Elmwood Montessori School

Week 13th -17th May 2024

This week we learnt about frogs. Frogs live on land and in water. They are amphibians. In our tuff spot the children played with “frogspawn” (made with soaked chia seeds), tadpoles, froglets and frogs, lily pads, numbers and pebbles. We sang “Five little speckled frogs” as they counted the frogs sitting on the log.
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The children were invited to make a frog with a long tongue which can be flicked out when they blew through the straw, just like a real frog. 🐸

In Forest School we looked at different sized stones, some big and others small. We talked about frogs and froglets .We then each chose a stone to paint. The larger stones were frogs and the smaller stones were froglets. Once we had painted our stones, we added speckles and eyes. 🐸🐸

In our cooking session, we made “Lily-pad pittas.” The children kneaded their dough and then flattened it with their hands into circular lily-pad shapes. Our green pittas were then baked in the oven and eaten with hummus at break time.

What a fun week learning about frogs.🐸🐸

Week 7th-10th May 2024

We started the week with one of our parents coming in to read us the story “Why do we need bees?” The children had been finding lots of bees in the garden both alive and dead so this week we learned all about bees.🐝 🐝🐝🐝
We set up a bee table in the classroom and learnt the parts of a bee, the different bees that live in the hive and how they work together to make honey. We talked about the different dances the bees do to communicate with the other worker bees to tell them where the flowers are.
We played the bee game,made a honeycomb pattern by rolling bubble wrap and then we talked about hexagon shapes that bees make inside their hive.
We transferred bees, pollen and flowers with tweezers using our fine motor skills and pretended to be bees outside wearing wings while jumping and bouncing using our gross motor skills.
In Forest School we watched the bees busily going in and out of our bug hotel , then we made our own bees by wrapping wool around an oval shape and then we added wings and eyes. When our bees were finished we flew them around the garden finding flowers to collect pollen.
We finished a very busy bee week by making our own honey sandwiches and enjoyed eating them together. 🐝🍯🐝🍯🐝🍯

Week 29 April- 3 May 2024

We continued our learning discovery about minibeasts, focusing on ants. 🐜🐜🐜
We learnt many interesting facts about ants. They live in colonies, they always like to be together and are very good at team work. Some ants live in underground nests that have chambers to store food, nurseries where eggs are kept safe and babies hatch, and one special room for the queen ant. We went outdoors and marched like ants following a line and the queen ant. We loved the activity and later in the week, we used chalk to draw our own intricate lines to follow. We pretended to be ants and followed the line very well, further developing our concentration and full body coordination and spatial awareness.
We used team work to play together in our building/construction area, using tools and helping each other to build ramps, bridges and towers. We loved using hammers, and the sound of them and other tools was heard throughout the morning.

We also learnt about Weaver ants which make homes in the leaves, by sawing the leaves together to create a safe nest. The leaves are held together by silk made in the abdomen of their larvae.
We used our threading activity to develop the skill. We had some leaves to thread the shoelace through and also some plastic cotton reels to thread on the lace, creating colourful patterns. We enjoyed this focused activity, exercising our fine motor skills and pincer grip. Most of us were very good at it!
We explored the ants’ habitat on the tuff spot, building nests for them under logs. We used magnifying glasses and boxes to look at small ants more closely. In our tuff spot games, the queen ant took care of her babies and led them in line over and under logs and grass.

In Forest School on Wednesday, we went on a minibeast hunt in the garden, looking for lots of different insects on pictures hanging in the garden and for some real insects too. We watched tiny ants climbing up and down the tree, we found some wood bees and watched them go into their bug hotel and then fly out, we saw some snails going ever so slowly along the fence.

We found out that there are black, brown, red and yellow ants. We learnt the names of the body parts of an ant - head, thorax, abdomen - and counted six legs and two feelers. In our art activity, we made ants. First, we mixed food colouring and water and used pipettes to colour cotton cosmetic pads attached together for the ants’ bodies. We glued on legs, eyes and feelers, and placed our ants on a leaf.

We learnt that some ants use their strong jaws to cut leaves - these are called leafcutter ants. The interesting fact about them is that they don’t actually eat the leaves, but place them in their compost pile to help fertilise the fungus gardens that they feed on. We used scissors to cut real leaves from the garden making a lovely natural nest for our five ants and their queen. We were brilliant at it and ran out of leaves quickly. We had to go out with a small bucket to collect more leaves! The activity was very popular with most of the children.

Week 22nd-26th April 2024
This week at school we were introduced to our new theme - Mini-Beasts, which this week focussed on ladybirds, as we have seen a few in our garden outside and talked about them. We looked at pictures of the best-known ladybird, which is red with seven black spots and is known as the garden’s friend as it eats 50 aphids a day. 🐞🐞🐞

We also read many books related to our week’s theme, including “Ten Little Ladybirds” by Melanie Gerth, a story that tells how each ladybird disappears on its journey around the garden, and “What the Ladybird Heard” by Julia Donaldson, which we acted out on our tuff spot using props. 🐞🐞🐞

In our Fantastic Art session we explored three different art stations inspired by Mini-Beasts. We used boiled spaghetti to represent worms and created our own ‘worm’ paintings, we pretended to be spiders and wove our own spider web around the tuff spot stand using colourful thread and wool. We also explored two trays filled with sand, soil, and toy bugs. It was exciting to dig through the trays and discover all the hidden creatures! We all had a great time exploring each station and unleashing our creativity.
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We welcomed Speedy the Giant African snail back into the classroom after his long winter hibernation. 🐌🐌🐌
We continued to explore and experimented with the new activities in our inside and outside classroom.
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Week 11th-15th March 2024

This week our focus was investigating our five main senses. 👃👁️👋👅👂
We started the week exploring our sense of smell. We wore a blindfold and used our sense of smell to see if we were able to recognise coffee, chocolate, soap, lavender, rosemary,orange and perfume.
In the classroom ,we investigated what happened when we mixed lots of herbs together. We remembered some of the smells of the herbs we used in Forest school a few weeks ago.
When we explored our sense of hearing we used lots of musical instruments in the classroom and made our own tunes with the musical bells. We played the listening game and took it in turns to play a musical instrument while hiding it from our friends to see if they could guess what instrument we were playing.
To explore our sense of taste we made delicious Irish Soda bread and enjoyed eating it with jam or honey.
For our sense of touch once again we wore the blindfold and used our fingers to identify fabric that was soft, furry, rough, smooth, spiky and sticky.
It was another fun week.

Week 4-8 March 2024

This week, we celebrated World Book Day, which we expanded onto a week of celebrations! The children brought in some of their favourite books throughout the week that we shared in circle times and smaller groups each day. We learnt how stories are structured, and that fairy tales begin with “Once upon a time” and often end with “They all lived happily ever after. The End.” We love books! Wonderful! Throughout the week, we also focussed on literacy skills 📘📕📗📙

On Monday with Mrs Maggie, we read "Mr Little's Noisy Car" by R. Fowler. Mr Little heard lots of strange noises coming from his car and on closer inspection, he found different animals hidden in different parts of the car. The book had flaps for us to open to reveal the animals. We learnt some of the names of car parts and we loved discovering which animal we would find next. We made animal noises too. We made a little paper car, decorating it with pastel crayons, then attached wheels with split pins - a new skill for us to learn. Our imaginative play area was a garage/petrol station, where we got very busy fixing cars, pumping up tyres, and using all sorts of other necessary equipment and tools. In the tuff spot, we played in the lentil building site driving trucks down a ramp to a lower level situated in another tuff spot. We loved it and it was everyone’s favourite area 🚗

On Tuesday with Mrs Lisa, we went on a "Dear Zoo" adventure. We explored animals from the story in the jungle, finding them in suitcases and box caves. It was a lot of fun. On the tuff spot, we played with wild animals from the story, and fed them (and ourselves!) with the cornflakes they were standing on. We used spoons and our hands to transfer the cereal into bowls, learning about capacity in a simple, fun way. For practising our pencil skills, we drew lines between the animals and the boxes that they came in, following the story. Some boxes were big, some were small, and we had to remember which animals fitted best in which box 🐘

On Wednesday with Miss Fani, we read the story of "The Dot" by P. H. Reynolds. It is a story about a girl named Vashti who thought she couldn’t draw. Her teacher encouraged her to just make a mark, so she put a dot on the paper. As she explored different ways to make dots, she discovered her creativity and began to believe in herself as an artist.
In the art area, we provided a canvas for the children to express their creativity, inspired by Vashti's story. Much like Vashti, the children tried out different media and created their own artworks. They painted on the easel, drew on long sheets of paper using various markers, and experimented with different sizes of dot stickers. In the tuff spot, we explored objects from the treasure baskets and used them to create, explore, and play. We also practised our fine motor skills and had fun decorating dot pictures using colourful dot markers or stickers. It was a day filled with creativity, where we discovered that every little dot or mark can become something beautiful and meaningful 🔴

On Thursday with Mrs Monika, we read a very special story - "I Love You, Mummy" by J. Harker. It's about a little bear who is so eager to try new experiences, he goes too quickly which leads to some mistakes. He is immediately helped by his watchful and caring bear mummy. We looked at our own family and birthday books, finding pictures of our Mummies and sharing nice comments about them. We felt a lot of love and nice fuzzy feelings all over. We drew a portrait of our Mummies and later made a special gift for them - a hand painted candle jar. We played with bears, dressed them and joined them for a lovely picnic 🧸

On Friday with Mrs Mita, we read "Terrific Trains" by T. Mitton, using descriptive words and sounding words related to trains. We travelled in our own train that we built with cardboard boxes. We had to add wheels, windows and other decorations, making our train special and magical. The travelling continued throughout the morning and we took some of the bears with us. We went around the world, remembering to stop for ice cream. We felt happy and did lots of dressing up too. There were many happy characters and lots of fun interactions between children 🚂

We also celebrated special birthday! Yay! 🎉🥳🎁🎈

Week 26th February-1st March

This week was a very busy one!
We started looking for the first signs of Spring . We painted pictures of daffodils 🌼 We became nature detectives and went outside using our special flower looking glasses to see if we could find grape hyacinths, daffodils, cherry blossom, Spring snowflakes, daisies, magnolia flowers and crocus all growing in the outside environment and we found them all. 🪻🌸🌷🌼
We talked about the artist Vincent Van Gogh and made ourselves into beautiful sunflowers before we used our fingers to make a sunflower picture. 🌻🎨🖼️
Our play area was set up as a police station this week and we all enjoyed using the radios, wearing the helmets, using the handcuffs and driving the police car complete with a blue light.
We had a visit from our local community police officer PC David who told us what it is like to be a policeman and we tried on his heavy protective vest and hat. We had our fingerprints taken and made our own warrant cards.
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We ended the week celebrating St David’s day and eating Welsh cakes.
What a great week ! ‎

Week 19-23 February 2024

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This week we celebrated Chinese New Year. It is the year of the dragon - it is very lucky if you are born in the year of the dragon. Our home corner was transformed into a Chinese restaurant and was visited by all the children and teachers during the week. There was tasty food to choose from on the menu and lots of new skills to learn, picking up food and objects using chopsticks and pouring tea from the bamboo-handled teapot that was tricky to hold and pour from.

We had a very special visit from Florence Wan (an ex-parent) who came to tell us how she and her family celebrate Chinese New Year also known as the Lunar New Year or Spring festival. It marks the beginning of the lunar calendar and is celebrated by Chinese communities worldwide. It is a 15-day festival that begins on the first day of the new moon and ends on the day of the full moon (today!). She read us a wonderful pop-up story book that we all thought was amazing and we enjoyed learning how this festival is celebrated. It starts with the cleaning of their homes to remove any bad luck from the last year. On the eve of Chinese New Year, families get together to share a big meal of a whole fish, which symbolises abundance, prosperity and wealth. They also eat chicken and prawns, which symbolise happiness and liveliness. The word for prawn (xiā) sounds like the word for laughter or joy. They decorate their homes with pink cherry blossom and red wall hangings as red is a very lucky colour. They wear new clothes and again like red. The children visit their relatives and say ‘Kung Hei Fat Choi’ and in return receive red packets of money called ‘lucky money’. They watch a dragon and lion dance, and in the evening set off fireworks to scare away bad luck and evil spirits.

Florence bought in lots of beautiful clothes decorated with dragons and lions for us to try on, as well as two small lion heads for us to dance around our classroom in. It was a wonderful visit and lovely to see Florence again.

The children helped prepare a delicious Chinese New Year stir-fry vegetable dish. They chopped and snipped pak choi, mushrooms, green beans, mange tout, courgettes, red pepper and water chestnuts. Then sweet corn and root ginger were added to the bowl, and it was taken to the kitchen to be fried and added to cooked noodles. We all enjoyed eating it together at break time, trying to twirl and suck up the long noodles. The longer the noodles, the more luck you have!

The tuff spot was set up with giant pandas that are primarily found in China, specifically in the central mountain ranges in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces. They inhabit bamboo forests at high altitudes and are recognised as a national treasure of China. The children used small wooden blocks to build habitats for the pandas and green leaves similar to bamboo made tasty food for them.

We read lots of stories throughout the week, including “Yikang’s Day” by Sungwan So, a story that gave us a glimpse into the life of a girl who lives in a Chinese city. “The Great Race” by Dawn Casey told the story of the great river race and how the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac chose the order in which they would head the festival celebration, year by year, starting with the year of the rat. We also read “Lanterns and Firecrackers” by Jonny Zucker and Jan Barger, which was a lovely recap on how Chinese New Year is celebrated.

In music, we sang a version of our “Hello” song and “How do you do?”, greeting each other in Chinese by saying “Nǐ hǎo”. We warmed up our arms with the song “Everybody do this” pretending to make a vegetable stir-fry. We chopped and snipped vegetables and cooked them in a pot and ate them with chopsticks. We watched a short clip of a dragon dance on YouTube, and then used our dragon head to do a dragon dance. We used mini-cymbals and wood sticks to accompany the song “Chinese New Year is here again!”

Through the week, the children were invited to the art table to make a Chinese dragon. First, they painted a paper cup in red, gold and green and then they added pompom eyes. The pompoms would not stick so the children had to think of a way to solve this problem – we discovered that the best way was to peg the pompoms in place until they dried. The following day they finished their eyes and added fire, sticking long strips of coloured tissue paper in the dragons’ mouths. When they placed their cup up to their own mouth and blew hard, the dragon breathed fire!

We started to look at the sound ‘d’ and found lots of objects around the classroom, including a dragon, as part of our morning circle. The children also threaded straws onto a pipe cleaner to make a Chinese New Year dragon. This was a great fine motor skill exercise to help improve and support fine motor skills – it was challenging, as well as great fun.