Montessori observed that children want big, meaningful tasks that help them engage in their culture and community. Carrying large buckets certainly is big work! And being trusted with the tools and appliances is very engaging for young children.

Activities like collecting sap to boil help bring meaningful work to the outside environment, and connect the children to the natural world and the changes of the seasons. Food is a wonderful way to engage young children and support concentration because of the sensory experiences involved in food preparation. The Bluebird class expressed excitement as they felt the heaviness of the sap, smelled the boiling sap, smelled the cooking pancakes, felt the warmth of the food, and finally tasted their treat. Additionally, through their efforts, the children felt immense pride when they accomplished their goal!

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The Marine Masters, the Namaste elementary robotics team, secured two trophies at the First Lego League competition, on Saturday, January 25th. The robotics championship arrived after months of hard work building and customizing their robot, coding for missions, and preparing a research presentation on deep sea diving. The first award the team received was for the most overall points scored by their robot over their three trials. The final award was for the overall championship, awarded to the team that performed best overall. They not only scored well in the robotic competition, but also presented their research project skillfully, and demonstrated the core values of the league: discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork, and fun.

The team researched suits for deep sea diving with the hopes of supporting human efforts to understand and care for the earth’s oceans. The robot tasks included pulling, pushing, turning, striking, and gathering of objects on the table of challenges. The team members built custom attachments for their robot and coded the robot to move carefully through obstacles. Small groups of two students controlled the robot for each timed run of the competition. This early introduction to robotics and coding supports the students in their future building and engineering goals!

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The primary environment is connected to a fenced courtyard that includes tables, gardens, and work benches for using tools. The outside activities often include things like painting and washing cloths. Garden work includes activities such as weeding, watering, and cutting flowers and herbs for the classroom. There are tools, such as hammers, saws, and hand drills, that offer the children fine motor practice. Children can also choose to bring their work or snack outside to a table. The children enjoy hearing the birds and feeling the warm sunshine and cool breezes!

The indoor/outdoor classroom is somewhat weather dependent, but the children go outside year-round! When the weather turns cold, the children continue to go outside to explore the playground, and bring in things from the natural world to explore. The take hikes around the property and help collect sap for maple syrup. However activities like using tools or easel painting have to move inside or await space in the spring.

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Exploring the natural world is an important part of the Montessori curriculum. The children enjoy observing the amazing changes in the world around them. Often these projects just arrive when a child finds a caterpillar in their garden! Or a child asks to bring in a tank of tadpoles. The children often find praying mantises and walking sticks in our outdoor courtyard. There is so much to discover in our world! Bringing some of these amazing seasonal experiences inside supports their sense of wonder and their love of the environment around them. Raising butterflies also offers opportunities to develop patience, gentleness, responsibility, and the ability to let go. The children feel the simultaneous joy and sadness of letting the butterflies out into the world where anything can happen.

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Each Spring, our 5th and 6th year elementary students plan a field trip to a nearby city. This year the students chose Philadelphia and planned for a very busy three days of activities. The activities included a visit to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum for a private tour and art lesson. The students visited the Philadelphia Mint to learn more about the minting of coins. Additionally, they chose to visit ‘The Art of the Brick’ exhibit at the Franklin Institute after their work with First Lego League Robotics. They ended their excursions with a visit to the Adventure Aquarium to further their research of ocean biomes for this year’s robotics competition.

The Importance of Going Out

Dr. Maria Montessori believed that learning is not limited to the classroom. The students need to explore the wider world to better understand and connect what they are learning with life. Each year the students help plan a city trip as part of their practice of “going out”. Through these excursions, the children apply practical math and language skills and deepen their understanding of topics they are studying. They also build confidence in speaking to adults, moving through public places, and managing time and money. They practice essential skills, like working with a group, compromising, and taking responsibility for themselves by planning and packing.

This is truly a student led and planned trip. The school provides the students with a budget and, with some adult guidance, plan for housing, meals, transportation, and sightseeing. This year, the students found a rental downtown and could shop and prepare meals in the apartment. This allowed them to accommodate dietary preferences and use budgeted money saved from not eating out for additional sightseeing activities.

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Our elementary students learned about the growing of wheat and milling of flour, the creation of sourdough starters, and the kneading, shaping, and baking of bread this spring! With guidance and support from staff from Wide Awake Bakery and Farmer Ground Flour, the children enjoyed in-class visits and field trips to gain hand-on experiences with the processes of farming grain and making bread. The children worked in groups to maintain their own sourdough starters and experienced the tangy shifts in flavors and then made their own loafs of bread to bring home to their families!

Hands on, sensory experiences are essential to Montessori education. Children learn and retain more when their learning involves meaningful projects, movement, and multiple senses. Many thanks to our parents for their motivation to create and support this project with the class!

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Poultry sciences are part of our annual curriculum at Namaste. Our chickens laid fertile eggs, thanks to our not-so-friendly rooster, and the elementary children were able to incubate and raise three chicks this spring! The children were able to observe at every step of the process. They candled the eggs to see the embryos form, and watched them hatch and grow. The life cycle is more fascinating and memorable when you get to watch and experience it!

Montessori observed that engaging the children in real, meaningful tasks led to more inspiration to learn. While it may seem obvious, this is an often overlooked aspect of education. Our elementary students have regular, hands-on projects that engage their senses and create solid memories. These projects lead to greater interest in related curriculum areas. In this case, the students were tracking data, managing temperature, maintaining safe conditions, researching types of chickens and their needs, and budgeting costs for care.

The Namaste Friends 4H club supports poultry sciences as part of the school curriculum. The children learn how to care for animals and if interested, can even show animals at the 4H youth fair. Namaste partners with Cornell Cooperative Extension and 4H to provide several other integrated 4H projects including robotics, coding, natural fibers, and Namastea.

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We are grateful for all the people that participated in our “We Love Books!” Barefoot Books, Book sale last month! With the credit we earned, we were able to purchase some beautiful books for our classrooms. To fit with the Montessori theme of Grace and Courtesy and building community, we selected some sweet short stories. These books included short chapter books with themes of friendship, loyalty, perseverance, and grit. The stories are wonderful to read aloud for all ages, and are a manageable length for early readers to enjoy.

Our new weather and song books are perfect for toddler and primary classrooms. And they are hardcovers versions, which will help them last in little hands. Our library keeps growing and improving thanks to all the community support for our annual book sale – Thank you!

Barefoot Books was chosen this year because of their commitment to high quality children’s books. They are a women-founded, independent publisher with a mission that is very much in line with Montessori! They are often featured at Montessori workshops and conferences. If families know of other publishing companies they would like to feature, they can contact the school! We are happy to work out book sale plans with small, independent publishing companies.

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The Namaste Elementary First Lego League Robotics Team, The Tech Animals, won first place in a FLL qualifying tournament. They competed in with 22 other teams from the area. The event took place in Auburn, NY on Saturday January 20, 2024. Tech Animals will move on to compete in the Fingerlakes Regional Tournament in Buffalo on February 10, 2024.

From the FLL Website: FIRST® LEGO® League Challenge Level introduces science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to children ages 9-16 through fun, exciting hands-on learning. Participants gain real-world problem solving experience through a guided, global robotics program. This program helps today’s students and teachers build a better future together. The challenge inspires youth to experiment and grow their critical thinking, coding, and design skills. The learn through hands-on STEM learning and robotics.
For the tournament, the team was evaluated in four areas of performance. The performance areas were: Innovation Project, Robot Design, Mission Coding and Execution, and Core Values. As a first place winner the Tech Animals demonstrated excellence in all four of these areas.

Theme and Research Related to Robotics

This Season’s FLL Theme was “Masterpiece”. Participants learned about how technology is used in the arts. The Innovation Project Challenge was to take a hobby or passion your team cares about and share it with others using technology. The Tech Animals shared their passion for helping animals in need. They researched how kids their age can make an impact for neglected animals.  They brainstormed a wide range of ways to help. Some options included organizing supply drives for local animal shelters and park clean up days. They created a plan to make short engaging videos they could share through social media to inspire others to join. Their project required learning how to use an equipment. The students used HD video camera, sound recording devices, lighting for video production, and using video editing software.

They designed and coded an autonomous robot using the Lego Spike Prime Brick and App to complete missions on the competition field. The team had 2 and a half minutes to complete as many missions as possible. They scored points for the successful completion of each mission. In an interview session with judges they explained their robot design process, coding scripts, and overall strategy.

Throughout the entire season the team embodied the Core Values of the FLL: Discovery, Innovation, Inclusion, Teamwork, Impact, and Fun.

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Who needs candy when you have a book that keeps giving love and sweetness throughout the year! You can purchase books for your family, for friends, or even for your child’s classroom, and each purchase will give Namaste 20% in credit toward more books!

“We Love Books” Online Book Fair
Event Start Date: 01-24-2024@12:00 pm EST
Event End Date: 02-14-2024@11:00 pm EST

Follow this link to shop:
https://www.barefootbooks.com/event/?id=23974&redirect=bookfairordering

Thank you for your support of Namaste and your children’s love of books.

Barefoot Books was chosen this year because of their commitment to high quality children’s books. They are a women-founded, independent publisher with a mission that is very much in line with Montessori! They are often featured at Montessori workshops and conferences. If families know of other publishing companies they would like to feature, they can contact the school! We are happy to work out book sale plans with small, independent publishing companies. Namaste plans to run an online book sale each year to help refresh our library but also provide resources for families for high quality children’s books!

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