Thanksgiving involves art projects (like painting your hand to make a turkey print) and a lot of food prep to get ready for our Thanksgiving Feast! The children made mashed sweet potatoes, kale chips, applesauce, apple pies and roasted pumpkin seeds; then on Tuesday all the children sat down to eat together, and what a feast it was! This time of year there’s also a focus on being thankful and grateful for all that we have. This pairs nicely with the three drives that we do in the fall for coats, food and toys. On Monday, some of our leaders (Hank, Nash, Rowyn) and I delivered 267 lbs of food to EFAA, all donated by you, our fantastic families! Thank you!
At MMS we go all out for Halloween! The children come dressed up and ready for our Halloween parade. Families, sometimes in costume, but always with cameras at the ready, stay to watch and cheer them on. And our Montessori guides don’t hold back either, as you can see!
In August we welcomed back our returning students who were wonderful role models for our new students. The children were excited to see each other and to get back into the materials and playground. They also had to adjust to a change in staff – Beatrix, previously assisting in the north class, took the lead in the south classroom and Parul moved from the south to the north classroom to take Beatrix’s place so it was a wonderfully seamless transition and the children are doing beautifully! New this year: the guinea pigs will travel between the classes so all the children can get to know them and take care of them; we added chalk boards to the back of the ’Lincoln log’ shed; we introduced “grabbers” so the children could retrieve items lost under the decks and, my son Drew found and fixed-up a playhouse that the children are loving!
Our students really enjoyed the summer, especially the challenges of learning to: swim, climb to great heights and construct incredible water features on Flood-the-Sandbox days! We (teachers) all attended a special training at Movement Gym on the art of belaying so that we could help belay the children. Professional storytellers Nina Berezina and Lu Benke filled our Wednesday afternoons with wonderful stories and Nina’s magical flute music. It went by all too quickly but it was great fun while it lasted!
Summer camps are in full swing! Our activities include swim lessons at the Louisville Rec Center, climbing at Movement gym, flooding our very own sandbox, making clay projects, learning Spanish, hearing our storytellers, creative movement and more. I’m not sure, but I think the sandbox and water combo might be one of the favorites – they’ve mastered basic plumbing by using the pipes to divert water to various areas where it’s needed!
Spring is full of celebrations at MMS. Spirit Week, including crazy-hair-day, backwards-clothes-day, and more, was followed by our 46th annual Moving-Up Ceremony. That was a wonderful family pot luck followed by songs, sung and signed by the children, and several musical selections from our angklung band. The angklung, an instrument from Indonesia, has eight tones that can be separated allowing each band-member to play a tone. After the children performed, we quickly trained five parent volunteers who performed Beethoven’s Ode to Joy so nicely that the parent audience was actually able to identify the song! To finish our celebration, all the children got to walk over our bridge symbolizing their move up to new and ever-expanding levels of development. It was a wonderful, and often emotional, morning of community, appreciation and joy!
In April Mapleton Montessori School celebrated 46 wonderful years of service to the child. We had a fun fair with face painting, spin art, crown-making, bean bag toss (with prizes) and nail polish. And we wowed everyone with our very own hot dog roller! It was a great evening, lots of mingling, making new friends, and, of course, cupcakes with a resounding rendition of Happy Birthday Dear Maple, sung by all!
After a week of below-zero days, 45º seemed absolutely balmy for our Valentine’s Day Family Social! We had a great turnout for our BYOM (bring your own mug) event. The children made special snacks and we had hot chocolate in our “new” thrift store 10- quart coffee maker; seems to be perfect for hot chocolate!
Linda’s class made butter by shaking milk for a good long time! And what goes better with butter than fresh baked bread – so Rob, my husband, brought in his fresh-baked rosemary bread and the children had their snack – yum!
Francie’s dad Aaron, a Skratch Labs chef, came in to finish the pumpkin job he’d started in October. With his help, the pumpkin he’d frozen was turned into gnocchi, made by the children. Aaron was so organized and patient with the children it was a joy to see! Thank you Aaron!
A new Tonka truck became a lesson in civic responsibility and voting; should the truck be donated to the Share-a-Gift box or kept for our sandbox? We voted and, almost unanimously, the sandbox won! Iris, Nash and Hank are ready to give the truck its first run in the sand!
The Children’s Annual Thanksgiving Feast was a bountiful success. The tables were arranged end to end so all the children could sit together while they feasted on the goodies they’d made the day before – applesauce, corn muffins, sautéed carrots and gnocchi, of course!
It was a crisp and sunny day as families gathered to watch all our MMS students, now princesses, animals, astronauts, super-heros and more, march around the trike path for our annual Halloween Parade. (And actually, the “march” was more like wandering down the path, as they took in all the various characters attending school that day!)
