Cobham Montessori School

Newsletter W/C 28th September 2026

Dear Parents,

NOTICES

Reading Buddies and Tiltwood Volunteers

You may be aware that Elementary children act as reading buddies for the older Children's House children and the younger friends always look forward to their weekly slot where they proudly read aloud. We recently asked the Elementary children if they too would like to have an older reading buddy. The reaction was mixed but there are several who were enthusiastic! With that in mind, we are seeking volunteers to offer to act as a reading buddy for an Elementary student - it wouldn't be your own child. The idea is that you could pop in at drop off once a week for 10 minutes and your young buddy would read to you from their reading book.

Also, we visit the Tiltwood Care Home once a week with a small group of Elementary children. If any parents would like to accompany the children to Tiltwood on an ad-hoc basis, please do let us know. It is usually a very joyful experience!

For either role, we would need to carry out an enhanced DBS check and seek one character reference. We would also need to provide you with relevant Safeguarding training.

If you would like to get involved, please let us know.

RSE Consultation

For those of you who didn't make it to our RSE Policy consultation, below is a link to the presentation used at the meeting. You might be interested in pages 9-12 which contain a brief summary of what behaviour is 'typical' at different stages of development. As ever, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

RSE Parent Consultation.pdf

THE WEEK IN SCHOOL

In the Children's House

In the Children’s House, we have focused our Grace and Courtesy on placing a hand gently on someone’s shoulder to get their attention. We have been showing the children how we can get someone’s attention without interrupting them when they are busy (in the middle of a presentation, in a group, or concentrating on their work):

If the person we would like to speak to is busy, we can gently place our hand on their shoulder. The person will acknowledge us by touching our hand, letting us know that they have noticed us, and then come to speak to us when they have finished what they are doing. This is a simple way of helping the children develop awareness of others, patience and respect for concentration.

Our Words of the Week have been: indulgent – velvety –impeccable - grudge. We have also had lots of fun practicing a tongue twister: She sells seashells on the seashore.

We have started learning the “Buenos Días” song, which means “Good Morning” in Spanish.

On Tuesday in Yoga, the children enjoyed a story about a scarecrow's role in keeping away crows from crops. Lots of movement came into play with ca-caw-ing beaks, patting the body to make a rainstorm, flapping of wings, and more! One flapping child shared "My arms are making air for me to have fresh air:" The group also discussed what crops are, making the connection that some crops such as barley, contain gluten, an allergen for some people.

We have talked about the Autumn Equinox and how we can begin to notice the changes that are happening around us as the seasons transition. We talked about the weather and observed how the leaves are changing colour. On Thursday, we had an art session inspired by our observations. The children enjoyed printing with leaves, carefully looking at the different shapes and noticing the beautiful patterns of the veins.

On Friday, during Sports, the children continued developing their physical skills through basketball and football. When practicing dribbling a football, several children exclaimed that it was "easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy!" So Coach Phil knows to up the challenge for next time!

Snapshot of the Week

During Walking on the Line, one of our younger friends was jumping rather than walking along the line.

Child 1: “Miss, X is jumping on the line.”

Child 2: “He is just practicing.”

And the season has started...

Child 1: ���He has gone home because he was feeling poorly.”

Child 2: “Miss, let me tell you my poorlies. I have a blocked nose, sneezes and coughs.”

Child 3: “I think he went to hostipal.”

Child 4: “I don’t think he is that poorly.”

The Week in Elementary

We have settled into a good routine in the Elementary Classroom. We have completed our telling (and retelling) of the Five Great Stories and we are also seeing some real progress with the children in terms of their "nuts and bolts" work in the classroom. We are steadily seeing more consistent follow up of the maths and language lessons, with one child even proudly proclaiming "I loved doing division with the Stamp Game, it's getting so fun the more we do it - when can we get the next lesson?"

In other areas of the cosmic curriculum we have been exploring gravity and its effect on liquids and solids - the ever exciting opportunity to do experiments tempered with the all important paperwork! The write up never seems to be the thing anyone wants to do, but we have a clear expectation that if you want to do an experiment you may, but we need to consider: What am I learning? What do I think will happen? Why did it happen that way? In this way we are supporting development of the reasoning mind which the child of the second plane has a new capacity for.

Some children have already started exploring a project area and are starting to get going with some interesting research; over the years we help them to build research skills appropriate to their age. Others have projects ongoing from last year which really need to be finished. This is in spite of having lost some momentum over the summer; it always seems impossible to finish something when your interest is piqued elsewhere!

In read-aloud we have been reading "You're Amazing Anna Hibiscus" by the author Atinuke. Antinuke is the author who is also responsible for the "No. 1 Car Spotter" series, as well as a number of non-fiction books about Africa and Black British History. We have a small selection of her books on the shelf along with a set of biography cards which tell the children more about her life. Some children have found the book quite sad as it deals with her grandfather passing away and how everyone feels about it afterwards. It has been a great opportunity to talk about how big feelings can affect our behaviour.

A reminder for anyone who would be willing to come in and talk about the job they do - you'd be most welcome and if you're finding timing tricky, please let us know as we would love to have you in - don't be scared!

Kind regards,

Yvonne