Montessori Villa of The Woodlands

We replicated our classroom news period via zoom this morning. This was our 3rd successful Zoom! Thank you parents for your patience and support.

This week as children received a how to make a bird clip art and the previous build a bird feeder video we decided to add Rockin’ Robin to our collection of music. We sang this piece last spring as well.

Thank you to our lovely community of parents, grandparents and teachers. We cannot express our gratitude enough. Thank you for your kindness and support.

Together we will get through this.

Call/ Text to reserve your child’s place! Join us for complimentary coffee, gardening and a book reading this Saturday morning!

[01/14/20]   FOLLOW us on Instagram! Search Montessori Villa!

Beautiful first day back!

Holiday Recital 2020

Fall Feast 🍂

Grateful for the children who humble us everyday. These young souls are daily reminders of life’s simple pleasures and the beauty of human kind. Autumn, though delayed in Houston, is a time where the children feel the leaves falling and gradually changing colors and the cool breeze. We have asked our landscaper to skip this week’s maintenance to truly observe the leaves and fall! We’ve spent news periods reflecting on what we are grateful for, how various cultures and people give thanks. Tomorrow, we will end the week with the children preparing a meal, setting a fall tablescape, and dining with their friends on one long table. 🍂

[09/16/19]   We finally have an official Instagram account!! Follow us at Montessori Villa!

Beautiful flowers brought by Elias and arranged by Abbott. The children are enjoying their lunch. They set up their lunch space with a cloth placemat and napkin brought from home.

Welcome Anika, Ames and Elias #tworrifictwos #toddlercommunity

Stop letting your kids stare at iPads in restaurants, science says

We know screen time is a hotly debated topic. Sometimes it’s fine to let our children relax and sometimes, as parents we need a break. But what about during dinner. We found this article interesting and are curious to know your thoughts.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/17/health/meals-ipads-screens-family-dinner-parenting-go-ask-your-dad/index.html?no-st=1558492500

cnn.com It may seem innocuous and convenient, but research suggests that screens during meals have a big downside.

Sliding in to July like... this concludes our Summer Session 1.

See you July 8 for Summer Session 2.

Adam, a graduate of Montessori Villa returns this summer to volunteer. He attended from age 2 through 1st grade, 2007-2012. This fall he will be a freshman at The Woodlands High School.

Lovely to observe how he has grown into a well balanced individual.

His responsibilities are preparing material for the class, playing a team sport with the children (board games, soccer etc) and baking.

We ended the week by arranging flowers, setting the table and cooking an entire meal.

Summer 2019 has begun and the children are SO excited!

Still enrolling for July and Fall 2019!

Sneak peak to tonight’s wonderful graduation! As usual, the flowers planted by the children and parents this March were used by the children as they made flower arrangements for this evenings tablescapes.

Appreciating all of our educators!

Mrs. Keeley, Mrs.Blanca, Mrs. Mihed, Mrs. Naushaba and Mrs. Maria, thank you.

But, education begins at home - so thank you to our wonderful parents for your support, trust and dedication in helping us raise kind human beings.

Today, a bearded dragon joined our class. The children suggested the names and we drew one from a basket. After the children ate lunch, Muncher was hungry as well. They fed him crickets!

Welcome to our class Muncher!

This week is Waite and Strickland’s snack week. Their family sends snack for the week, maintains the weeks laundry and provides a natural bouquet of flowers for the children to put in a vase and later create smaller arrangements around the classroom.

Today, from this practical life lesson we progressed to a language lesson.

The season and weather is a great time to introduce our young minds to nature. Enrich their experience and tongue with the names of leaves and flowers. We also noted the differences and can now recognize a sunflower from a yellow daisy.

For the last few weeks we have been learning about metamorphosis.

We’ve had five caterpillars in the class and just yesterday a few of them transformed into beautiful Monarch butterflies! Truly a real life experience for the children to observe this beautiful life cycle.

Today we set the butterflies free.

Thank you to our wonderful families for such a beautiful and fun garden day!

Clear blue, sunny skies! Looking forward to this weeks garden (fri)day!

We ended our first day back from spring break with a birthday celebration! Happy 5th Birthday Abbott!

Happy Birthday to three lovely, kind and brilliant individuals! This week we celebrated Abraham turning two, Kanav turning 4 and Noah who turned 6!

Happy Birthday Adam.

The traditional birthday celebration for children in a Montessori classroom includes the “Walk Around the Sun,” a powerful, special, and educational Montessori tradition. The basic form is used by Montessori Villa: to place a lit candle or yellow circle in the center of the class floor to represent the sun, while the birthday child’s classmates form a large circle, or an ellipse, on the floor surrounding the candle, to represent the Earth’s orbit. The birthday child holds the continent globe and begins to walk a circle around the sun, while her classmates surrounding him, sing.

Classmates of the birthday child help count and talk about significant stages or developments that happen in each year. Ms. Naushaba notes the tradition is extra meaningful when a child brings photos of themselves at each year for their teacher to share with the class as they circle. We lay down the months of the year around the sun, allowing the birthday child to start their walk on their birth month and step from month to month as she circles the sun.

In addition the birthday child brings treats from home (if he wishes) to share with his classmates and a book for his classroom library.

Reading and writing are sometimes taken for granted by adults who have mastered the skills—but looking at them from a child’s perspective, they are skills of Herculean difficulty.
Literacy is a complicated, integrative process that involves the association of symbols with sounds, sounds with words, and words with ideas. It means learning to fluidly encode ideas into symbols and decode symbols into ideas. On top of everything, it involves acquiring complex physical production skills, such as the fine motor skills involved in writing with a pen or pencil.
The Montessori approach uses a distinct set of practices that nurture a positive, natural learning experience to teach reading and writing. The Montessori curriculum is thoughtfully built around teaching children the many elements of reading and writing one by one, in a way accessible to and enjoyable by a child.
Here are a few of the steps in the sequence used in a Montessori environment to ensure that children master literacy with joy.
Children in a Montessori environment learn to write first, before they learn to read. This approach is organic, as children are able to put the letters for the sounds they know together into a word before they are ready to interpret and string together the sounds of a word on a page. Children begin learning the letter sounds using sandpaper letters, which incorporate the sense of touch to further reinforce learning. While the child learns the letter sound, they trace the letter with their fingers on a textured sandpaper inscription of the letter, learning the strokes used eventually to write that letter on paper.
Once a child has mastered the sounds associated with each letter, she'll be shown the moveable alphabet, which will allow her to easily put letters together, sounding them out to spell simple, then progressively more complex, words. Children love to move, and learn by doing. They learn best by physically interacting with the world, so why not take advantage of their natural tendencies to do so? The moveable alphabet allows children to begin “writing”—even before they develop the fine-motor skills to control a pencil.
Writing is a hands-on process, and the Montessori approach fully leverages the fact that children are naturally hands-on learners. In the Montessori classroom, children develop hand strength early on during activities that encourage use of the “pincer grip”, such as the cylinder blocks. The hand position used to pick up the blocks is the same as the one used in holding a pencil.
Teaching children to read and write at Montessori Villa is an incredibly rewarding experience. Our guides follow your child through these and other steps, guiding them through a process carefully designed to encourage enthusiastic producers and consumers of the written word. We take pride in growing these fundamental roots of each child's education—the foundation that will support their learning for the rest of their lives.

Alaia
Age 3.5

Sew Fantastic 🧵

Not pictured or recorded both children threaded the needle and tied a knot.

As parents and guides we all want our children to love learning. Children that autonomously and joyfully seek knowledge are far more likely to become confident, independent, and happy adults.

For the love of learning, we encourage you all to step back, be patient and “follow the child,” within limits to grow into his full potential!

Photos from Montessori Villa of The Woodlands's post

Today was super sweet as we celebrated two birthdays. Benjamin began Montessori Villa as a young toddler. Below is him going around the sun as a 2 year old and as a 4 year old!

Happy Birthday Benjamin!

Happy Birthday Camila!

Thank you Waite for creating a beautiful birthday table setting and flower arrangement.

Happy Birthday Camila!