B RIGHT C HILD B ULLETIN
A UGUST 2013
B RIGHT C HILD . B RIGHT F UTURE .
Supporting Emotional Development
in the Montessori Classroom
During the month of August, we are fortunate to be working with a State consultant to implement the Wisconsin Pyramid model for Social Emotional Competence
into all of our classrooms. As our children grow and development, they are watching and learning from their peers, family and care givers how to express feelings
and what behavior is accepted in their environment.
Social development is our interaction with others.
It is the ability to form secure relationships. Emotional development is regulating and expressing
emotions. It involves the way one feels about
themselves, others and the world. The way that
we promote and build relationships, models for
the children in our care and environment how
and why we behave the way that we do and what
is acceptable. Recent research from the National Academy of Sciences shows direct connection between healthy social emotional development and academic success.
The Montessori curriculum beautifully aligns with the Wisconsin Pyramid model
for social emotional competence to promote a healthy environment in the classroom. In a Montessori classroom, social emotional development is supported in
the following ways:
• Teachers go to the child and interact with them on their level with a soft,
calm voice.
• Children are encouraged to problem solve on their own and with their peers
before gaining help from a teacher.
• Children are in charge of their learning and encouraged to be independent
learners. Teachers encourage children to try new things and always encouraged and supported in their choices.
• Songs and visual cues are used as transition tools to signal an activity is
coming to an end. A structured, yet flexible routine is followed daily.
• Teachers model appropriate ways to express feelings as well as encourage
children to express their feelings appropriately. Feelings are acknowledge
and it is known that it is ok to be happy, sad, mad, excited, etc. and is modeled and discussed how we express all of our emotions using conversation,
pictures, books and mirrors.
To promote Social Emotional Competence at home, some helpful tips you might
try could include:
• Get into a structure routine, incorporate visuals when needed to let children
know what is coming next. Incorporate songs into transition times to signal
that an activity is coming to an end. Create routines that are predictable,
but flexible.
• Show feelings, let children see when you are happy, sad, upset or frustrated and talk about the name for an emotion and appropriate ways to
show feelings with your children.
• Show affection daily: hug, cuddle, read and talk to them throughout the day.
Tornado Safety
On July 25th, BCLC
was fortunate to have
a representative from
the Madison Fire Department here to observe a school wide
tornado drill! The MFD
was able to offer suggestions on best
practices to ensure the safety of our
students in the event of an emergency.
We look forward to continuing our partnership with the City of Madison and
future visits from our city’s experts on
safety to provide the best care possible.
UpCOMING EVEnts
• Week of August 26th
Scholastic Book Fair
(online shopping from 8/21-9/10)
• September 24th
Fall Picture Day
Family members welcome!
• October 12th at 10am
BCLC Community
Gathering at the Epfelgarden
Sing with us
Bee Bop, Bee Bop Fire Truck
(To the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star)
Bee bop, bee bop fire truck.
Kitty in the tree has gotten stuck.
Put your ladder way up high.
Bring him down and waive bye-bye.
Bee bop, bee bop fire truck.
Kitty in the tree’s no longer stuck.
C LASSROOM
UPDATES
Oak & Elm
Our friends have been working hard on some great achievements this month. We have a lot
of first birthdays to celebrate which also comes with a lot of growing and new developmental milestones. Our older friends are working hard towards community eating times for
snacks and lunches as well as working towards more structured naps. This change helps
them be ready for challenges aheadJ. During meal times every day we work on selffeeding with spoons, trying to eat different kinds of solid foods, and drinking out of sippy
cups and holding our own bottles for the younger friends. All of these things help
strengthen our gross and fine motor skills and help our friends get more comfortable eating
at the table where they can practice sitting up in a chair and socializing with our teachers
and other friends.
We have been working very hard on specific skills in each room as well. Our friends have
been doing awesome with their gross motor skills. Our younger friends have been getting
so strong when it comes to rolling over, sitting up, and pulling themselves up. Our older friends have been working hard on
standing on their own and using their walking feet when they want to explore the classroom or they need to go wash their
hands and/or get to the table for meal time. When it comes to fine motor skills, we have a lot of masters in our rooms. We
have babies sitting up and reaching for specific work and using their pincer grip to obtain the work. Our friends have been
enjoying our new bird work that we have hanging in each room. They can grab it with their
pincer grip, pull and push the birds as well. We also have been practicing on language progression. Our friends have been pointing at works they would like to explore, and they also love to
point at different things outside so we can all communicate about nature and how the weather
and seasons change around us. Pointing is a beginning form of communication to start engaging in conversation and showing teachers and friends areas of interest. There are lots of fantastic successes happening in our room and we plan to continue to build upon each one of them.
Pine
Wow what an exciting month our Pine friends have had! This month we have welcomed Lauryn, a new friend who
moved up from the Oak Room! All of our Pine friends have done a fantastic job welcoming our new friend, and we couldn’t be
more excited to have her! We also welcomed, Ms. Rachel to our classroom. Ms. Rachel has an extensive Montessori background
and is excited to learn with us! Please welcome her to the Pine room!
In addition to welcoming our new friend, our Pine friends have been working very hard with a variety of new works
and books that have been introduced to the classroom!
The book “The Zoo” has proved extremely popular and has sparked a great interest in animals, which has been the talk
of the classroom for the past couple weeks. Due to the natural interest the classroom has had in animals recently, Mr. Matthew
decided to incorporate learning into the animals that our Pine friends love so much. For example, our Pine friends are beginning
to learn colors through pointing at animals and naming the colors of each animal. Additionally, some new work has been added
based on animals, such as the animal matching work.
The Pine room friends have also shown a great interest in helping out around the classroom! This is fantastic because it
not only helps them learn how to do common house-hold tasks, but it also helps develop
a variety of motor, cognitive, and social skills which are crucial to later learning! Due to
this growing interest, Mr. Matthew has been giving our Pine friends more responsibility
around the classroom, and they have responded with great success! Don’t be surprised if
our Pine friends start asking to help out at home!
Looking forward, the Pine Room will be welcoming a couple new friends and
Mr. Matthew is confident that all of our existing Pine friends will ease the transition for
these new friends! The Pine room will continue all of their hard work in the classroom
and will continue eating from plates and drinking from open cups. Soon our Pine friends
will be introduced to drinking all of their beverages using open cups, which will be an
exciting step for the Pine Room!
C LASSROOM
UPDATES
Maple
Our Maple friends have been enjoying the past summer months. We definitely have a love for nature and the outdoors and that shines through everything that we do. We have been working on our
self-help routine and putting items away inside and outside. Our friends love the clean-up song and
have been enjoying helping our new Maple friends with the clean-up routine.
We love using our prediction skills when guessing what the weather is like outside before outside
time along with using our problem solving skills to see why we are not able to spend time outside.
Our Maple friends are great at letting us know when it is raining, windy and sunny. While outside,
our friends love to help water and take care of our garden. Some of our friends even let us know
when it is time for the bird feeders to be filled for our bird friends to
eat. We love watching the birds flying outside our window and
enjoying the food that we supply them with.
In the science area we are learning about the birds in our life cycle
pictures and relating them to the birds we see and hear outside. We
have been having fun naming the parts of a bird and learning the
words: beak, feathers and wings.
We have also enjoyed working with our new consumer education material, especially our tractor work. We are very good at matching and naming the different pictures as well as looking
for different tractors, trucks and machines outside our classroom. Our matching works
strengthen our language vocabulary as well as helps us learn all the different types of machinery. Our friends love asking questions about especially about the sounds and items they see
every day. We have also been talking about the mailman and delivery drivers that we see
daily and building our vocabulary.
We are excited for the fall months and to watch everything around us change (especially our friends)!
Willow
The Willow friends have been busy welcoming new friends and work into the
classroom these months. We welcomed some new friends along with some maple
friends during the month of August as well as our new assistant, Ms. Tiana. We
are so excited to have all of them join or classroom. All of our friends have been
amazing helpers showing them around the room and helping with the routine. We
have also had the opportunity to have Pancake, our hermit crab, come out of his
cage and see him interact with our friends J
Our friends have been gravitating towards our language area and are very interested in learning new sounds as well as sound blending with the removable alphabet. Learning the sounds first helps our friends be able to put more than one
sound together. We have also introduced prepositions to some of our older friends t work on learning the meaning of inside, outside, behind,
above, etc. Our older friends love teaching our younger friends this work as well helping our
friends read and learn letters.
We also have been having fun learning about our solar system. We have introduced a three
part matching to help with recognition, naming and comparing all of our planets. We also
have been working on our new planet floor puzzle that has been helping reinforce the order
and names of the planets. All of this work has sparked conversation about the planets as well
and has gotten us talking about the temperatures on the different planets and comparing plants
to each other.
Our teepee is also a big hit for our friends and has helped incorporate a quiet area throughout
the day for some friends that like to have a space to do quiet activities individually or with
another friend. It has been great practice for our friends to respect others and take turns when
using the teepee.