Woodland Montessori

Woodland Montessori has now teamed up with the lovely ladies at Global Child Montessori. We're pleased to announce our new facility located in Campbell Park, St. Albert. We look forward to growing our new Montessori family together. Hands on nature observation and forest play will be incorporated into our Montessori program. There is so much value to outdoor learning, this is going to be an amazing adventure! Hope to see you there!

Since the big lockdown, I've been offering personalized tutoring in Language and Math. We've had fun playing several games to accomplish this. One game is having a child sit in a circle of letters that they have been introduced to. We play this game twice, once asking the children to find the name of the letter, the next time asking the child to find the letter sound. We have also made up our own yoga poses for each letter, depending on the child's interests, they are invited to do any pose they want for each letter sound. A ninja move or pose for the letter n, for instance. This incorporates some much needed movement and muscle building.

We make sure to leave time for phonetic word building and some sight word / phonics reading, which the children love. We've played many more games to learn our letters and numbers, including some fun card games, a game of "number twister" and memory games. There is often giggling so loud, that my husband comes to see what we're doing :) I often get accused of "playing all day" and not really "working" . . . I love my job!!

What we did today in Montessori . . .

* Sight word printing on pumpkins - yes, we still have pumpkins :)
* Number printing in cornmeal
* Alphabet workbooks with pre-reading practice
* Nature walk
* Built forts with snow and branches
* Sledding down a path with "curbs" (like a luge)
* Yoga (our favorite poses . . . in a tree!)

It was a great day for the outdoors! When the weather gets below -19 C (including wind chill), we will shorten our time outside. But for now, we are soaking up as much sun and mild weather as we can :)

We’ve been having so much fun in the snow! One of our favorite things to do is find tracks in the snow. The tracks tell a story. Although we never see a bunny, I must have one living under one of my evergreen trees. We see fresh new tracks every day – and we can tell that the bunny has a favorite spot where he likes to sit.

Sometimes we see Coyote tracks following some bunny tracks. The smart little bunny hopped through a fence and the coyote tracks circled and then moved on, phew! We have been trying to build little igloos and stick forts for the bunnies and other small animals to live in. We made snow animals, using natural materials. Ms. Gloria supplied suet cakes, which we’ve taken out to the forest and smeared them into the bark for the birds.

We are enjoying our new Meditation techniques in nature. Our favorite thing to do, is to find and build a “retreat spot” for ourselves so we can sit for a few minutes to listen to the sounds of nature. Ms. Gloria built a meditation maze in the snow for us to walk through.

We finished our Montessori Continent & Ocean units and have completed making our own map of the world. Each student will take their map home and use it as a prop to sing the Continent Song and the Oceans Song to their parents as the child points along to each continent / ocean. They have practiced their knowledge of the Continent shapes on globes without color cues.

On our nature walk, we saw geese flying in the sky in their “V” formation and the children saw first-hand that the geese take turns being the leader of the V. This lead to discussions about how even animals depend on each other (teamwork) and how they take turns, just like we do. The geese were headed West, so we decided that we would still have a few warm days ahead – or they would be headed South. (The children know which way North is by observing that moss only grows on the North side of the trees).

In the forest today, we noticed that the spiders have been a bit more active in making new spider webs due to the weather being warmer. One student found a giant mushroom and carried it with him for the rest of the day, taking care of it as if it were a baby, giving it rides on a homemade stick teeter totter and taking it down a mud slide hill with him – first on his lap, and eventually the mushroom got to slide down the mud hill all by itself. This was amazingly cute! The mushroom was having so much fun that it needed a nap, so the child made a small leaf pile for it to nap on. This is when we noticed a ladybug and an earthworm hiding under the fallen leaves. Another student noted, “So this is where they hide when it gets cold outside!” *Another WIN for forest learning vs. traditional classroom learning* I also want to note that anything could be a toy in the forest . . . even a stick or a mushroom – no plastic or bright colored, high stimulus toys, just open ended NATURAL materials.

Enjoy!

What we did at St. Albert Woodland Montessori today:

• Morning Nature Walk, found some puddles to jump in :)
• Dragged a branch for 15 minutes:
(involved strength, problem solving & determination)
• Made a spider web craft and used it to decorate our fort
• Worked with patterns
• Built letters with natural materials
• Used a REAL hammer and nails for a Halloween project
• Letter sound basket work for Pre-reading students
• Sight word & phonics work for Reading Ready students

Enjoy!

What we did in St. Albert's Woodland Montessori today . . .

It was a chilly morning, but that didn't stop us from going for our morning Nature Walk. We were outside for over an hour this morning, and it never ceases to amaze me how much warmer it is in the forest compared to an open field. We discussed how smart animals are to take refuge in the forest, as the trees provide protection from the wind - even with bare trees!

Here are some pictures of our day:

Today was full of snowy wonder and discoveries. We visited one of our nearby forested sites to see if there was snow in the forest, and there was! It's funny how new things seem to pop out when highlighted with snow, things we didn't notice before.

We found an old fort that had been in the forest for years, just a bunch of sticks leaned up against a tree. One student noticed that there wasn't any snow inside the fort, and decided that it would make a good place for an animal to live (and not get snowed on). We found a few burrows that we hadn't noticed before, and one that we thought was abandoned had animal tracks coming from it! Boy, were we surprised. Another burrow had several tracks following its own exact same path going back and forth, back and forth. Something was getting his stash of goodies, and storing some winter treats in that burrow. We decided the animal must be the size of a squirrel and took some time examining the foot prints, becoming animal detectives.

The students really like to role play "Nature Store" where they sell any item you want in exchange for pine cone, stick or leaf currency. This is sooo cute :) Any sideways growing branch or fallen log becomes their "store". They even made me "swipe" my stick (card) and show my membership card (piece of bark) before each purchase.

One of the students discovered a tree that grew like the number 4. These were all amazing discoveries that just can't be taught in a classroom setting. Interest in Science and Nature come naturally. Children apply what they already know about language and math to any situation. We had fun writing numbers and sight words in the snow. I did not get pictures of this, unfortunately, as the game preceding word/number making was to "stomp" on the number or sight word that was called out.

What a great day of Discoveries!

What we did at St. Albert Woodland Montessori today:

We started our day indoors this morning, doing Yoga Stories – a 45 minute session. Our Kindergarten student is really into patterning. He used our pine cones, sticks and acorns to make various patterns. I was impressed by his advanced patterning skills. He moved on to forming letters, then his name with these materials. The students worked on Montessori materials, they all preferred math activities today. We are learning about Nocturnal animals, so they are incorporated into several activities. The students help to clean and set the table every day for lunch, which they love.

Outside, we made a giant pile of leaves. The students got to perform their “swimming skills” in the deep pile of leaves. Who knew that water wasn’t necessary to practice the front/back stroke?!

When we came back, we heard a popping sound and had discovered that some of our pine cones are cracking open due to dryness. It was suggested by our Kindergarten student that we try putting it in water to see what would happen. This is an example of a Child Led Science discovery activity. Not only did the pine cone close its scales, but it sank to the bottom of the globe we put it in.