Cobham Montessori School

Newsletter W/C 11th March 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

NOTICES

Performance - The Work of Air

The end of term is rapidly approaching and Elementary are working hard to produce a (very!) short play to celebrate their community. We would like to invite parents, siblings and other carers to attend their performance.

The children will perform their play at11.45am on Thursday 28th Marchso we will welcome The Children's House, any parents, carers and siblings to come along to this celebration of storytelling and our amazing planet. Term finishes at 12.15pm and we hope that many of you can join us before heading off on your Easter adventures.

THIS WEEK IN SCHOOL

Children's House

This week in the Children’s House we welcomed a new member to our community.

Following on from International Women’s Day, a child brought in a book from the ‘Little People, Big Dreams’ series which we enjoyed reading. “It’s about a Swedish girl who wants to save the planet and she’s only 21”. The book was entitled ‘Skolstrejk for Klimatet’ and was indeed about Greta Thunberg.

Many of you will have seen some colourful paintings coming home with your child/ren as we been thoroughly enjoying a new art project this week. This involves finger painting and then dragging a squeegee down the paper. This makes for lovely abstract creative artwork and the children have rightly been proud of their work.

In yoga, the story was about Sid the Dinosaur and his friends who went on a berry picking adventure. Sid lost his roar after he scared his friends, who thought it funny. This made Sid sad and so he rested and decided to prove he could be a good friend and so, when his friends were captured by a T.Rex, Sid recovered his roar and scared the T. Rex away.

We are learning a new song with Miss Jess (singing and piano teacher), ‘Hungry, Hungry’ which talks about a goose moose burger, 15 pickles and a purple plum. Some of the children drew illustrations, at the suggestion of Jess, to accompany the song. The children are really enjoying the nonsense words in this song and have been heard singing it during garden lunch time play so you may well hear them sing it at home too!

In ballet, the younger group continue to work on their skips and gallops whilst theolder group have been doing quite complex moves, all in preparation for our end of year show next term. Glisser (to glide to the side) andpliéwere some of the movements used to create a story about a mole darting in and out of his hole.

In cooking, ahead of St. Patrick’s Day we made (gluten free) Irish Soda Bread. We made our own vegan buttermilk, combining plant based milk and lemon juice. Even though the dough was quite sticky all the children managed to shape at least one bread roll to take home.

Finally, in sports, the children practised handball in the rain! They worked on the skill of bouncing the ball whilst walking; and ended the session by taking turns to shoot and score with one goalkeeper in the goal.

Elementary

This week in Elementary we have continued to be plagued with the lingering sickness bug - it's really nasty and seems to take a long time to fight. With that in mind we've been thinking about how to best support our bodies - lots of water, good nutrition and ample sleep and rest. We must learn to recognise when our bodies are able to perform at their peak, and when to have compassion and take things slower.

In Yoga the children played lots of bonding games, noticing which child had been covered by a blanket, then they were invited to say kind things about that person. It's so heart-warming to hear children talk about what they see as the most valued characteristics in one another. "he's so kind", "she makes up great games in the garden", " he has such a lovely smile". Their affirmation for the week is "I am observant".

We have finally made some progress with the play; we've assigned parts and we have even managed a full read-through! The play is called The Work of Air but it includes creation myths, how the earth came to be and the interactions of sun, earth, water and air together with the coming of life on our planet. All of these "elements" are so interdependent that we can't tell the story without all these characters. The children will have to make their "costumes" and there is talk of a puppet show being included too!

In a topic not related to the curriculum, but affecting the class nevertheless, we have a polite request please. It can be difficult to traverse friendships at the best of times but in a small community such as ours the sting of not being invited to a social gathering can be felt keenly. However, it is a normal part of life that sometimes one is not invited to something and the accompanying feeling is one which we can learn to manage with support and coping strategies. It is not expected, nor always possible or appropriate, that everyone gets invited to everything. With that in mind it can be helpful for us to know if parties are planned which do not involve the whole community, so we can support the group appropriately.

Next week will need scooters for Wednesday and Friday please -- pickup will be from Painshill on Wednesday.

Kind regards,

Yvonne