The highlight this week was surely the upper elementary Science Fair where the students shared their interesting and impressive research projects!
Montessori students learn many practical and challenging tasks in the casa classroom, one of which is how to sew a button! With this wonderfully exciting piece of work, children also develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, concentration and focus.
Our elementary classes had a beautiful day for their trek to see the Winter Stations art installations at Woodbine Beach today. Winter Stations is an international design competition held annually in Toronto, where participants design temporary winter art installations that incorporate the existing lifeguard towers. This year, the theme for the installations was “Dawn”.
Working hard on a project showing the parts of a horse! Casa children learn the parts of various animals and plants through lessons in the Montessori zoology and botany curriculums, often creating a booklet or board where they draw and label each part.
The grade 3-6 elementary children had an awesome couple of ski days at Dagmar Ski Resort! For some it was their first time ever skiing and they should feel very proud. For other more experienced skiers they had an opportunity to shine and be mentors. Thank you to all the parent supervisors that helped to make it a fun and safe trip for all!
We had a huge turnout and beautiful weather for our annual Family Skate on the weekend! Everyone enjoyed skating and drinking hot chocolate together.
“As soon as children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate.” -Maria Montessori
We finally have snow. Oh, what fun!
Introducing the life cycle of a butterfly to a pair of first year casa students!
Real specimens are an important part of the Montessori method, which emphasizes hands-on learning and direct interaction with the environment. Montessori classrooms use real specimens to help children learn about science, botany and zoology.
Here one of our lower elementary teachers introduces a lesson on the skeletal system using several real animal bones, a skull and a life size model of a human spine, immediately sparking the interest of her students!
Glass polishing is always a favourite practical life activity in our casa classrooms. The direct aim of this work is to show the child how to clean glass objects in their environment and the indirect aim of this activity is the development of concentration through order and sequence and the development of fine muscular control.
Our upper elementary students began a unit of study on sculpture in art this week by making these fantastic paper sculptures! They had a blast and were very proud of their work.
In this zoology lesson, a casa child matches animals with their tracks!
We had an interesting, thought provoking and inspiring day of professional development at the C.C.M.A. National Fall Conference at Centennial College today. It is always wonderful to connect with other Montessorians, spend some time together outside of the classroom, hear from incredibly knowledgeable and experienced keynote speakers and rekindle our love for what we do!
Here we see two students examining items on their classroom nature table.
The purpose of the nature table is for children to observe and explore anything that has been brought from nature into the classroom. The children are encouraged to bring in items of special interest from nature. For example, interesting stones, bird nests, old egg shells, pinecones, feathers, acorns, leaves, anything that takes the child’s interest. Displaying their objects on the nature table makes them feel proud.
The nature table fosters an interest and respect for nature and helps to develop observational skills and vocabulary.
Some of our lower elementary students made sundials and took them outside to see if they could use them to predict the time based on the shadow from the sun.
Kew Park students have been out on several fun and interesting field trips this month. Our first-year casa friends took a big yellow bus to Riverdale Farm! Our second and third-year casa students spent a morning doing printmaking at Harbourfront Centre. And our lower elementary classes enjoyed a day outdoors at Tommy Thompson Park learning about animal habitats and searching for animal clues. A great time was had by all!
Congratulations to several of our elementary students who competed in this week’s cross country meet with the Independent Schools Athletic Association. We had beautiful weather and all of our runners did amazingly well and we had many medal winners! We are always so impressed with their effort and their sportsmanship - the children are so supportive of one another and cheer each other on! Thank you so much to all the parents who accompanied us to the meet who made it safe and enjoyable for all.
Our upper elementary students have various mentoring responsibilities within the school, including greeting and walking the casa children down to their classrooms every morning. Aside from being extremely helpful, this opportunity develops confidence, empathy and leadership skills in our upper students and the casa children are always happy to walk and chat with them. It is such a joy to watch their interactions and listen to their conversations!
Our lower elementary classes are learning about the primary, secondary and tertiary colours in art class!