Kindness has been a focus at circle time over the last month. We have read books about how to be kind, practiced how to speak kindly to one another and discussed what types of actions are kind. To celebrate some of the kind things the children have been doing, we created a kindness jar. We record on pieces of paper some of the kind words and actions we have seen the children demonstrate. At the end of the week, we read the slips of paper that are in the jar which encourag

We recently celebrated our first birthday circle with the group in the Seedlings classroom. At first circle we entered the classroom and let the children know that we were about to do “something special”. In the center of our circle space there was a felt sunshine, a globe and a candle. Once we were all seated, we began to share with the children what a “birthday circle” is. We announced that today was the day two years ago that a very special friend was born on Earth. Th

“Sss…sss…ssss…sun!” a child exclaimed as he proudly placed a toy sun into his dump truck and rolled it back to the work rug. A teacher worked with a small group of children to fetch each object and match them to the corresponding initial letter sound from the movable alphabet. The children were thrilled to roll the truck back and forth, bringing movement and fun to practicing letter sounds. The movable alphabet is an important material in every authentic Montessori classroom.

“BBB…..oh it’s a ‘b’ at the beginning of box!” the child remarks as he looks through the Movable Alphabet box for the letter b. He continues to sound out the word: “O…X- I need an o and an x!” The wooden letters o and x are found and laid on the mat after the b, completing the word. The child continues on with his work, spelling out additional three letter phonetic words. Once the work is complete, the child chooses to record his work on paper so that he may read the words at