SWIMS February Newsletter
School Bulletin Board
Congratulations to the Pratt/Buchanan family on the birth of Clementine! We send warm snuggly wishes to Mandy, Jemmyn and their new little girl.
Congratulations also to Kassidy Waddell on completing her master’s degree in Montessori from St. Catherine University. Ask her about her thesis on using Chat GPT in the classroom!
January flew by punctuated by good long work periods and celebrations. We delight in the lengthening days and planning the next round of work, play and celebrations in balanced measure.
In February we look forward to Valentine’s Day celebrations of love in every class. You will notice the decor and mailboxes starting to appear as students decorate their classrooms for the coming parties. They will be working on expressions of love for family and friends, preparing foods and decor for their parties, practicing dance etiquette and some will even make corsages for the fancy dress parties. Along the way we will be reviewing presidents and possibly baking cherry tarts in the name of honesty and freedom. You will also see signs of the Asian Celebration that will come right after Presidents Week Break – aka Ski Week!
Summer School classes are full for this year. Thank you for your prompt enrollment. We look forward to those warm summer days to come.
February
7th…Explore Your Child’s Potential 3:00 – 4:00pm for families of 3rd year early childhood students, Wasatch Elementary students and Evergreen Middle School students. These students are now practicing lessons with their mentors to show to their families on this day.
14th…Party Day!
El Nido Infant Class – See class sign-up for special snacks. No sugar or nuts, please. Valentines are not necessary.
Bumblebees, Chickadees, Sunflowers and Tadpoles Toddler Classes – See class sign-ups for needed supplies. Valentines are optional – add who they are from, but not who they are to, please, so toddlers can drop one in each mailbox without having to match the names. No sugar or nuts.
Bluebirds, Ladybugs and Turquoise EC Class – parties are held during regular class time. See class sign-ups for needed supplies. We recommend sitting down with the family and lots of paper, scissors, glue, stickers, ribbons, etc. to make valentines for classmates. Only children who read and write independently should address them and can deliver valentines to appropriate mailboxes. Students not yet reading can add who the valentine is from, but not who it is to. No sugar or nuts, please. See below for names for valentines.
Wasatch Elementary, Evergreen Middle School & Bridgemont High School Classes will join Montessori Community School for a Valentines Dance. See class sign-ups for needed supplies. No sugar or nuts, please. See below for names for valentines.
16th…Half Day Before Presidents Week Holiday
11:30 – 11:45 dismissal: Bumblebees & Sunflowers Toddler Classes and Ladybugs and Turquoise Early Childhood Class
11:45 – noon dismissal: El Nido Infant Class, Chickadees & Tadpoles Toddler Classes, Bluebirds Early Childhood Class, Wasatch Elementary, Evergreen Middle School and Bridgemont High School Classes
18th…Happy Birthday, Hollis!
19th – 23rd…No School – Presidents’ Week Break
March
1st & 8th…No School – Parent/Teacher Conferences
Sign-ups to follow.
5th…Happy Birthday, Kassidy!
Lower School
Infant & Toddler Impressions – News from the El Nido Infant Class, Bumblebees, Chickadees, Sunflowers & Tadpoles Toddler Classes
We have enjoyed the long quiet work periods of January. Every student has made significant progress in completing work cycles, physical development, social and emotional development and broadening our awareness of the world beyond our classrooms with our Carnaval Celebration. We’ve studied fishes, made rainbow people to honor Martin Luther King, Jr and toured the Maria Montessori Museum on the 117th anniversary of the first Montessori school.
With the in-class practice of large and fine motor skills, memorization of sequences, concentration and independence, these young children are adding more steps to their processes. Anyone who is walking steadily is setting their place for snacks and lunch, clearing their places, working on food preparation skills, and the steps of cleaning up. Infants and toddlers particularly love Practical Life skills that are aimed at learning these skills. Try giving your mobile infant some simple food prep such as tearing lettuce for the family salad.
February brings studies of amphibians, Asia and celebrating our love for each other on Valentine’s Day. See the class sign-ups for party supplies. No nuts or sugar, please. Valentines are not necessary for infants and optional for toddlers. They can include who they are from, but not who they are to so toddlers can easily deliver one valentine to each mailbox.
Excellence from Early Childhood – Every Day in the Bluebirds, Ladybugs and Turquoise Classes
Baby, it’s been cold outside this winter and indoor recess was a necessary novelty! Only in a Montessori school can 60 children between 3 and 6 years old sit quietly in the hall playing cooperatively for an extended period of time!
Early childhood classes have been enjoying the long winter work periods where their concentration, fine motor coordination, organizational skills and independence accelerate as they master academic and social concepts.
In February we will study amphibians, moving from a “key experience” with a real amphibian to morphology of the amphibian, species and adaptations of amphibians. Later this spring we will have a visit with Kim’s Cold-blooded Creatures to get up close and personal with a variety of amphibians, reptiles and invertebrates.
We will also study Music, Time, Asia, Poetry and celebrate love at our last Party Day of the school year on February 14th. February concludes with our Asian Celebration on February 28th for which we invite your child to dress in their Asian best!
Maribel has been helping students develop Spanish vocabulary as she visits each class with a basket of objects to name in Spanish. Students know Maribel as a favorite teaching assistant and her Spanish lessons are a hit!
Check class sign-ups for Valentine Party supplies. Valentines should be signed, but not labelled who they are to unless your child is able to read and write well enough to successfully deliver the messages to a specific mail box.
Bluebirds: Asi, Claire, Cooper, Emilia, Gaia, Jordan, Kate, Lily, Logan, Louise, Lucy, Luna, Matilda, Meru, Orion, Paxton, Remy, Rickie, Thea, Victoria, Laura & Grace
Ladybugs: Aksel, Asher, Brooks, Charlie, Elliott, Finn, Julian, Kellen, Lola, Mallory, Mason, McKayla, Nora, Olive, Oliver, Saoirse, Sienna, Sydney, Violet, Kassidy & Arielle
Turquoise: Alan, Alec, Ani, Ava, Ciera, Declan, Dylan, Elliott, Grace,Kennedy, Lawson, Levi, Noah, Oliver, Oisin, Quinn, Ramsey, Will, Winter, Annie & Hollis
Upper School
Elements of Elementary and Middle School – News from the Wasatch Elementary and Evergreen Middle School Classes
Elementary and middle school classes took the lead in the March on Washington in January in celebration of Martine Luther King, Jr Day. They created a Washington Monument and presented excerpts from the I Have a Dream Speech where the entire student body gathered to declare their dreams.
Later in January these oldest students led the student body in a Carnaval parade with the float they had created and choreographed dance steps.
Students have spent the long winter work periods practicing their academic skills, collaborating on projects and keeping their Wild Pines Designs candle and soap business stocked. One student may be refining a sketch, while another is using power tools to dissect a computer, another is practicing algebra and another is reading Shakespeare. You never know what you will witness when you enter the Wasatch or Evergreen Classes. Through January they practiced for their class spelling bees. From here they will try their spelling skills at the Park City Spelling Bee. Good luck, Wasatch and Evergreen!
These classes will celebrate Valentines Day during the afternoon on February 14th with their friends at Montessori Community School in Salt Lake City. See class sign-ups for needed supplies.
For your Valentine making pleasure-
Wasatch: Amelia, Beatrice, Benny, Brooklyn, Dylan, Jacey, Morgan, Noah, Rafael, Sloane, Agnes & Emily
Evergreen: Chloe, Darya, Emma, Gabriel, Juliet, Lada, Manuel, Winter, Eden & Emily
Highlights from High School – News from the Bridgemont High School Class
We are pretty proud of our first high school student. The Montessori girl who had never taken a test before has made straight A’s in the very rigorous classes she takes with Bridgemont International School. She is an athlete and needed a flexible school schedule and didn’t want to leave Soaring Wings. She was planning to go to one of the local online schools where there is nothing but tables and chairs and you bring your own computer. We realized we could offer online high school but make it a much richer experience.
She has her own office in the Upper School where she takes classes with her 30 online classmates from around the world taught by incredibly talented Montessori teachers. After about 2 – 3 hours online she spends the rest of the day completing homework, hanging out with her IRL friends, and participating in school projects and field trips. She can ask any of our faculty or use our hands-on materials if she needs help with her work. She and Bridgemont Facilitator Emily Squadroni will travel to Washington DC to meet her online classmates in person and see the sights this spring.
While conventional schools are struggling with an outdated design, government mandates and a paucity of qualified faculty, this student is cruising along as happily as she always has, learning and excelling at her own pace. And she loves it.
We will add several more students for the 2024-2025 school year. Plans are in place to begin the next addition to the facility to accommodate this expansion of Upper School.
If you have questions about this new program, give Bruce King a call at 435-649-3626.
Gratitude
We’ve done some good work this year. We rallied funds for a dear Montessori school in Turkey after the earthquake. We supported Peace House with carloads of donations to help homeless families through the holidays. We supported our Navajo Grandma Frances with contributions to help her stay warm and healthy through the winter. And we collected donations for teachers in Lahaina to help them rebuild after the fire. All of them expressed gratitude and surprise that strangers would be so generous. It took awhile, but this card came to us from Hawaii. You can tell they are teachers by the beautiful handwriting!
Next we will begin collecting learning toys, coloring books, crayons and picture books for the infants and toddlers in Peru who sit patiently for hours on end while their mothers work with Claudia Bouvier (Oliver and Sebastien’s mom) to bring health care to their villages high in the Andes. Any outgrown toys, books or toddler-appropriate art materials can be dropped off at school. Thank you for being a force of good!