Tag Archives: Early Childhood Education

MCA’s Top 10 List for Starting Back to School


Our MCA classrooms are ready to welcome you to the 2019-2020 school year!

It seems like the summer, once again, is passing by in the blink of an eye. And while some folks are eking out the most of their remaining vacation time, many teachers have already made their way back into their classrooms to start preparing for the upcoming school year. Now is actually the perfect time for parents and children to also begin to do some preliminary planning to help ease into the start of school in September. Below are some helpful hints shared by some of our MCA professional staff of things families can do now to build excitement and alleviate any stress about the upcoming school year.

1. For Parents First: Read through your Parent Packet and complete any necessary forms prior to the first day of school.
By now, our MCA families should have received their Parent Packets filled with information about the school year, the calendar, school policies, the Parent Handbook, and much more. Included in the packet are several forms which should be completed and ready to turn into the school office on or before the first day of school. Especially important are the medical forms, which were mailed earlier in the summer and are due back to school by August 26th. The State of New Jersey has very specific requirements about what schools must have on file before any student may enter the school building. Reading through this information and completing the necessary paperwork ahead of time will help parents be prepared for that first day of school.

2. Adjust activities at home.
One of the wonderful things about summer is the opportunity to have some ‘down time’ which often is missing from September through June as children’s days are filled with their time at school, which is often followed by after school enrichment activities, sports, homework, and very little ‘down time’. If the house rules for summer allow for more screen time—television viewing, computer games, etc. —it’s probably a good idea to trim those hours now. Instead, consider initiating a reading time (perfect for when parents are preparing dinner—children can read aloud while you cook or look at books silently nearby until supper’s ready). Or, engage as a family in a few more activities that require more concentration and focus—a large jigsaw puzzle, card games, or even art projects. Helping children return to tasks that need their full attention will help them when they enter or re-enter the classroom.

3. Start easing into a “school day” morning and evening routine.
A few weeks leading up to the first day of school is a good time to begin adjusting your family’s morning wake up times and evening bedtimes, which may have become a bit lax during the summer months. Knowing how early your family needs to get up to get through all of your necessary morning activities makes starting each school day so much easier. From brushing teeth and getting dressed to having a nutritious breakfast and making the morning commute, some families benefit from doing a ‘test run’ a few times to see if they can accomplish their morning rituals and arrive to school on time.

Equally important is establishing a healthy bedtime which ensures your child has adequate sleep for the busy hours spent at school. It’s not always easy to settle down for bed when the sun still hasn’t set in the summer, but even easing into a bedtime routine of listening to soft music or reading a few books in bed helps with this summer to school year transition.

4. Consider creating a family calendar.
One family activity you might consider is to create a school year family calendar. Many dollar stores sell wonderfully large calendars which you can customize with your own important information. After looking through the school calendar, mark important dates on the family calendar. Invite your child to decorate special event days with their own illustrations, or color-code the days of the calendar according to school days and days off from school. As children see some of the exciting activities that await them each month, their excitement about school may grow and override any nervousness they may be feeling about that first day.

5. Visit with friends.
Some of us have the best intentions to reconnect with friends and family during the summer when we think we have more time to get together only to find that we’ve blinked and haven’t had a chance to do so! If your child hasn’t seen neighborhood friends or former classmates over the past few months, now is a nice time to reconnect. If you know some of the children who will be in your child’s class for the upcoming year, having them come together at a local playground might be enough to spark that joy of returning to school to see old friends and make some new ones, too.

6. Attend “Meet the Teachers Day”.
If you’ve created a family school calendar, then you’ve marked the date for “Meet the Teachers Day” already! At MCA, parents and children together visit their new classroom, receive their lists of necessary school supplies, and meet their teachers face-to-face.
Meet the Teachers Day is followed by a “Phase-In” (see your Parent Packet for details), aimed at helping to alleviate any separation anxiety and providing the children with a smooth transition into their new school environment. Meet the Teachers Day is just one part of the orientation to school where the children acclimate both socially and emotionally to being apart from their parents and begin to take part in all aspects of their classroom community. At home, use your child’s teachers’ and classmates names in conversations, and begin to initiate conversations that are related to school.

7. Take your child shopping for school supplies.
Allow your child to get excited about going back to school by bringing him or her with you when you go shopping for any needed supplies or a special first day of school outfit. Giving your child the freedom to pick out his or her backpack and lunch box will also create a sense of ownership around these items, which will inherently point your child in the direction of being responsible for his or her things. Now is also a good time to remember to label all items with your child’s name.

8. And while you’re shopping, consider making a grocery list for lunches!
Sometimes planning for mealtimes is the most stressful part of a busy school or work day. Get a jump start on this and together with your child, create a list of things your child would like to have packed in his or her lunch each day. Creating a one or two week schedule of meals that can rotate may alleviate any of the issues your family may have regarding food. Keep in mind your school’s nut-safe policies, your child’s personal tastes, and what is important for a healthy lunch that will sustain your child for the afternoon.

9. Separate your anxieties about separation from your child’s.
Whether this is your first child heading off to school or your fourth, it is normal for parents to have some hesitation about leaving their children in the care of others. As parents ourselves, we at MCA know the internal struggles of sending our children off to school. We also know that our children will thrive and grow in their school settings, and that our children’s schools are nurturing, safe, and enriching places for our children to be!

In order to assist our children in making a smooth transition, it is important for us, as parents, to put forth a positive attitude and send our children off with a big smile, a brief hug, and assurance that we are looking forward to sharing stories about each of our days when we meet again after school and work. Your positive attitude helps your child sense that you believe he or she will be able to manage the school day just fine, and that positive attitude just might be contagious!

To help you maintain a smile before you say goodbye, take some time to reflect on the successes your child has exhibited in play groups or at other times when you were not right by his or her side. And be confident that should your child need some extra support, the teachers at MCA will help you both through this new transition and with becoming comfortable with a new school routine.

10. Consider starting a new ‘last day of summer vacation’ or ‘first day of school’ family tradition.
Again, using your family calendar, mark something special to do on the day before school starts or for that first day of school. Maybe it’s a special outing to a favorite nature spot, an end of summer ice cream treat, or a family splash in a pool. Or perhaps it’s a first day of school dinner picnic in the park, ride to a favorite bookshop to purchase one new book for bedtime, or an evening walk around the neighborhood in pajamas. Whatever you decide, make it something that will bring about a heightening happy anticipation to the start of school.

We can’t believe that the summer is almost over, but we are anticipating another wonderful school year ahead!! The MCA school calendar is filled with fun activities for everyone, starting with our Welcome Back Coffee. We hope you’ll mark your calendars now for our Parent Workshops and our highly anticipated night with guest speaker Dr. Robert Brooks, author of Raising Resilient Children, which was the featured selection for our MCA Parent Book Club last year. Our teachers are preparing their classrooms, just as your family is preparing for the new school year in your own way. To all of our new and returning MCA families, we look forward to seeing you in September!

Sewing Up the School Year

By Fiorella Benson with Alex Chiu

As the 2018-2019 school year comes to a close, we are delighted to share a special photo blog featuring a special end of the year project from one of our MCA classes which beautifully illustrates how skills gleaned from across the Montessori curriculum come together “seamlessly” with stunning results!

The students in one of our MCA classes have been working on a new extension of the Montessori Constructive Triangles, using a sewing machine and their hand sewing skills to make their very first quilt. The children deepened their knowledge of the different shapes they can make with triangles, while learning about symmetry, patterns, and how to design a quilt. This hands-on approach to geometry also gave the children the opportunity to work on a fiber arts project, improve their fine motor skills, develop a sense of order, promote independence, and deepen their concentration. It was an empowering experience for the class to work on this project as a team and to realize that each one of them could thread and operate a sewing machine independently.

The creative process involved the following steps:

Working with the Constructive Triangles and Extensions
The children first created different shapes and patterns with triangles. They worked with the Constructive Triangles and worked on different extensions, such as tracing, coloring, and gluing triangles made out of construction paper.

First Stitches
The children learned how to thread a sewing machine and practiced sewing a straight line, while leaving a ¼- inch seam allowance. They also practiced putting the right pressure on the pedal.

Patterns and Symmetry
The children explored the different shapes and patterns present in a finished quilt, and then proceeded to create their own design as a team. We talked about symmetry and how you can use the same pattern at the top and bottom, or at the right and left side of a quilt.

Sewing Half-Square Triangles
Each child learned how to sew a half-square triangle, which is a square made from two equal right triangles. Then they sewed them together following the pattern they created for their quilt.

Putting the Pieces Together
Once again, students used the sewing machine to put their half-square triangles together.

Hand Tying the Quilt
The students quilted their project by hand, using a tie stitch that runs through the three layers of the quilt and is secured with a few knots.

Topstitching by Hand
To give a colorful final touch to their project, the children topstitched the perimeter of their quilt by hand with running stitches.

Presenting Their Finished Quilt!

Applying the skills the children have developed over the school year to a project such as this is a wonderful way to keep those skills sharp when school is out while at the same time having some family fun and perhaps learning new skills along the way. We hope this photo feature inspires some of our MCA families to consider taking on a special family project that involves creativity, new learning, and fun this summer.

We wish you a happy, healthy, and rejuvenating summer season!

More Than Just a Bake Sale

By Alex Chiu

When is a bake sale more than just a bake sale? When we look at the learning opportunities behind these special fundraisers, we discover that children get more out of them than we might realize! Let’s take a peek behind the scenes of the bake sales hosted by The Montessori Children’s Academy and uncover the ways bake sales can help our children learn to look beyond the sweets with some very sweet and lasting results.

1. Children learn empathy. First, it’s important to be aware that with one exception (the Kindergarten bake sale), the proceeds from MCA bake sales go to charity. This month’s sales will support The Valerie Fund, MCA’s chosen charity for this school year. The students at all three MCA campuses have spent the past several months learning about this organization and how The Valerie Fund helps families whose children are suffering from childhood cancers or other blood diseases. They have come to realize some of the challenges these children and families face, and have learned about the things that this organization does to assist them. The children learn empathy for others, and are introduced to other people’s experiences and struggles. In addition, children are encouraged to see the bake sale as an opportunity to do something kind not only for the individuals associated with the chosen charity. They are inspired to consider who they might like to share a special bake sale treat with as a random act of kindness. Perhaps the local librarian? The crossing guard? A sibling? They might decide that someone they know could use a special ‘pick me up’ and share a treat with that individual as a very sweet gesture.

2. Children learn to plan and organize an event. MCA bake sales are planned and organized together with the children. While the teachers must coordinate the dates for the sales, the children are very involved in other aspects of the preparation. Students are responsible for listing the things that are needed to run the sales, including basic items like tables to display the sale items, decorations and tablecloths to make the sale attractive, money for making change, baskets to hold the baked goods, to name a few. They also create the posters which hang in the school hallways to promote the sales.

3. Children learn appreciation. Our Kindergarteners take the lead on a spring bake sale, which not only raises money for a charity of their choice, but also helps to support their end of the year events. The proceeds are divided between a charity that the students research and vote on, a special memento left on the school grounds representing the graduating Kindergarteners (e.g., wind chimes, a carved stone, etc.), and their special Kindergarten-year celebration. In this way, the Kindergarteners learn that in addition to their charitable contribution, there is work, time, and money involved in being afforded these special year-end activities, and they come to appreciate them even more.

4. Children practice interpersonal communication. Alongside parent helpers, MCA students work at the bake sale tables. They greet their customers and are encouraged to explain the purpose of the sale. They might describe the information they have learned about the charity that will benefit from the sale or share details about the various items being sold. In general, they have the opportunity to practice general grace and courtesy with their interactions.

5. Children use math skills! In addition to developing communication skills, the children who work at the bake sales practice their math skills while taking money for purchases and making change as needed. In their classrooms, the children work on identifying coins and learning the quantities within the different coins. Children who help their parents prepare the baked items at home also have the opportunity to practice math skills as they measure out ingredients for their recipes. And for those who opt to purchase pre-made goods, those children can work together with their parents to determine how many of each item is in the package and how many packages they will need to be able to provide a dozen bags of treats for their sale.

6. Children can express their creativity. When preparing bake sale items or packaging them, consider having your child create labels or decorate stickers to put on each bag. While not necessary, this is just another way to involve children in the process.

7. Children make connections across their learning. When schools work together with families to bridge the learning that takes place both at school and at home, children can see the connections of what they are learning across all areas of their lives. Learning doesn’t just happen at school. Things parents teach at home aren’t just meant for when the children are with their families. Bake sales are just another opportunity where these connections can be made in a very delicious and satisfying way!

So next time that information sheet about an upcoming bake sale comes home, consider the learning opportunities it can offer, and then let the baking and more than baking begin!

Artful Opportunities

By Alex Chiu

Winter is an especially opportune time to delve into the wonderful world of art with children. Time spent outdoors is sometimes more limited than in warmer seasons, and families often look for creative activities to do together at home. While Maria Montessori did not create specific Montessori materials for art activities as she did with the materials she developed for other areas in the curriculum, there are many Montessori-inspired ways to bring art into your child’s life.

Montessori classrooms usually have an inviting Art area with shelves that contain activities where children can focus on one skill at a time, and then gradually move on to other activities that require combining several skills. For example, you might find cutting work on the Art shelf. Children choose strips of paper that they may cut any way they wish, or they might select a strip of paper which has lines (curvy, straight, horizontal, zig zag) where they practice cutting in different ways and at different skill levels. Another work might focus on gluing. Children learn the proper way to squeeze and apply glue to adhere smaller pieces of paper in a variety of shapes and colors (maybe even those which were part of the previously mentioned cutting work) to a larger piece of paper. Here they learn about paper collage, what to do if you squeeze too much glue, and especially about cleaning up thoroughly so there’s not a sticky table left behind after they are done! Color mixing is another favorite art work. You might find children mixing two different paint colors at an easel to discover the surprise of creating a whole new color, or using eye droppers filled with different colors of water to drop onto a coffee filter for the same purpose in a different medium.

These are but a few of the many activities children explore in the Art area of their classrooms. And while each has its own unique purpose of learning a specific skill, they all share the common purpose of helping children learn to follow multiple steps in preparing, performing, and cleaning up their work. In addition, the activities found in the Art area also aid in the development of hand-eye coordination, concentration, and organization. In this way, the art activities promote skill development the children will need in all other areas of the classroom from Language to Math and more.

In addition, many teachers find a way to connect and enhance their curriculum, especially their Cultural studies, with special art activities. For example, when studying Asia, children may have the opportunity to try using a stylus to write symbols in the same manner used by Chinese calligraphers. Or if there is a theme related to Native Americans, the children might have an opportunity to make their own pinch pots with clay or practice threading small beads onto string or wire. Classes often study famous authors and artists, and teachers may supplement art materials so that children can create their own masterpieces in the style of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” with oil paints and swirling motions, Picasso’s cubist portraits with their own faces as the subjects of their work, or illustrate their own stories with tissue paper designs modeled after an Eric Carle book.

The options for art are endless, and these ideas are easily transferred to doing art in your own homes as well. But before you begin, remember that as with all Montessori lessons, it’s all about the preparation and the process. Be sure to have supplies for whatever art activity you engage in complete and ready for use before you begin. Also, consider investing in some better quality art supplies, including paper, scissors, paintbrushes, etc. Artist-quality colored pencils often last longer than the cheaper varieties which easily break and cause frustration. Introduce your child to the materials with enthusiasm, let them know you support their creativity, and then let their inner artists emerge.

It is equally important to have the necessary clean-up supplies on hand and provide instruction on what is expected for the clean-up (keeping in mind what is age appropriate) when they are done. Your children will see the connection with doing art activities at home with what they do at school, as they set up a workspace, have the required materials to do the work, participate in the work, and then clean up the workspace. Keep these same expectations for home art activities, and be impressed by how well your children complete each step!

Here are just a few fun and inspirational art activities you might like to try at home:

• Disappearing Artwork: If you’re hesitant about the mess that is sometimes involved with art, this might be a good one to begin with! Provide your children with a small lap-size chalkboard (often sold at Dollar Stores). Then, using a paintbrush dipped in water, your children can create their masterpieces and watch as they magically disappear before their eyes!
• Recycled Sculptures: Using items that you might normally throw into your recycling bin, allow your child access to tape, paper towel rolls, used dryer sheets, tissue boxes, paper scraps, cereal containers, and more to create their own unique sculptures. They could build cities, robots, doghouses, or anything else their imaginations may think of, as the possibilities are endless.
• Impressive Impressionism: Put a small amount of different colors of paint into the spaces of an empty egg carton. Instead of a paintbrush, have your child use cotton swabs to make a masterpiece of dots in the style of Monet or another Impressionist. Consider using 5×7-sized paper so the work isn’t too overwhelming.
• Collage Creations: Find a use for old buttons, ribbon, or wrapping paper remnants, or even stale cereal, inexpensive lentils, or dried beans by letting your child create a one-of-a-kind collage. You could even allow your child to experiment with which type of glue works better for different types of material. Offer a glue stick and also regular school glue to have your child compare which is more successful for his or her project.
• Observational Drawing: Provide your child with a small notebook and some high quality colored pencils, and then invite him or her to look out the window and focus on one object to draw. Or let your child pick an item from nature—a seashell, pinecone, twig, or leaf, perhaps—and encourage some time observing the object carefully and using the pencils to illustrate what your child sees.
• Crazy Crayons: Together with your child, remove the paper casing from several different colored crayons. Show your child that the color can be made using the tip, the flat top, or even the side of the crayon. Let your child experiment with the different effects each method creates. This is also a good activity for expressing emotions. Your child can use the crayon lightly, frantically, smoothly, strongly, and see that each different way of pressing the crayon on the paper can reflect a different ‘emotion’ of the crayon, and the artist too.

This is just a tiny sampling of the many types of art adventures you could have at home. Whatever you choose to explore, remember that in addition to learning a variety of skills, art can be an incredibly useful outlet for expressing emotions and a way to simply do something that makes your child feel joy.

Also, keep in mind that for most children, art is about the process, not the product. To them, the manipulating of materials and taking the time for exploring them in a variety of ways is the focus. Try to keep activities very open-ended and don’t be discouraged if once the activity is completed, your child simply wants to throw the artwork away! The work has served its purpose for your child—the process of doing and creating. Be careful to keep this in mind, rather than thinking about an ‘end product’ or expecting their creations to look a certain way. You can secretly collect the artwork from the trash to save for yourself without your child even knowing, if you really want to!

Resources for this article include:
https://www.montessoriservices.com/ideas-insights/art-in-the-montessori-environment
https://theartofeducation.edu/content/uploads/2014/12/Montessori-Art-Overview.pdf

Making Sense of It All – The Montessori Sensorial Area


By Alex Chiu

This month, The Montessori Children’s Academy will host the third in its series of Parent Education Workshops on January 9th from 7-8PM at the Short Hills campus. The topic for this upcoming workshop is the Sensorial area of the Montessori classroom, a hallmark of Montessori education. The Sensorial materials were designed by Dr. Montessori as a way for children to be able to explore and then make sense of their environment. Because she believed that sensorial exploration began at birth and that children had a developmental period where they were exceptionally receptive to what they took in through their senses, she created the Sensorial materials.

Dr. Montessori said, “The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge. Our apparatus for educating the senses offers the child a key to guide his explorations of the world” (The Absorbent Mind). Each material in the Sensorial area isolates a different sense, and Dr. Montessori categorized her Sensorial materials into eight groupings based on which sense was being used: Visual, Tactile, Baric, Thermic, Auditory, Olfactory, Gustatory, and Stereognostic. The Montessori Sensorial materials help children organize, compare, order, and classify things based on how they look, feel, sound, smell, taste, etc. While this may at the surface appear very simple, a child’s discovery of these various qualities helps to build the foundation for learning in other areas.

For example, when children use the Pink Tower, a centerpiece of the Sensorial area, they can discriminate the size of each pink cube from the smallest to the largest. However, if we take a closer look at the depth of the learning behind this simple work, we can recognize that children are gaining so much more. First, as with most Montessori materials, there is only one Pink Tower, so children must either wait for a turn to use it or learn to use it cooperatively with another classmate. Next, the child must go through a multi-step process to prepare to do the work. A work rug must be unrolled. Then, taking one cube at a time, the child must navigate the classroom from where the Pink Tower is stored to his or her work rug. This takes several trips back and forth, as there are 10 cubes!

Once using the material, the child may arrange the cubes in a variety of formations. Horizontally on the rug, the child can see how the cubes compare in size. Vertically, the child can build the tower. Children can be quite creative as they use these materials, sometimes creating beautiful displays in an endless array of patterns and designs. This promotes not only discovery of the size discrimination, but it also provides an outlet for creativity and artistic expression.
As with all Montessori materials, the work is self-correcting, and the child, through the control of error built into the work, will see whether or not he or she has placed the cubes in correct size order. If a larger cube is place on top of a smaller cube, the tower would not look visually accurate, and in some cases, would topple over because it’s not structurally sound. There’s no need for a teacher to intervene in this work, as the child can see for him or herself whether or not the work was completed correctly.

On an even deeper level, the Pink Tower is an introduction to mathematics. Each tower is made with 10 pink wooden cubes that increase in size from 1cm cubed to 10cm cubed and represents the base 10 number system. From the youngest age of 3, children are exposed to the concrete material that later helps them understand more advanced mathematical concepts. As an early introduction to mathematics that can grow with the child as he or she is ready, it leads the child to move on to the cubing of numbers and cubed roots with the Montessori Golden Bead Material in the Math area in a natural and progressive manner.

Each colorful and beautiful Sensorial material, from the Pink Tower to the Red Rods, the Knobless Cylinders to the Color Tablets, the Trinomial Cube to the Geometric Solids, the Sound Cylinders to the Rough and Smooth Boards, has a plan and a purpose behind its creation. While initially the children may simply be intrigued by the materials because they are attractive and colorful, they eventually are drawn into deeper learning as they investigate the many aspects of each work. Their senses are refined and awakened, and they come to make sense of their world in a much greater way. Again, as Dr. Montessori so cleverly understood, the children’s work with the Sensorial materials indeed “open(s) the way to knowledge”.