This week at MES

This week at Montessori, Nicholas got a lesson in shoe polishing and apron folding. He did some water color painting and also learned how to paint "Aa". He learned that two of a kind is a "pair" and also worked on the Montessori knob cylinders. The class talked about Johnny Appleseed. They learned that a whole can be divided into parts and they graphed an apple chart. They made a ven diagram to compare/contrast apples. They measured ingredients and made an apple spice cake. Yum! The Good Shepherd lesson was Adam names the animals.

I'm so excited that Nicholas has the opportunity to be exposed to Spanish at school. Other than our wonderful neighbor who tries to teach me Spanish from time to time, we don't usually hear much Spanish being spoken around us. And although I can speak a little Spanish I probably don't have the pronunciation quite right and I'm certainly not ready to teach it to Nicholas. I hope that Nicholas will eventually learn French and Spanish, both wonderful languages in their own ways. But for now I just want him to hear the sounds and notice the differences in English and other languages. Today Nicholas was singing a little part of a song in Spanish. I was proud of him for picking it up so quickly. I recall learning French songs when I was in Montessori in Louisiana and I specifically remember Ms. Ylello teaching us to roll our R sounds. I have no doubt that this early exposure to French helped me to do so well in furthering my French studies through college. (It's a shame there isn't much need to speak French though!) However, in today's business world it is important to know how to speak other languages - and in Texas it's especially helpful to be able to speak Spanish.

Also this week we attended "Montessori Night" in which parents are invited to learn more about, observe and participate for themselves in the Montessori environment. Stuart was very impressed and learned a lot about Montessori. Even though I attended Montessori Night last year and was already familiar with the program, I was again impressed by the Montessori method of teaching and, in particular, this school and its wonderful teachers.