Hello Cedar families,

Thanks so much for your kind and heartfelt notes and generosity!! We appreciate your trust and support as well. We wish you happy holidays and hope you will have a cozy and joyful time with your families during this winter break.

The following are the focus of this month. We hope you enjoy and feel proud of your child’s growth and learning so far in school.

North America

The orange continent in Montessori is North America. We learned there are many countries in just one continent. People look different and speak different languages. We explored Canada, the United States, and Mexico, looking at their flags, and talking about famous geographic landmarks, animals native to the different regions, and different regional foods. With our five senses, we practiced mindfulness eating to explore the differences between potato chips and tortilla chips. To end the study, we finished off the week by making delicious waffles topped with a bit of maple syrup from Canada.

Holiday activities

-We hope you enjoy the holiday gift the children made by hand.  We made salt dough, kneaded it, carefully rolled it out with a rolling pin, and then cut it with a unique cookie cutter. After a weekend of airdrying the ornaments were ready to be decorated with paint and glitter. The children were so excited to make these gifts for the family.

-On Dec. 6th we celebrated Samichlaus. In German-speaking countries, tradition has it that on the night of Dec. 5 St.Nikolaus, also known as Samichlaus in Switzerland, comes to visit the children who recite poems or sing a song for him. Accompanied by his donkey and Knecht Ruprecht or Krampus/ Schmutzli,  Samichlaus carries with him a large sack from which he brings each of the children a small gift of sweet bread, mandarines or nuts.

Melia and Mom Ellen brought us the story to read to the class along with a large sack of delicious mandarines to eat.  The message of the story is about spreading joy and “that when we make someone else happy, we also make ourselves happy.”

Thank you Melia and Ellen for this lovely gift.

-We talked about the Chanukah story, focusing on the “miracle” that a vessel with enough oil to burn for only one day lasted a whole eight days until more oil was found/made to replenish the lamp. We lit the Menorah and sang the prayer. Additionally, we learned how to play the Dreidle game – along with the meanings of the different inscribed Hebrew letters.

-Hope Alper, a local author, came to ECC and read her children’s book, The Chanukah Bears of Marin Circle. Keep a lookout for the bears at the Marin Circle as you drive by during the holidays.

-Our other holiday craft was drawing the dreidels with oil pastels and watercolors together.  We enjoyed this experiment to create unique mixed-media paintings.

Art with Julianne–Take a line for a walk

Here is the document from Julianne.

Work Time 

Outside Time