Merry Christmas

For Unto Us a Child Is Born

 

Today we celebrate the birth of a man from Galilee. This man was born, as all of us are, as a small helpless being, dependent on the care and protection of a mother and father.

  

This child was born in a stable on a journey decreed by a Roman emperor in order for an accurate taxpayer's census to be prepared. In the times of Caesar Augustus, expectant mothers were not allowed the luxury of staying at home during a census. Paying taxes was more important to the Roman Empire than the birth of a child.

  

Shepherds, due to a lack of education and wealth, were considered the lowliest members of a community. Shepherds, though, were the first to recognize the birth of a child who would become the Prince of Peace.

 

 Wise Men, kings from other countries, journeyed to bring gifts to this child. These kings realized the potential of this child. Another King, believing that the prophecy of the birth of the "King of Kings" had been fulfilled, ordered the slaughter of all male children under the age of three in his kingdom.

 

 To protect their child, Mary and Joseph left their home, their families, and their livelihoods. This child and his parents fled to Egypt to escape King Herod's murderous edict.

 

 At the age of twelve, this child's parents allowed him to follow his desire of becoming a rabbi, even though he would spend most of his adult life as a carpenter. The last three years of his life, from the age of thirty, this man traveled from city to city with his followers and students.

 

He talked to people about how to be kind to one another and how to have a personal relationship with the Creator of the Universe. His teachings were considered treason by the governing powers at the time, and he was sentenced to death.

 

 This week we celebrate the birth of a man from Galilee. In our celebration let us remember that we all are born as children of God with enormous potential that even a simple, uneducated person, such as a shepherd, can comprehend.

 

 

In our merrymaking, let us remember that each of us has possibilities that should be encouraged by those in our world who are in positions of wisdom, wealth and influence. Those of us who hold these positions of power should seek to share our gifts and offer them to our children, as the Wise Men did.

 

 

We need to be prepared to protect our children from the treachery and greed of those who would be the King Herods in our world.

 

 

Using Mary and Joseph as our models, we need to trust our children to follow their paths and believe in our children's and our own unique abilities to heal the world.

 

Every person on our planet is born a child. No matter what our beliefs in terms of religion, nationality or faith, the message of the child called Jesus speaks to us all, if only we will listen. The message is simple.

Jesus said that the two most important acts we can perform in the world are these:

• Love the Lord thy God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
• Love your neighbor as yourself.

A message simple enough for a child to understand.

  

For unto us a child is born. We need to remember that each of us is that child.

 

Source: Kids Talk

Merry Christmas

On our shelves - December

Monday the students were treated to a nice surprise seing the classroom all decorated with the Class Christmas tree and Advent Calendar

Ms. C also had a lot of new and fun Christmas work  to share with the class.

Bell hanging work - there are ten hooks and ten bells to hang. This is also sensorial, appreciation of sounds, listening to bell. This work was popular in all age groups.

Christmas wooden characters matching work.

Christmas berry ornament tonging work. Visually appealing to the young ones.

Christmas sorting work. Next year, a variation to this work could be sorting the objects coming in different colors.  

We made handprint Santa's. The older ones needed little supervision with the gluing and designing.

We also  had a Christmas tree decorating work which I saw in My Montessori Journey's blog a couple of years ago. This is our second year doing this work and the students love it.

 The wooden Christmas ornaments work is sensorial in nature. Touch, and see little details on the ornaments. This particular student has been doing this work during the whole work period.

 Other children doing Christmas work.

This is a nesting box with a winter scene. The children need to be exta careful because of the delicate material of the box.

I've already packed the Christmas work and working on Winter art ideas for January.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Celebration in the Classroom

The students wore Pilgrim and Indian Hats to reenact the Thanksgiving feast in class. We didn't have turkey and corn but students had their favorite snacks and a cookie (treat).

 Thanksgiving Feast in the classroom

 The bulletin board shows what each studentsis thankful for

This bulletin board shows what the class is thankful for and all the students and teachers in

Pilgrim and Indian Hats

I am thankful for:

My family

My class

My friends

My home

My computer

time - off to rejuvenate and do homework for training

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May the spirit of gratitude and cooperation be with us.

my first month of training

First day of Pedagogy I got overwhelmed with the syllabus and books to read. So far I've spent  more than $400 just for books. I bought new and used books from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. We were given a planner to help us get organized. That night I plugged in all the homework and projects for each month. That took almost 2 hours but I was glad I did all that prep.
I've finished reading Rita Kramer's autobiography of Maria Montessori and found it very interesting reading. Easy and light. I liked it that our Saturday class talked about her life and I felt I understand her more.
At the same time I am also taking practicum. Every Tuesday is pedagogy and Thursdays practicum. For practicum I have three students to observe and I'll be making a student portfolio about them. At the same time I'll be putting together an intern portfolio. This will be more on classroom and school routine and documents.
My first month has just ended and I'm am getting the hang of the classes. There will be more things to do but I'll be sharing my bag of tricks which is one of my first projects in class. The bag has day care/rainy activities which we can just grab anytime we need it.

Time to organize my bathroom drawer

My drawer had too much in it and I was having a hard time finding what I needed and jewelry got tangled with my other messes. It was time to organize my bathroom drawer. I also need to organize my head bands and I'm trying to think how to do it.

I took out all the junk in the drawer and arranged like with like. Once I've done this I looked around the house for containers and anything I can use to "contain" those.

I purchased these small bins from our local Lowe's.

I bought this cute floral organizer way back knowing I'd be able to use it (or maybe I just found it cute).

This toilet paper roll will be my head band organizer.  No need for any prep.

Once everything was sorted out I started putting the items in each container/organizer.

I've arranged my things by color and by kind. This organizer is back to back but for now I am only using the front .

I plan to cover the toilet paper roll with a scarf to make it blend with the decor of the bathroom. I can also keep it under one of the sinks. After all the more clutter-free the better.

I've seen different kinds of ways to organize head bands (google blog)  but this is by far the simplest...dontcha think.

I like how these turned out.

I can't believe I have so much space in the drawer. I can easily get my things without any fuss. Plus I didn't spend anything since I already had everything on hand. Tired but I'm glad i did it.

I am officially enrolled in my first montessori class for 3-6 year olds

I have enrolled this morning in the UC Irvine Extension Montessori Philosophy and Pedagogy class for fall semester. I'm so excited and scared. I know it'll be a lot of work but I am looking forward to learning Montessori. Have been itching to say that. :>

I still have a lot of preparing to do... I need to order all the books for class...Amazon here I come.

dinosaur week

I'm way behind my posting. This is the 2nd week of summer school. All about dinosaurs. We talked about dinos and did some amazing crafts some of which I was able to find on the net.

This lovely dino silhoutte template and painting design was inspired by That Artist Woman.

We also used salt to make the effect of falling comets. Each one came out different than the other...came out really prehistoric-like.

The school had some dino templates that we traced and cut. WE used wiggly eyes, markers, various colored construction paper for each type of dino plus colorful sand to add texture to the craft. We like using construction as backdrop for bulletin board. Very easy to do and readily available.

Another dino craft that the students did was foil rubbings. We had available different dino patterns. Each child chose a pattern and foil was lain on top of the pattern. By gently pressing the foil with their fingers the pattern surfaced which they colored in using colored markers.

Coloring the background a solid color made the dino stand out more. Each rubbing had 2 dinos one smaller like a mommy and baby dino according to my students.

We also did fossils using clay which unfortunately I was not able to take pictures of. We gave the clay a day to dry. the kindergarten class painted theirs, turned out really nice. Our class (preschool) kept it as is. We used small plastic dinos, plastic leaves/flowers/stems/grass (we used the class flower arrangements) to press on the clay to make the fossil impressions.  My go to for this fossil craft is from That Artist Woman.

4th of July crafts and parade

Our summer school started this week. Each week we have a different theme, for this week we had Fourth of July. I'd like to share our crafts and our class parade.

Happy 4th of July!

Using tone and voice level to communicate

It’s not so much what you say
As the manner in which you say it;
It’s not so much the language you use
As the tone in which you convey it;
“Come here!” I sharply said,
And the child cowered and wept.
“Come here”, I said -
He looked and smiled
And straight to my lap he crept.
Words may be mild and fair
And the tone may pierce like a dart;
Words may be soft as the summer air
But the tone may break my heart;
For words come from the mind
Grow by study and art –
But tone leaps from the inner self
Revealing the state of the heart.
Whether you know it or not,
Whether you mean or care,
Gentleness, kindness, love and hate,
Envy, anger, are there.
Then, would you quarrels avoid
And peace and love rejoice?
Keep anger not only out of your words –
Keep it out of your voice.
~Author Unknown

I read this poem from the NAMC website and I wanted to share this as a reminder to us educators and parents children respond/react to our tone. Our voice level, our tone can make or break our relationships.