishings that were just their size! Immediately, there ensued an emphatic chorus of skilled negotiators vying to spend the night in the camper.

Less adept adults might have feared the commencing mutiny, but there were no amateurs in this crowd and we had come armed with stores of two very powerful munitions- s'mores and Jiffy Pop! Within minutes, the children were assembled in front of the campfire, cheerfully melting marshmallows, their sticky faces plastered with insect repellent and melted chocolate.

The children had no difficulty burning off their dessert by racing around the campground like a swarm of giggling "fire flies," their tiny flashlights flickering in the distance, until (to my absolute astonishment) they disappeared into their tents and slept soundly through the night.

We would like to sincerely thank my very talented sister-in-law, Jeffie Pryor, who created the darling T-shirt design; Amber Selzer who provided us with the amazing sun shelter, loaned out a lot of personal camping gear, and provided some great advice and suggestions about camping young children; and our parent community for all of their help and support with this event. We really hope that everyone enjoyed themselves as much as we did, and we hope you will join us again next summer.

2011 Bloom! Montessori Family Campout

2011-07-14T18:00:00.005-06:00

Next weekend is the first ever Bloom! Montessori School Family Camping Trip at Union Reservoir.

Union Reservoir is one of the few natural lakes in Colorado. It is a 736 acre body of water, located about ten minutes from the school. The park features a swim beach (with lifeguard supervision), playground, and fishing and biking opportunities. It should be lots of fun! Please join us for school BBQ and overnight camping trip!

Please reserve your campsite (and help us to have an accurate headcount) by RSVPing (there is a sign up sheet in the cloakroom) by Monday, July 18th.

Farm to School Article

2011-06-15T20:32:00.002-06:00

Bloom! Montessori's Farm to School Program and nutritional education was featured in last Sunday's edition of the Longmont Times Call. To read the article, follow this link: http://www.colo-news.com/submittedContent/enlarge.asp?topic=3&item=3942&Publication=tc

The Summer CSA Season Begins Today!

2011-05-30T09:31:00.006-06:00

Reminder to Families who Purchased a CSA Share: Your share will be available for pickup today, on the patio of the school after 3:30 pm. If you will not be able to collect your share in person, feel free to send a friend!

The Summer Session is officially here! Summer Session at Bloom! Montessori means many things: warmer temperatures, summer BBQs, the ability to work out on the patio, camping trips, field trips, and the beginning of our Farm to School Program!

During the summer, we partner with Ollin Farms, a local, organic, family-owned farm, to bring our students fresh, seasonal, local produce. The children have the opportunity to visit the farm to see how food is cultivated and to develop a relationship with a local farmer; additionally, we use their produce for snacks at the school and in practical life lessons (traditional Montessori lessons in which children engage in simple, independent, food preparation activities to facilitate their care of the self).

In addition, parents had the opportunity to purchase community supported agriculture shares from the farm. These shares are available for pick up at the school every Monday after 3:30 beginning today.

Graduation BBQ is Today at 10:00 am!

2011-05-28T05:42:00.004-06:00

Reminder: The 2010 - 2011 Graduation BBQ is today at 10:00 am! The graduation ceremony will include a performance by the Bloom! Suzuki Violin Students, the presentation of diplomas, and a family BBQ.

The school will supplybeverages, plates and utensils, hamburgers, 100% beef hotdogs, veggie burgers, and a vegan salad option. Please bring something to sit on (picnic blankets or camp chairs) and a dish to share.

We hope to see everyone there!

Parent Teacher Conferences

2011-05-27T11:03:00.007-06:00

Reminder: Parent Teacher Conferences are Thursday, May 26th & Friday, May 27th from 7am - 7pm.

At your conference you will receive your child's portfolio of work, a copy of the book A Parent's Guide to the Montessori Classroom by Aline Wolf (given to you upon your first conference at the school to use a a resource during your child's time at Bloom!- the book offers a concise explanation of the philosophy and the materials used in the Montessori classroom with full color photos), an album of photos showing your child's major accomplishments and the lessons they were primarily engaged with over the term (photos are annotated with notes written by your child's guide that reference the pages where the material is explained in more detail in A Parent's Guide to the Montessori Classroom), a CD of additional photos of your child taken during the term, and your complementary copy of the 2010-2011 class picture.

Your child's written progress report for the term will be mailed to you.

We are not comfortable discussing your child's growth and development in their presence
and ask that you make alternate child care arrangements during your conference time. Most conferences take 30 minutes.

We can't wait to show you what your child has been up to this term!

Open House Today from 2-4

2011-05-22T11:29:00.009-06:00

Reminder to New Families With Children Starting During the Summer Session:

We are hosting an Open House today from 2-4pm to provide additional comfort tours to new families with children who will be starting during the Summer Session which begins on Tuesday, May 31st.

Please feel free to stop by the school to ask questions, drop off required health forms and paperwork, and help your child to feel more comfortable in their new environment.

Also, please remember that if your child is a new student (not a current student) beginning during summer session, the school must recieve required paperwork no later than this Wednesday (May 25th) for your child to start next week. Turning in paperwork after this date will result in a late start date for your child. Please contact our office if you have additional questions or need additional copies of the required forms.

Forms can be mailed, faxed (to 303/776.8173), emailed, or left in the drop box next to the cloakroom entrance (this box is checked daily). We will email you to confirm receipt.

Thank you!

Bloom! Violinists Perform Spring Solo Recitals

2011-05-21T13:15:00.029-06:00

"The first piece that all infants learn to play is "Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." After having heard the record daily at home, they learn to play it themselves. The lessons are given with infinite care. As soon as they can play the piece, they are told, "Now we are going to learn how to do it beautifully." This is a very important step and aims at the improvement of quality. It is the beginning of lessons designed to produce a finer tone quality, more graceful movement, greater accuracy, and better musicianship. We educate their talent using this piece as the teaching material. And every child, without exception, learns to play it magnificently. Their tone gradually improves, their movements become free and graceful, and they become fine musicians. Talent has been inculcated in them. "

-Shinichi Suzuki, Nurtured By Love,1983

Today was the Spring Solo Recital Concert for the Bloom! Montessori Suzuki students. The solo recitals mark the culmination of the sixteen week Suzuki semester and are a wonderful occasion to reflect back on how much the children have accomplished over the past few months.

For our beginning students, this was their first opportunity to perform a solo recital in front of an audience. Over the past sixteen weeks, these children have progressed from playing pre-violin games and calisthenics to increase their understanding of rhythm, to being able to hold cardboard models of violins in the correct position without dropping them, to learning how to care for and handle a" real" violin carefully. Since music is an aural art, long before the children were given a real violin to play, they listened daily to recordings of the Suzuki repertoire, and to their older peers in the Montessori classroom. Once the children were fit with their "real" violins, they practiced many important balancing games to learn the correct posture and to ensure that they were comfortable, relaxed, secure, and able to achieve the desired mobility for playing. Finally, after months of this type of indirect preparation, the children were ready to learn their first rhythms. Amazingly, with the very first sounds the child plays, they are already learning the first piece in the Suzuki repertoire!

And so, for their first recital, our little pre-twinklers climbed up on the stage with their darling miniature violins, "built their shelves" (a balancing game in which the children hold their violins without the use of their hands), and used a few inches of their bows (carefully metered out with stickers), to play their first Suzuki rhythms on open strings. The children accomplished this feat with the gusto and aplomb which comes so naturally to young children, who find it completely unnecessary to mask their passion, delight, and pride in acquiring new skills and abilities.

This concert was also the first opportunity for our advanced students to play the first solo pieces that require the use of fingers! Over the last sixteen weeks, our advanced students have progressed from learning to play the first rhythms in the first variation of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on open strings with precision and good tone, to the first phrases of the song, to being able to play the entire song. They have learned to cross strings, carefully setting the bow on the new string before pulling it to cleanly transition from one string to another. Additionally, and perhaps most significantly, the children have learned how to correctly place their fingers on the fingerboard to play the A major scale on the A and E strings. "Using fingers" requires these young children to develop the ability to activate all of their fingers independently and requires a great amount of finger and hand strength for their age. This of course, results in a large amount of fine motor development, far greater than that achieved by most children at this age, which has the added advantage of indirectly benefitting their ability to accomplish other fine motor tasks (such as handwriting). As the children made gains in accuracy and precision, the space between the notes was reduced, until amazingly (and spontaneously!) they found themselves playing The First Variation of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, their first "finger song!"

All of our advanced students had the pleasure of performing the piece at the concert! What an amazing accomplishment for each of them!

Over the summer, these children will continue to improve their bow technique as they learn the remaining four variations of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and (finally!) the original tune itself. By the time they have learned the entire set of variations, the children will have played a piece 72 bars long, lasting six or seven minutes, using three fingers, and some very complicated rhythms, entirely from memory! Pretty amazing for children who are all under the age of seven!

We want to extend our sincere thanks to our amazing Suzuki teacher, Erron Lacy of Longmont Suzuki Strings. We feel so fortunate that our children are able to participate in your amazing program! We would also like to thank Cobus du Toit, our outstanding (and good humored) pianist, and Grace Evangelical Free Church, for hosting the event.

If you are the parent of a child in the Longmont area, we encourage you to visit Longmont Suzuki String's website; they have recently taken on a wonderful cello teacher and a new violin/viola teacher and have openings at their studio (a rarity- there is usually a significant wait list). http://www.longmontsuzukistrings.org/

The Importance of Cultural Studies Units- Ornithology

2011-05-15T20:47:00.079-06:00

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children."

-John James Audubon

First, I want to offer a little apology. I have re-formatted this post at least three times, but every time I publish it, the changes are lost. So, I have conceeded defeat. Hopefully, the formatting issues will not detract too much from your enjoyment of your child's work.

As we have been making our way through the taxonomy of living things this year, the children recently completed a unit of study about birds. Birds are a perfect unit of study for this time of year- many children are fantasizing about Easter eggs, and they are constantly exposed to birds busily flitting about the play yard constructing their nests and rearing their young.

Birds are pretty fascinating animals to study- they can be found on every continent in the world, they descended from theropod dinosaurs, have been observed manufacturing and using tools, communicating through complex songs and symbols (attaching white bits of weeds and garbage to a nest mean babies have hatched), and participating in complex social behaviors (hunting, cooperative breeding, flocking, mobbing predators, and migrating). Additionally, teaching students about birds before reptile or amphibians, makes it easier for them to understand the lifecycle of these animals since the structures of bird eggs are more familiar, and larger.

We are fortunate to have several pairs of Ringneck Doves which build nests at the school each year and raise their young in the relative safety of our play area, in addition to the numerous crows, a woodpecker, robins, and sparrows. So the children were fortunate to have some experience with concrete examples of birds in a natural environment.

Cultural units of study are units which are largely developed to help the child adapt to their own society (learning about science, geography, art history, etc). They generally begin with concrete experiences with real things the child might encounter in their environment, and then provide the child with an understanding of the more abstract principles through carefully scaffolded interactions with their environment (not through rote memorization, lectures, or even stories).

Although providing children with an introduction to the life sciences is important in its own right, the cultural units of study serve other important purposes in a Montessori classroom environment. They provide children with the opportunity to develop their vocabulary, to apply math, geography, and formal language knowledge (reading, composition, grammar), to utilize scientific tools and instruments (measuring, weighing, using a microscope or dissection tools), and to cultivate an understanding of the scientific method (making predictions, testing hypotheses, and recording observations).

Montessori firmly believed that children this age are in a sensitive period for learning the names of the things which surround them and that it is important to provide children with the correct, precise, nomenclature for what they are observing. She developed many lessons to teach children the precise names of leaf shapes, geometric solids, and many other objects; she also created lessons in which children label everything in their environment with small labels. Personally, I always find it pretty amazing to consider the sophisticated language that these young children are absorbing through these units (in this unit alone, children learned the terms- bird, nest, talons, claw, beak, wing, feather, down, semi-plume, plumage, vaned, tympanum, blastoderm, embryo, albumen, yolk, chalaza, membrane, calcium, porous, ovoid, ellipsoid, scavenger, raptor, nocturnal, diurnal, predator, prey, vertebrates, preening, brooding, aviary, fertile, infertile, ornithology, naturalist, camoflauge, etc) and how easily they seem to remember and correctly employ the vocabulary later.

Far from merely creating precocious children, it turns out that Montessori had recognized something fundamental about the needs of young children and the optimal path to literacy. Current research in the cognitive sceinces confirms that children this age are in a sensitive period for language acquisition and shows that a child's vocabulary is one of the most important predictors of their future literacy (which in tern, is one of the most accurate predictors of their educational success). A 1998 study by the National Resource Council found that preschoolers with the largest vocabularies by 5 years of age, were the most proficient readers by 10 and 15. Obviously, the quality of the early childhood environment is a key contributor to vocabulary development. Several studies confirm that children from higher income and "enriched environments" had the highest vocabularies. In one very interesting study on the effects of early childhood environments, it was shown that children in enriched classroom environments had heard three times as many words as children in less literate early childhood settings, and by first grade those children had twice the vocabulary (Graves & Slater, 1987). Studies undertaken in home environments show similar findings. In one monumental study, conducted in 1995 by Hart and Risley, researchers tracked how often parents conversed with their children and what vocabulary they used. They found that an average low income two year old child hears 620 words per hour; by contrast, a high income two year old child hears 2,150! By age five, the low income child has heard 10 million words (knows about 3,000 words) and the high income child has heard 30 million words (and knows about 20,000)! To close the gap, would require providing the low income child with 41 hours per week of out of home language exposure as rich as those heard by the affluent children! Pretty staggering!

To begin our unit on birds, the children learned the basic structures of an egg (using the regular, hard boiled variety). Then, they learned the difference between a fertile and an infertile egg, and had the opportunity to view some mounted specimens of eggs and an assortment of particularly beautiful eggs (white, cream, brown, and blue eggs) from our community supported agriculture farm to see the diversity in differently sized and colored eggs.

The children also participated in several practical life activities involving eggs- including baking and slicing hard boiled eggs for a snack.

The children learned to identify the basic structures of an egg (shell, membrane, albumen, yolk, and chalaza).

The children also learned to identify the basic parts of a bird using bird puzzles and by making Parts of a Bird booklets.

Then, one day, a package came to the school! Inside the package were ten beautiful chocolate colored eggs that came from Gabbard Farms. Much to the children's excitement, these eggs were fertile and contained beautiful little Marin chickens!

The children put the eggs into the classroom incubator and anxiously counted down the days until the chicks were due to hatch !

Advent- style chains are an effective way for young children to visually understand the passage of time (as well as being a fun three dimensional art project). Many of the children made their own chains to count down the days.

As the eggs were gestating, the children learned some basic embryology using sequencing cards

and this embryology set (which shows the development of an embryo during each of the 21 days in their development).

Finally, after what seemed like "eternity," or so one young man told me, there were chickens! The children named their beloved brood Dandelion (after their most beloved flower), Ginger, Tilly, and Twinkydink (characters from one of the chicken books they read). Caring for animals is an important experience for children this age. It facilitates independence and the development of responsibility. They learn how to care for something gently and compassionately, they learn about the basic needs of living things (water, food, warmth), and it helps children to develop a positive sense of self esteem (by contributing positively to their environment and community).

It was important to me that children have some understanding of the great diversity of avian life. To show children some different types of birds, we treated the children to a special presentation from the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program. The children got to see a Great Horned Owl and a Red Tailed Hawk. They learned about the basic characteristics of raptors, and the need for preserving wild spaces where they live.

After the presentation, many of the children dissected "owl castings." Generally, I am a big fan of using "real" supplies for projects, but we actually used artificial pellets for this activity. The artificial pellets have a few clear benefits over real ones- they are safer (there have been some disease outbreaks in public schools where real castings were dissected, even ones that had been sterilized), and you are guaranteed to get an entire skeleton (and to know, in advance, what animal skeleton will be inside). We dissected castings containing small birds so that the children could get the added benefit of assembling a disarticulated bird skeleton (reinforcing that birds are vertebrates). The children matched the "bones" to blackline masters of the skeleton. This turned into a great small group project!

The children also had the opportunity to examine birds nests.

The children learned about different species of birds using three part cards. Three part cards are a versatile Montessori material, used for practically every area of cultural study imaginable. Children who are proficient readers can read the labels and match the labels to the pictures; children who cannot read use the cards to perform a simple visual matching exercise in which they match identical pictures and words. These lessons increase childrens vocabulary, provide advanced students with new reading challenges, and give all students exposure to having seen a lot of words in print.

The children looked at some framed mounted specimens of different feather types (down, semi-plume, and vaned feathers). Then they created their own feather collections and labeled the parts, type of bird, and types of feathers.

Children who were proficient at reading and had been learning the parts of speech (nouns, articles, verbs, adjectives, etc) read noun labels and matched them to miniature birds.

Some of the older children also came up with the idea of sorting them into raptors and non-raptors once they were labeled. This generated some great discussions and intense debate about how best to classify some birds and about the characteristics of raptors (for example, as one student observed, pelicans eat fish like a raptor, but don't have talons and hooked beaks).
Children also reinforced their understanding of geography by correctly placing miniature birds on the continents in which they live.

Children diagrammed sentences about birds and raptors.

And, of course, the children read lots of high quality, age appropriate, literature about birds and some wonderful biographies about John Audubon.

The children also really enjoyed looking at feathers and parts of egg shells under the microscope (something I really recommend- you can see the air holes in the shell, even under very low power).
They also matched bird x-rays to the types of birds they came from (again, reinforcing the meaning of the term vertebrates).

After completing so many bird activities, many of the children processed the information in their own ways, pretending to be hens sitting on nests in the yard or Peregrine Falcons diving at prey, creating beautiful bird drawings in the style of John James Audubon (whose art they studied with books and matching cards),

chalkboard drawings,

bird cut-outs and representative modelling with clay and playdough (one child made an amazing Great Horned Owl),

and by researching and composing their own non-fiction books about birds or raptors to read to their friends during the "Author's Chair" at line time (a time when children can read aloud their own compositions to their friends).

(This page reads: "Birds use their beaks to gather food.")

(This page reads: "Bald eagles feed the fish to the baby. They eat small birds too.")

Near the end of the unit, the young author of this particular booklet told me that when he grows up, he wants to be "just like John James Audubon". I daresay he might.

Completed New Student Forms are Due Monday, May 23rd!

2011-05-03T07:47:00.006-06:00

Reminder: If you are the parent of a new student who is scheduled to begin during Summer Session (Monday, May 30th), your child's completed New Student Forms Packet is due no later than Monday, May 23rd!

Receipt of forms after this date may result in a late start date for your child!

The school recently mailed reminder letters (and additional copies of the required paperwork) to families whose paperwork is currently incomplete. Please contact the school if you have additional questions!

Bloom! Violinists Play at Operation Smile Benefit Concert

2011-05-01T10:34:00.034-06:00

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

-Shinichi Suzuki

Yesterday, many of our students participated in the Longmont Suzuki Strings benefit concert for Operation Smile. For the past two months, the children have been collecting money to donate to Operation Smile, an organization which provides free surgeries to children around the world who are born with cleft palates and other facial deformities. More than 200,000 children are born annually with cleft palates; leaving them unable to speak, eat, socialize, or smile. As little as $240 dollars and 45 minutes of surgery can transform a child's life forever.
Longmont Suzuki Strings hoped to raise $2,500, or enough money to fund ten surgeries; although the final totals are not in yet, at last count the group had raised more than $7,658 (32 surgeries)!

For many, the concert was the first time that our little "pre-twinklers" played in an ensemble with older, more advanced Suzuki students. Just as in a Montessori classroom, the mixed ages allowed our young students to hear more advanced pieces played by older students, and to get a glimpse of what they might be able to do years from now. Additionally, they had the opportunity to experience what it is like to play in a large group as part of an orchestra and the chance to donate their time and talents to an amazing cause. It is never too early to begin teaching young children the importance of philanthropy and helping others who are less fortunate,a nd it is opportunities like these which assist children in developing an authentic sense of self-esteem, which comes from making a meaningful contribution to their community. I could not have been more proud of our students!

We are very fortunate to have Longmont's most patient, kind, and good humored Suzuki instructor, Erron Lacy, of Longmont Suzuki Strings, offer weekly violin lessons to students at the school as part of our integrated Suzuki violin program.

The Suzuki method was created by Shinchi Suzuki, a skilled Japanese violinist who wanted to bring beauty into the lives of young children in the wake of the devastation caused by the war.

The Suzuki method shares many important affinities with the Montessori Method of education. Both theorists believed that education is a "spontaneous," or naturally occurring process, which occurs as the child interacts with her environment (not as the mere transmission of knowledge or facts from a teacher to a student or the formulation of appropriate standards and benchmarks for accountability); as a result, in both methods, it is very important that children are placed in enriched environments in which they can develop their potential. In Suzuki homes and classrooms, it is very important that children are in a "music rich" environment, so that we are seeding the child's love and enjoyment of beautiful music. Additionally, both theorists believed that children are in a sensitive period for acquiring music, language, and developing their auditory pathways; just as a child regularly exposed to a foreign language can learn it with an exactness and ease that cannot be achieved later in life, children can also learn music if exposed to the right stimuli during this formative time. Both theorists adapt the material to the specific developmental needs and abilities of the child (for example, adaptations are made to the bow hold because young children are still largely picking up objects with a palmer grip; initial rhythms learned in the Suzuki sequence are quite fast because children have an easier time executing quick movements then slow ones, etc). Finally, both theorists use the procedure of performing an analysis of movement, to break difficult movements into a sequence of small steps which are specific, repeatable, and provide the child with a greater opportunity for success. The lessons isolate each difficulty, provide clear controls of error (rugs are drawn with exact foot placements on them so students practice with correct stance, the initial rhythms are learned with short bow strokes and only a few inches of bow are marked off with colored tapes to set the boundaries), and indirectly prepare the child for more complicated work over time (awareness and movement analysis for their first piece have already been incorporated into all of the introductory lessons).

The benefits of Suzuki instruction extend far beyond being able to play an instrument. At the same time that the children are learning to play the violin, they are also improving their fine motor coordination (particularly finger dexterity, finger strength, and their ability to move fingers independently), gross motor coordination (performing movements which assist the child in crossing the midline of their bodies and integrating the hemispheres of the brain), building their auditory pathways (which will assist them with auditory discrimination tasks, phonological processing, and reading ability), developing an understanding of patterns (rhythmic discrimination and melody processing develops spatial awareness and mathematical reasoning), developing executive function skills (planning, executing, and timing precise movements, developign self control and the ability to delay gratification), cultivating an appreciation of beautiful music, and teaching children to enjoy practicing and taking pride in working hard to overcome difficulties.

After waiting patiently for forty minutes as they listened to the pieces being played by the advanced students, it was time for our students to take to the stage.

Among the first pieces that all Suzuki students learn to play are five rhythmic variations of the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star written by Schinichi Suzuki to teach the child different bow techniques- martele, spiccato, sautille, son file, detache, legato, and staccato. In the variations, Suzuki isolates the difficulty of controlling the bow (the child does not have to concern herself with the notes and finger placement, as they are the same in all variations).

Our children played the first two variations, "Mississippi Hotdog Twinkle" (Variation One) and "Yo Ka Twinkle" Variation Two. They also played I'm a Little Monkey, Cinderella, and a song from Star Wars called Augies' Band, and sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and It's a Small World After All.

The children seemed extremely comfortable on the stage and very excited about having been able to perform for their friends and family. Thank you to everyone who took time out from their weekend to participate or attend!

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Erron Lacy, the school's Suzuki violin instructor, for making this opportunity available to our students and for all of her hard work in putting this wonderful event together. We would also like to thank Longmont Suzuki Strings, instructors Barbara Barber and Anne Brennard, and Katherine Dumont, the amazing photographer who took the photographs which appear in this post. Thank you all for your generosity and your kindness.

The Montessori Mafia?

2011-04-13T10:11:00.012-06:00

In case you missed it, I wanted to pass on a link to this article which came out last week in the Wall Street Journal about Montessori education.

The article is entitled The Montessori Mafia; it discusses the results of a new study conducted by professors from Brigham Young University, which found that a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs who start new businesses or invent new products are Montessori alumni. The article also describes the role Montessori education played in contributing to the life long success and love of learning of many famous Montessori alumni (including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Google founders Larry Page, and Sergei Brin) and the evidence from Milwaukee cohort studies which demonstrates that Montessori students often have better executive function, problem solving skills, critical thinking skills, better reading and math skills, and are more prepared for elementary school than non-Montessori students. The Milwaukee study is one of the most conclusive studies of the Montessori educational method, because the children in the experiment were randomly assigned to Montessori and non-Montessori schools; as a result, socio-economic status, parenting philosophy, parent education, and other common variables were controlled.

Over the years, Montessori has enjoyed a number of famous teachers and advocates (Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Mister Rogers, Woodrow Wilson, Alice Waters, Erik Erikson, and Jean Piaget among others). Although most classroom guides like to think that the proof our of method comes in the calm, joyful expressions on the faces of children who are concentrating deeply and developing a life long love of learning right in front of us, it is certainly nice to get a little positive press and the support of an increasing body of scientific research as well!

To read the article, please click on this link: http://blogs.wsj.com//ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-mafia

The author of the WSJ article will be hosting a webinar to discuss the research and answer questions about Montessori education today at 3pm (click on the link which appears in the article to participate).

For more information about studies which document the benefits of Montessori education, please see:

-Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius by Angeline Stoll Lillard (2005: Oxford University Press)

-Montessori Madness: A Parent to Parent Argument for Montessori Education by Trevor Eissler (2009: Sevenoff Press)

Visit from the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program

2011-04-11T16:39:00.018-06:00

This morning, as part of our current unit on birds, the children received a visit from the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program. The Rocky Mountain Raptor Program rescues, rehabilitates, and (when possible) releases injured birds of prey. They also offer a comprehensive educational outreach program which teaches young children about the importance of preserving wildlife and wild spaces for future generations. With great anticipation, our little ornithologists convened on the lawn to have their first up close peek at these amazing birds.

Carin Avila, the Educational Director of the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, began by asking the children about their favorite animals. In what would prove to be a harbinger of the day to come, many of the expectant children told her that owls and Peregrine Falcons were their favorite!

Carin also asked the children what they liked to eat and explained that raptors like to eat snakes, rodents, and small birds. The children learned the difference between "predators" and "prey," and were visibly amused to find that animals could be both! For the rest of the afternoon, they inquired about what different animals ate and what animals ate them!

The children were introduced to two native Colorado raptors, beginning with a beautiful Red Tailed Hawk. The children learned about the basic characteristics of raptors (their sharp hooked beak, sharp talons, and excellent eye sight). They got to examine hawk feathers, see how owls use camouflage to blend into their surroundings, and heard about how birds' hollow bone structure enables them to fly. The children watched with rapt attention, and a surprising amount of amusement, as the voracious hawk used it's sharp beak to devour a large piece of a jack rabbit (fur and all!).

Then, the children were introduced to an exquisite Great Horned Owl. They learned about the difference between nocturnal and diurnal raptors and about the special adaptations the owl has which enable it to see in the dark and to fly quietly so that is can use its stealth to sneak up upon unsuspecting prey.

Our knowledgeable hosts also explained that they care for hurt raptors; both birds had arrived at the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program because they had been injured by automobiles. The children learned that the owl had injured it's wing severely and the hawk had one eye which no longer worked.

After viewing the birds, our hosts led the children in some fun role playing games to help them process the information they had learned. The children practiced walking around like birds,

learned a fun song about raptors,

and experimented with how many children could fit in an eagle's nest.

As always, the children were the model of grace and courtesy. At the end of the program, the inquisitive children inundated our guests with questions ("Why do short eared owls come out during the day?" "Why didn't you bring a Bald Eagle?" "Can we see the raptors fly?").

and politely thanked them for coming to visit.

For the rest of the afternoon, the children pretended to be raptors catching prey and many chose to write and illustrate raptor books during the independent work time.

We would like to sincerely thank Carin Avila and the Rocky Mountain Raptor Society for coming to share their expertise with us. They provided an unforgettable experience, that I know inspired many of our children's interest and curiosity about these amazing animals.

For more information about the Rocky Mountain Raptor Program, please visit their website at www.rmrp.org.

Additionally, as you can see on their website, that they are having a special Mother's Day Celebration on Mother's Day, May 8th from 11-3, where they will be celebrating baby raptors. The public is invited to bring baby shower gifts and visit the orphaned raptor chicks who got bumped from their nests or tried to fly too soon.

Suzuki Family Concert

2011-03-06T15:29:00.014-07:00

This weekend our students participated in the Longmont Suzuki Strings Family Concert. Although we were small in size and in numbers (due to some virulent bronchitis and a three day weekend for some due to the public school system's Friday inservice), the children had a wonderful time.

The Suzuki Family Concert is a special concert put on by Longmont Suzuki Strings in which "families" are encouraged to perform together. Some of the families consisted of parents and children playing together, others consisted of friends, Suzuki performance groups, or, in our case, classes. It was really amazing to hear the performances and to hear how talented many of these families are!

Our school has twelve students enrolled in the Suzuki violin program. Half of the children (our advanced class) have been playing for six months and are beginning to "twinkle," or play their first renditions of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star ; the other half began in January and are just beginning to transition from their cardboard violins (which they use to build up the muscles in their chin, learn the correct positioning and placement of the violin and bow with lightweight, durable cardboard models, and practice taking the violins down safely from their chins to rest position) to "real" violins! For the new, beginning, students, this family concert was their first introduction to concerts and public performance. It could not have been a more successful or enjoyable concert!

When it was their turn, our little quartet took to the stage to perform their Rest Position song and Bow Politely. All of the children seemed very excited to perform; if they were feeling nervous about getting up on stage, it didn't show a bit.

After that, the advanced students who were present performed Jumping Beans together. I must say, I could not be more pleased with their tone and technique. Look at that beautiful positioning!

After they performed, the children settled in to listen to the other groups. Here they are shown with Longmont Suzuki Strings instructor, Erron Lacy. More than anything, I was struck by the children's interest in listening to the other performances. They sat with rapt attention and seemed to understand that in the performances of the older children, they were seeing the potential for what they themselves might accomplish. It was a really powerful reminder of the importance of a mixed age grouping and allowing younger students to watch, learn, and draw inspiration from more accomplished and experienced students.

The next Suzuki concert is Saturday, April 30th at 10:00am at Longs Peak United Methodist Church. This concert is a benefit concert for Operation Smile, a charity which mobilizes doctors to perform reconstructive cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries around the world. For more information, please visit their website at http://www.operationsmile.org/.

In anticipation of the event, the children have been decorating donation banks. They will be raising money by offering to perform songs on their violins for their parents, friends, and neighbors. Our goal is to raise $2,400, or enough money to fund ten surgeries. Friends and family members can donate by cash or check (made out to Operation Smile, not Longmont Suzuki Strings); donations are tax deductible.

We would like to sincerely thank Erron Lacy of Longmont Suzuki Strings (http://www.longmontsuzukistrings.org/) for providing this great opportunity and Todd Skaw of Guitars Etc (http://www.guitarsetc.net/) for offering up his stage for the concert.

Happy Birthday Thomas Edison!

2011-02-12T12:16:00.025-07:00

Having completed a unit of study on magnetism, it only makes sense to introduce the children to some of the natural laws associated with electricity. The main sensorial key for introducing electricity in the Montessori classroom is allowing children to construct a simple electrical circuit with a small lightbulb as a load.

The children delight in constructing the circuit, learning basic nomenclature (electrons, source, load, and return) and learning that electric current only flows in a closed path (the electrons have to get back to where they started).

I happened to have several prospective families come to tour the school while children were working with this material, and I cannot even begin to explain their amazement at the children's ability to assemble the circuit and explain to outsiders what they were doing. In every case, the visitors commented to me upon what a clever lesson it was and how they would not have considered teaching something like that to children this age. As always, I find myself able to tell them with pleasure that this lesson was not my invention. Montessori was always ahead of her time. This science lesson is standard fare for children in this plane of development (in fact I have a copy of a write up of this lesson from the Maria Montessori Training Organization in London, which was opened by Montessori herself, from 1947). In fact, it was members of the American scientific community who first welcomed Dr. Montessori to America and embraced her beliefs; Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell invited Montessori to America for her first appearance in 1915, and the first Montessori school in America was established in the home of Alexander Graham Bell.

But I digress... In any event, suffice it to say, I am reasonably confident that children today enjoy their first foray into the study of electricity as much as the children one hundred years ago.

When presenting this unit, it can be fun to try a little experiment with yourself: If you have correctly sequenced the units of study and the scientific materials in the classroom (in which case you will now have a magnetic sorting lesson on the science shelves in close proximity to the electrical circuit work), if you have provided the right classroom atmosphere (which encourages intelligent experimentation), and if you have given the right hints and cues to encourage the students to reach a higher level of thinking (scaffolding), your classroom will spontaneously (without your giving any type of presentation at all) arrive at an understanding of insulators and conductors. It is a really fun phenomenon to behold!

Generally, one very observant child will begin to see that just touching the copper wires to the terminals causes the circuit to work and from there they will begin to wonder what else they could touch to the terminals to have the same effect. Soon, they will notice that some materials can conduct the current, while others do not. They will inevitably go and get the magnetic sorting lesson (sorting objects into magnetic and non-magnetic) and try using the different items in the box, and will not fail to notice that the items that were magnetic are also the items that conduct electricity. At this point, the guide should supply the appropriate vocabulary to their discovery. The excited child will inevitably go around the classroom sharing his or her discovery with the other children (it they have not already crowded around to watch the experiment unfold).

This type of autonomous learning, the "ah ha," the exhilaration of having discovered something for themselves, is absent in classroom environments where teachers present concepts and information to children, rather than creating the conditions in which they can discover it for themselves. That is the beauty of Montessori. Everything is available to the child and made ready for her, but nothing unnecessary is done for her. Unnecessary help is a hindrance to development. The task of a Montessori guide is to invite and challenge, direct and learn, nourish and care, but also to stand back and observe these inquisitive and industrious minds at work.

Once the children understand the basics of an electrical circuit and insulators and conductors have been discovered, it is time to introduce them to a generator and the ways in which magnets can be used to make electricity. Our little generator uses a small hand crank to turn a single alnico magnet which lights an incandescent lightbulb (you could also use a compass as the load).

"I did it! I made electricity," one little three year old could be heard exclaiming the first day this was out in the classroom. I had to laugh; I am pretty sure that in this age of ipods, DVDs, Leapfrogs, and television, there aren't children anywhere that are more excited about being able to illuminate a lightbulb!

Visit from Lluvia

2011-02-11T14:30:00.014-07:00

This morning, the children were treated to a special visit from our CSA farmers, Mark and Kena Guttridge of Ollin Farms, and their three week old lamb Lluvia (pronounced "Juvia," which translates to "rain" in Spanish).

Although lambs generally conjure images of bucolic farms with undulating grassy slopes and these cute, gentle creatures wandering freely from one verdant knoll to the next , Lluiva was born in the middle of January's arctic storms. She was bottle fed for several days by the Guttridges, until they were able to return her to her mother, which might account for her calm acceptance of her new found preschool celebrity icon status.

The children were very excited to meet Lluvia! They sat as calmly as their little bodies could muster as we discussed some of the general characteristics of mammals, learned what lambs and sheep eat, and the parts of a lamb. They were particularly interested in the fact that Lluvia had been bottle fed, that she drank milk, that wool comes from sheep, and that she had cloven hooves and a tail that wiggles and wags when she nurses.

At last, the eager children had the opportunity to pet her! For her part, Lluvia was the most gregarious and good natured lamb I have ever seen. She seemed relaxed and happy while the children took turns petting her and then entertained them with her antics as she tried to jump around the rug and bleated softly as the children sang Ba, Ba, Black Sheep to her.

When it was time for them to go, the anxious children inundated our guests with requests to come out and see the farm ("When the snow melts," they patiently replied to countless children). I was glad to see that the children were as excited about our partnership with the farm as we are! We were also really excited about the prospect of incubating some chicken eggs in the classroom this summer and then relocating them to the farm!

For the remainder of the day, the children spent the majority of their outdoor play time in the garden, taking turns pretending to be farmers and lambs!

We wish to sincerely thank Mark, Kena, Amber, and Coral Guttridge for their kindness and generosity. The children were very excited to meet Lluvia and very excited about coming to see them at their farm.

For more information about Ollin Farms, please visit their website at http://www.ollinfarms.com/

Chinese New Year Celebration

2011-02-07T21:18:00.009-07:00

The children have been learning about Chinese New Year, a traditional Chinese festival which begins on the first day of the first month in the Chinese lunar-solar calendar (each month follows one cycle of the moon) and ends fifteen days later, on Chinese New Years Eve.

The children have been busy making red paper lanterns (traditionally used on the fifteenth day of celebration for the lantern walk) and red envelopes (traditional gifts given to children, usually containing money) and decorating the classroom with dragons (to scare away bad spirits).

The Chinese New Year celebration concludes with a sumptuous feast known as the reunion dinner, so it was only fitting that our study culminate with a celebratory meal of our own- fried rice and dumplings.

The children really enjoyed learning to carefully fold the tasty filling in the wonton wrappers.

A few minutes of pan frying, a quick steam bath, and voila! (er... qiao!), a delicious platter of irresistible dumplings.

No sooner had the crackling of dumplings in the pan subsided than the excited children gathered around the table and put their chopstick skills to the test with the special snack of homemade dumplings and vegetarian fried rice. Gung Hay Fat Choy!

We would like to thank Mei Lai for her informative, gracious, and delicious dumpling making tutorial, and for donating the supplies for the project. The children absolutely loved it!

Thank you!

Magnetism

2011-02-01T12:15:00.044-07:00

When I give tours of the school, I am often asked about science education for preschool children. Although there seems to be an acknowledgement that children are nascent scientists (in fact, a recent study by the National Science Foundation described them as "scientists in waiting... naturally curious and actively involved in exploring the world around them"), many parents are uncertain of how to expand their child's ability to think in ways which follow the scientific method and how to provide opportunities for children to conduct inquiries which contribute to the acquisition of scientific knowledge and nomenclature. So you can imagine the skeptical looks I get when I tell them that the best method I know of for doing so was invented more than one hundred years ago.

I have mentioned before that Montessori materials isolate one concept to brings forth the idea to the child in a concrete, hand's on manner in which the child can be at once scientist and explorer, and discover the concept for his/herself as an active participant in the learning process. The Montessori guide is indispensable in this process, but not as a teacher or a lecturer, so much as a facilitator who presents well timed opportunities for intellectual investigation that dialectically advances the child's understanding of the world. The main responsibility of the Montessori guide is to prepare the environment with the correct materials and provide the expert scaffolding (well timed interventions in the form of stimulating questions, hints, cues, and motives) that helps the child reach a higher level of thinking.

Few things illustrate the dialectical progression (how different concerete, sensorial experiences build upon each other to allow the child to acquire more sophisticated knowlege) of concepts better than science units.

For the past month, our science shelves have been stocked with lessons presenting basic concepts in magnetism.

A Magnetic Sorting Lesson allows the child to independently discover that some materials are attracted to a magnets and develop their conceptual sorting skills (the ability to form groups of objects based upon a single, common, objectively determined attribute from a diverse collection of objects- a complex skill that Piaget and Vygotsky famously believed children could not accomplish until early adolescence when they had achieved a sufficient understanding of the relationship between category and subcategory) as they sort a collection of objects into things that are magnetic and things that are not magnetic.

Once the concept was understood, the children used the concept to make some interesting insights which went beyond the scope of the lesson. Some children experimented with magnets in water (they were unsure whether the force of magnetism could go through water). Another girl spontaneously invented the classroom stud finder when she discovered that some part of walls were attracted to the magnet while others were not.

Another girl came up with the idea of producing this lovely book about magnetism.
After that, the children used a magnet to separate iron filings from other dry mediums, using these commercial materials

and by mixing sand and iron filings together and using a bar magnet to separate them.

Now that the basic idea was clear, children were given materials which enabled them to visualize magnetic fields by seeing how the iron filings line up along the lines of force of the magnetic fields.

They were also given materials that enabled them to see that the magnetic force surrounding a magnet is not uniform. There is a great concentration of strength at each end (at the poles) and a very weak force in the middle (demonstrated by dipping a cylindrical magnet in a tube containing iron filings- the filings accumulate at the ends while very few adhere to the center).

An assortment of magnets led the children to three other important discoveries: all magnets have two poles (north and south), opposite poles attract and like poles repel, and magnets can differ in strength.

The children also applied their understanding of polarity to match magnet configurations to pattern cards (putting opposite poles together when they wanted them to attract and like poles together when they wanted them to repel).

Then the children made their own compasses (out of corks, magnetized needles, and bowls of water) to understand that the needle of a compass is magnetic and to see how they respond to the bigger magnet that is our planet.

Then, the children learned about and visualized the Earth's magnetic field using a globe with a magnetic dipole.

Once the children understood that the needle of a compass responds to the Earth's magnetic field, they were ready to learn how to use compasses. They particularly enjoyed using them to label the room with its corresponding directions (they delight in getting this out and doing it several times a day). One child independently reasoned (based on her knowledge of polarity) that the Earth's North Pole must actually have the polarity of a south magnetic pole since it attracts the north pole of the compass needle!The children also examined compass roses on maps, created some compass roses, and discussed the way that a compass might be used as a literary trope.

And, of course, the children enjoyed relaxing and reading some quality non-fiction literature about magnets and compasses.

Over the next few weeks, we will be introducing lessons on electricity into the classroom.

Thank you to my mentors: Anna Applebaum (of Mapleton Montessori) for the idea of the Magnetic Sorting Lesson, Patty West (of Boulder Montessori) for teaching me how to develop physical science units for children in this plane of development, and Susan Stephenson for the Sand/Iron Filing Sorting lesson.