November 1, 2013

Hi Turquesa Folks,

This week in Turquesa, the students worked on their Early Humans drafts with serious dedication and focus. The act of transforming a whole pile of information into a carefully constructed report is a huge undertaking. There was a palpable feeling of triumph in the classroom as each person wrestled their research into sentences and then sentences into full paragraphs. On Friday, I met with each child to read through their draft and to give them specific feedback about how to move into the revisions phase of the report. We are now half-way through this first formal writing project and the people in Turquesa are definitely starting to understand themselves as writers.

In Choices lessons this week, we finished our section on Decision-Making. The most fascinating lesson involved the idea of irrational thinking, or “stinking thinking” as Choices called it. We had lengthy discussions about how, in the middle of the decision-making process, we can find ourselves thinking unreliable thoughts. These include thoughts like “I didn’t get invited to that sleepover, so I must be a loser” and “This math is hard for me – I’ll never be able to learn it!” All of the children shared times when they had noticed irrational thinking in their own minds and in others. We are building a very open and trusting community in Turquesa and I was proud of how the children felt comfortable sharing moments of vulnerability with each other. There were many moments of connection and empathy during our discussions as well; I heard many exclamations of “Me too!” and “Oh, that happens to me!” and “Wow, that’s just not true about you!”

As a Montessori classroom, we place the highest value on peace and have a unique historical connection to peace education. After all, Dr. Montessori was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. This year in Turquesa, I have a feeling that our students would make Dr. Montessori proud as well.

As a reminder, we have a Library trip next week on Wednesday morning.

Also, we hope you will be joining us for our Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 16. Our new building is finished! We are incredibly excited and proud. You will find an invitation to Ribbon-Cutting in your child’s Friday folder today. We will be moving the classrooms over the Winter Break and start class in our new digs on January 6, 2014. The children will be helping us pack up our current spaces in the two days leading up to Winter Break, so that they can experience the closure of moving and the reality of the new spaces. If you would like to help us with the packing adventures, you will be welcome to join us in that process. I’ll send more information about the dates and times in December.

That’s the news from Turquesa! I hope you all have a great, relaxing weekend.

Thanks,

Nicole