This week in Spark we continued to focus on routine and guardrails. Montessori is new for many of these heroes, so we went back to some basic guardrails including stay in the studio, let a guide know when you need to leave the room, treat the materials as tools not toys, and be a marshmallow (calm body, quiet voice). The heroes did a great job!
By Wednesday they were able to take on the challenge of either working on their own, or with one other hero. And by Thursday, they embraced the challenge of keeping their voices low the entire time in response to a hero who expressed that he would like to do more math work, but he has trouble concentrating when the others are noisy. It was wonderful that he felt comfortable speaking up, and that the heroes respected his voice. Everyday, we are seeing greater concentration and focus among all the heroes as they embrace Montessori mornings as a time for exploration and learning. They seem proud of all they are learning and doing!
The children have been doing a LOT of art and making this session. You may want to ask your hero about their self-portrait, their hero board, their hero cuffs, and about the makerspace champion badge! While not all have earned the badge (yet), they have all worked very hard to learn new skills like how to clean a paintbrush and safely work with the hot glue gun. The heroes are excited for the Spark Showcase where you can see the wonderful things they have made!
Speaking of “yet,” we’ve been exploring the phrase, “I can’t.” vs. “I can’t yet.” We’ve talked about how with practice, “I can’t” or “I can’t yet” becomes “I can do it!” We’ve also discussed the phrase, “practice makes perfect” vs. “practice makes progress.” The heroes have also been debating whether perfection is ever even possible. A question that came up today is, should they strive for perfect? Or should they strive for excellent?
We introduced the children to their badge plans this week. We are excited to use this as encouragement for work through certain materials. At the same, time we see beautiful learning without the badge plans. This week, we overheard four heroes debating the meaning of infinity. Two believe infinity is a number, while two heroes believe it represents all numbers. We noticed two heroes joyfully making play-doh “planets” and laying out a “scale model” (their description) of the solar system on our space rug. Today a few heroes learned about volcanoes and investigated the volcanic rocks samples in the studio. Another hero was delighted when she noticed the surface tension created when she filled up a cup with water from a pitcher, and spent three days exploring various water works in the studio. Another hero ran an experiment all around the studio to learn what material(s) a magnet will stick to.
Outdoors, the children continue to build their shelter in Nakoma Park. They have had a wonderful time exploring the hasta seedpods, sticks, cattails, burdock. They have also been building with cardboard boxes and heading to the playground at Nakoma Park. Play is so critical to children’s development and learning and we are so thrilled that they can enjoy this unstructured time each day.
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