Montessori Unit

Announcements

We begin Virtual Ancillae on Wednesday, March 18th. The daily email from your child's teacher will provide you with the learning activities for the day. Additional resources and ideas for your child can be found in the unit resource box and on each level page. Please reach out to teachers for any needed support. The goal of this at-home learning is to keep your child connected to school and engaged in learning!

Resources

Calendar

May 13th - Virtual Teacher In-Service

May 21st-May 25th - Ascension Thursday & Memorial Day - holidays

June 2nd- Last day of virtual school

June 3rd-5th- Faculty In-service

Teachers' Favorite Books

Whoever You Are by Mem Fox

The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle

Are You My Mother? P.D. Eastman

Backyard Birdwatch by Stephen W. Kress

The Day The Crayons Came Home by D. Daywalt and O. Jeffers

Egg by Kevin Henkes

The Lion Inside by Rachael Bright

Are We Still Friends? By Ruth Horowitz

Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley

Be You by Peter H. Reynolds

BACK TO Parents PAGE

Virtual Learning in Action

Welcome

This Montessori Page and the pages dedicated to each level, SSM, PS, and K, feature classroom highlights and previews, school reminders and dates, and home connections. Pages are updated regularly, so check back frequently for new information!

Don't miss that classes pages are now directly below on this page. Just find the tab for your level and see what's happening!

Magnify the Message

"Love and more love, because love overcomes everything."

~St. Raphaela Mary

Share a Heart

Montessori Inspiration

"Education should no longer be mostly imparting knowledge but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentials."

~ Maria Montessori

Ice Cream with Mrs. Scher!

Visit the Extended Day page!

Class Pages

SSM

Stepping Stones - May

In the Classroom

Monthly Themes: Ladybugs, Flowers, Summer Safety, Bugs, Butterflies

Season: Spring and Summer

At Home: Look out of your window for flowers blooming!

Color: Review All Colors

At Home: Paint a picture of a garden!

Shape: Review All Shapes

At Home: Make shapes out of Play dough

Letter: A-Z Review

At Home: Trace the letters A-Z in sand

Art Medium: Color dots

At Home: Use color dot markers to make a creation! Variation: Make a dot creation with a Q-tip

Science: Metamorphosis and Life Cycles

At Home: Take a walk and look for chrysalis and butterflies!

Religion: God's gifts of Spring

At Home: Say a prayer for another Ancillae Family in our class.

Songs, Books, Prayers

Songs: "If All the Raindrops"

Books: Goodnight Sweet Butterfly

Felt Board: Flowers

Schedule Info

Tuesday- Music

Wednesday- Spanish

Thursday- Gym

Contact Us

Mrs. Beth Mahan
Ext: 200 VM: 351
bmahan@ancillae.org

Mrs. Nicole Giorgione
Ext: 390
ngiorgione@ancillae.org

Mrs. Barbara Caffey
Ext: 340
bcaffey@ancillae.org

Our Classroom

Music Newletter

Week of May 25th

Week of May 31st

Bob the Builder Day

Happy Birthday!

Preschool

Preschool - May

Monthly Message

Virtual Anciilae begins on Wednesday, March 18th. Below please find learning resources and ideas for Preschool. Some of these will be referenced in the daily activity in your teacher's email and some are additional opportunities for your child you can utilize if/when needed.

Preschool Virtual School Resources

Contact Us

PSB psb@ancillae.org
Clare Brown cbrown@ancillae.org x 339
Karla Russek krussek@ancillae.org x 385

PSR psr@ancillae.org
Megan St. John mstjohn@ancillae.org x 373
Karen Vizza kvizza@ancillae.org x 342

PSW. psw@ancillae.org
Marianne Egner megner@ancillae.org x 341
MaryBeth Scher mscher@ancillae.org x 346

Show And Tell

We appreciate your assistance in making this a fun experience for your child. Make a game out of finding an item that fits into our weekly theme. Please talk with your child ahead of time about what could be shared about this item with his/her classmates.
See the full Show and Tell Calendar

Specials

Specials teachers:
Gym- Aleah Conlin Mon: PSB PSW Fri.: PSR
Art- Lisa Viola Tues.: 1/2 PSB, PSW. Wed. 1/2 PSB, PSR
Music- Matthew Esposito. Tues: PSR Thurs.: PSB, PSW
Spanish- Dena Brown Wed.: PSW Fri. : PSB, PSR

Practical Life

" The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one's self." ~ Maria Montessori

This area of the preschool environment assists in refining the movements of the child through activities such as pouring, sponging spooning, and stringing. The child will practice the “Practical” tasks in life such as our button dressing frame, screwdriver board, polishing a mirror, sweeping, and cutting cucumbers. As the year progresses, the tasks grow in refinement and complexity to increase concentration and a growing sense of order. Materials are sequenced so that each new activity challenges the child to focus and organize to complete the task at hand.

Sensorial Area

“The senses, being explorers of our world, open the way to knowledge.” ~ Maria Montessori

This area of the preschool environment assists in refining our senses through isolation of individual senses. Children will discriminate by size, color, shape, sound, smell, and touch. The children will recognize similarities through matching and differences through grading. Variations and extensions of the materials will deepen the senses to see relationships as the children build patterns and designs.

Math Area

“Children display a universal love of mathematics, which is par excellence the science of precision, order, and intelligence. “ ~ Maria Montessori

This area of the preschool environment develops the “mathematical mind” of the child. Through concrete experiences for quantity, the child learns the meaning of a number and then makes the association with the numeric symbol for that quantity. The tactile experience of the sandpaper numbers allows the child’s sense of touch to support the visual representation of each number. After mastery of the numbers to 10, teens and tens are introduced. Using the base of 10, children are invited into higher quantities and introduced to functions of addition and subtraction. Children are also introduced to the concepts of time, money and graphing.

Culture Area

“Within the child lies the fate of the future.” ~ Maria Montessori

This area of the preschool environment exposes the child to an understanding of our world. Starting with the whole and moving into smaller parts, the children first learns our world is made of air, land, and water. The lands have been given names called continents. Within these continents, we explore the cultures, wildlife, natural treasures, countries, people and celebrations. The children are exposed to the fine artists connecting with their weekly art class. This area develops the sense of our place in our world- to care for it and for each other. We are all part of the world community.

Science Area

"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry." ~ Maria Montessori

This area introduces several disciplines of science: botany – our study of plants, zoology -- our study of animals, physics -- our explorations and discoveries, health – our study of our bodies and senses. It is an area of discovery and wonder as we take a closer look at the world around us.

Language Area

“Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as the enthuse him to his inmost core.” ~Maria Montessori

This area develops the various components of language that lead a child to be able to communicate as well as understand what is being communicated. The readiness skill to recognize differences and similarities, sequence and retell a story, understand position, and classify assist in a growing comprehension in both visual and auditory instruction. In preparation for reading, all materials of the environment organize in a left to right, top to bottom layout to prepare the brain for tracking print. Children use multiple senses as they are introduced concretely to the symbol and sound relationship of letters. As this relationship develops, children will begin to blend the sounds to form words- a phonetic approach to reading readiness. Children also experience extensive vocabulary in all areas of the environment. Many activities involve matching and labeling using the written word – a whole language approach to reading readiness. Children are moved at the pace in which they are prepared to be successful and gain confidence in expressing ideas and approaching the start in their reading journey.

Prayers

To Start our day:

Spirit of Life, we thank you for our new school day.
St. Raphaela Mary, Pray for Us.

Before lunch:

Thank you dear Jesus. This day is for you.
We ask you to bless all we think, say, and do.
Amen.

Kindergarten

Kindergarten - May

Monthly Message

Virtual Anciilae begins on Wednesday, March 18th. Below please find learning resources and ideas for Kindergarten. Some of these will be referenced in the daily activity in your teacher's email and some are additional opportunities for your child you can utilize if/when needed.

Kindergarten Virtual School Resources

Contact Us

KA
Bevin Bodnar bbodnar@ancillae.org ext. 396

KB
Chrissy Ragg cragg@ancillae.org ext. 395

KC
Marianna Farrell mfarrell@ancillae.org ext. 394

Writing Lab
Angela Olbrich aolbrich@ancillae.org ext. 345

KA Highlight

It was great fun to have Billy's mom come in to show us how to make a crystal tree forrest. Please see below how our forrest grew.

KB Highlight

Building, sounding out words, reading logs, weighing, graphing, adding, and counting and more - so much is happening in Kindergarten at this time of year.

KC Highlight

See below for KC activities.

World Travels

Our travels land us to South America for May. Please look in your pickup package for a fun project to wrap upper travels together this year.

God's Quiet Things

Creature Feature

Our creature feature is the canine family.

Prayer

Hail Mary, full of grace

The lord is with you and

Blessed are you among women

And blessed is the fruit of your

Womb JESUS, Holy Mary

Mother of GOD pray for us sinners

Now and at the hour of our death.

Amen

Our 2020 K Religion Bee Winners

Journal Prompts

Story Starters/ I wonder questions

Have your child use one of the prompts below to put an entry in their K journal.

This summer I want to .......
My family likes to ......
One day when I was exploring, I found .....

Specials

Specials teachers:
Gym- Aleah Conlin Mon.: KA KC Fri.: KB
Art- Alexia Perrine Tara Carlos Mon.: KC Wed.:KB Thurs.: KA
Music- Matthew Esposito Wed.: KA KB KC
Library- Karen Sabatino Thurs. KA KC. Fri.: KB
Spanish- Dena Brown Mon.: KB Tues.: KA KC
Religion- Jane Diorio Mon.: KB Tues.: KA KC

On Wednesdays, Kindergarten rotates through afternoon enrichment classes taught by each Kindergarten teacher: Sign/Spanish (Bodnar), Religion (Ragg), and Yoga (Farrell).

Writing Lab

We have begun Unit 3 in Fundations. We will be continuing to work on our phonetic awareness skills. We will be blending sounds in nonsense CVC words, segmenting and spelling three sound short vowel words, and distinguish long and short vowel sounds. We will also continue to work on story elements including character, setting, and main events. We have learned all the red and green sight words and will begin to learn the pink sight words. We are also developing our writing skills. We are working on narrative writing skills and learning that narrative writing is a form of writing that tells a story about people, animals, or things. Writers write about what they see, hear, or do. They use describing words and ask questions to help them tell a story. We are also practicing the rules of writing complete sentences. Including upper case letter at the beginning, space between our words, and a punctuation mark at the end.