Toddler Room 1

April News

In April we are going to create a volcano eruption using baking soda and vinegar. We will discuss Australian animals and landmarks as well as other islands. The children will learn what an island is and where they are on our land and water globe. The children will practice pouring water to create an island. Since we’ve gone through all the letters of the alphabet, April is the time to review! Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is the perfect book to review all our letters. We will also be matching objects to their letter sounds and matching letters. Lastly, we will delve into springtime, one of my favorite seasons. This is the perfect time to begin gardening and taking care of plants. We are going to have the most fun this spring with Easter eggs — painting eggs, scooping eggs, sorting eggs, the spring egg hunt — it’s going to be egg-cellent!

March Recap

In March we learned about the continent of Africa by discussing the animals of the Savannah and the country of Tunisia in North Africa. We got messy when spooning sand and dirt in our African animal sensory bin and we practiced pouring cous cous, a popular food in Tunisia. I borrowed some items from my family, who lived in Tunisia, to show to the class at circle time (like a painted ceramic steamer and some wooden art). We also explored camels and the desert. Our friends made gorgeous lions with orange manes using forks. We know that Africa on the Montessori map is green! Speaking of green, thank you to all who made it to our St. Patrick’s Day celebration. We spent the week sorting colors and painting with all the colors of the rainbow. In math, our friends are getting so good at recognizing the numbers 1-9. During dinosaur week, the children enjoyed exploring the different types of dinosaurs, sorting them by color and pressing them into clay. 

February Recap

In February we celebrated Valentine’s Day with an awesome class party. We enjoyed sensory play with colored rice that some friends helped me dye with food coloring and vinegar. We decorated our classroom with paper hearts, some with watercolor and coffee filters and red paper hearts folded in half to make a symmetrical painting. The children have been very busy making chalk drawings outside and request their teacher to draw them pictures. It’s also a fun time to review our letter of the week and what begins with that letter. This month we learned all about what it means to be a friend. We are working on having gentle hands, keeping our hands to ourselves, and giving our friends hugs and gentle pats when they are sad. Each day we practice waiting our turn and sharing our work when we are done with it. We have had a lot of rainy days this month, but that doesn’t stop us from having fun. The kids loved making clay sculptures and making their own play dough together as a class.

January Recap

In January, we learned about animals who like to live in the cold and snow like penguins, polar bears, and arctic wolves. We focused on the many animals that live in Antarctica like emperor penguins, leopard seals, and whales. We learned that snow is made up of snowflakes and we created snowflakes in various ways for art this month. We mainly painted with cool colors this month - blue, green, and purple - and used a lot of glitter! Our snow sensory bin was so much fun to play with. It was a great way to play with our winter animals and practice spooning and pouring. We could even form the fake snow into snowballs! The children loved it and it's super easy to make - just cornstarch and oil. We kept it in the fridge so it would stay cold. The children were very careful when sifting flour to make it "snow" on the winter animals. We're not afraid to get messy here! 



Our Lunar New Year celebration was so much fun. We passed around red envelopes, pretended to be snakes, and painted glittering fireworks. During circle time, the children really look forward to giving me a high five or a fist bump to say good morning! As for our shelf work, the children are doing so well learning to wait their turn and like to share work like the peg board, the farm animals, and the red knobless cylinders. 

December Recap

In December we got an exciting visit from Santa Claus who gave us some lovely books for Christmas. We got into the holiday spirit by creating lots of lovely holiday art work and working on our baking skills like pouring ingredients and mixing. It was so fun dying pasta red and green, which are also the colors on the Italian flag! We looked at landmarks of Italy and France and learned about the music and food from these European countries. On the Montessori map, Europe is always red. Each child painted Europe red and added them to their individual world maps. As for our garden, the tomato and pumpkin plants are still going strong! Most of the pumpkin plants have gone from little sprouts to long vines. Thank you to our families for participating in Spirit Week and our Holiday Show. We enjoyed these special moments with you all.

November Recap

In November, we watched our pumpkin seeds sprout into little green leafy plants. Our tomatoes are getting bigger each day and the children have enjoyed watering the new plants in the garden bed and looking for pink flowers. Our toddlers sure do have a green thumb. The most popular work this month was the bead stairs. We have been discussing the United States by talking about the parts of the American flag. We are practicing locating the USA on a map. The children named places and things in the USA in our All About the USA booklet. I have been so impressed with the way the children line up to wash their hands and get ready for lunchtime. I appreciate how the children like to help me with circle time by bringing me the numbers and letters of the day. We have been discussing ways to be good friends after we read the Fill a Bucket book this month. We have been practicing filling our silver bucket with hearts as we sing the Fill a Bucket song. They always bring their listening ears!

October Recap

In October we discussed the things that make up our solar system, like the planets, sun, and moon. The children enjoyed holding the planets from our solar system model in their hands and feeling the different sizes. We practiced rolling play dough into balls to try and mimic the different sizes of spheres in the solar system. The children had a great time practicing different ways of spooning. They were very focused as they scooped a single raisin from one bowl to the next and enjoyed getting messy as they spooned applesauce and crushed graham crackers into their cups to create a layered snack. The tongs and tweezers were a nice challenge for the children developing hand muscles. They looked on in wonder as they watched themselves making the tools open and close over and over. The temperature tablets, which are made of cork, wood, stone, and metal, have become a class favorite and allow the children to feel the difference between cool and warm by touching them to their cheeks. We also used our sense of touch to feel the textures and weight of gourds and pumpkins. The children loved smelling fall scents, especially ground cinnamon. We began our world map projects by painting the blue ocean and gluing on an orange North America. Each month we will be building onto the map by adding the continent that we are studying. The children have been captivated by the colorful pictures of people and landmarks in our North America booklets. My favorite activity had to be exploring the guts of a pumpkin and decorating a large pumpkin as a class.

September Recap

In September, we focused on learning the classroom rules, like cleaning up when we finish meals, waiting our turn to use work, using work rugs and tables, sitting down to eat, and lining up. The children have been doing a great job with learning the class routine. Materials like the baby doll, the large tin bank, the dollhouse with mommy and daddy figurines, or the drum and drumsticks have become comfort items for our students. We had a lot of fun making sensory bottles together. The children love to explore them, and the bottles help them learn to wait in line when they wash their hands or go outside. Going to school is a new experience for many of our students and we were so pleased to see the children get comfortable here and form a stronger connection with us each day they come to school. 



We introduced the continents by first exploring the land and water globe. The children loved matching the continent puzzle pieces to the color-coded globe. We practiced using different sized spoons to transfer objects such as a pom-pom, an apple, and a bowl of cheerios. Some of my favorite moments were watching as the children freely painted their art projects, such as the big yellow school bus, the Friendship Apple Tree, and our colorful All About Me book covers. For science, we discussed the parts of an apple as we dissected it on the playground, and we discovered how to use a paper cup telephone to talk to our friends! We have enjoyed bonding during circle time by playing instruments like the rhythm sticks and moving our bodies by jumping, marching, rolling, and stomping to songs like our favorite, Walking in the Jungle.