September 2023
Honeybee
We are welcoming September with arms wide open, Honeybees! 🍯
As we bid adieu to the hotter season and warmer weather, we ease into the beginning of fall. This month in our Nido environment, we’ve been enjoying music, wild birds, and the joy these things bring us!
Music is a great point of connection for Honeybees. With the celebration of Peace Day, we have been loving the “Peace Like a River”/“Paz Como un Río” and “Light a Candle for Peace” songs! Creō gives us a great opportunity to teach and practice peace every day. Try singing these songs with your children and see if they can follow along!
Along with music, we’ve also had the delight of observing the wild birds that have come to visit our school. As a certified garden school, we have the privilege of having space to give life to a bounty of fruit, vegetables, and herbs. With this local vegetation comes the abundance of wildlife! Our numerous bird feeders around campus, including one right outside our window, give us the opportunity to observe the birds. This connection to nature fuels their everlasting curiosity! We’ve spotted white-tailed doves, house finches, crows, hummingbirds, and our most famous and frequent visitor, a roadrunner!
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“A child, who more than anyone else, is a spontaneous observer of nature.”
Dr. Maria Montessori (The Discovery of the Child, pg. 72)
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Upcoming events:
September 26 - Nido Community Meeting @ 5:30 PM
October 6 - Half day, all/all in session
October 9-13 - Fall Break, all/all in session
October 21 - Esperanza Charity Event - Solid Gold Disco @ 6 PM
As always, Honeybee familia, please never hesitate to contact our team at Susan@creoschool.org or Nido@creoschool.org. Thank you for being a part of our wonderful community!
With love,
Ms. Susan, Ms. Maria, & Ms. Roseanna 💌
Butterfly
Hello Butterfly families! This month has flown by. We’ve enjoyed getting to spend more time outside as the weather has cooled!
We want to extend a big THANK YOU to Hallie’s mom for coming in to help us with our auction project. The children enjoyed working to make something very special. Come to this years Charity Event on October 21st to help us raise money for scholarships for our under 5 friends.
This month’s community meeting is all about Food Preparation activities. Even in our Toddler environment, the children are able to help to prepare snack and have baking activities. This month, we’ve been baking bread. Following is the recipe, we encourage you to try in at home by pre-measuring out ingredients and allowing the child to pour, mix, and slice!
Banana bread
Ingredients:
-1/3 cup sugar
-2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons oil
-1 cup flour
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-1/8 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 cup banana
Directions:
Mash well-ripened bananas in a small bowl and set aside.
Mix baking powder, baking soda, flour and sugar.
Add mashed bananas and oil. Stir well. This batter will be very thick.
Spoon ingredients into a greased (or spray with Pam) a 9x5x3" loaf pan or muffin tins.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for approximately 15 to 20 minutes for muffins. (35 minutes for small loaves)
Hummingbird
Happy Fall Hummingbirds
We look forward to the temperature getting lower and having more outdoor time with the children. We started off the month by giving a warm welcome to a new friend and his family into our classroom! Each day this month the children practiced the Peace Day songs in preparation for the celebration in the gym, and it was so wonderful to hear them sing with the whole school.
Also, the children have been practicing new food prep activities including peeling and slicing cucumbers, spreading sun butter on crackers, peeling and slicing eggs, and baking banana bread (which was a class favorite!). Below is the recipe for you to follow at home.
In the class, we prepare all of the dry ingredients in one bowl, then the wet ingredients are separated into their own bowls/containers, and lastly, they mix all of the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. After it is mixed, we help them pour it into baking pans and transfer it into the oven.
To get some more ideas and tips for baking or preparing food with your toddlers we hope to see you at our community meeting, which the topic is “Food Prep”. At the community meeting, we will go over some of the benefits of letting toddlers contribute to the community through food preparation, even if it gets messy sometimes. 😊
Banana bread
Ingredients:
-1/3 cup sugar
-2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons oil
-1 cup flour
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-1/8 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 cup banana
Directions:
Mash well-ripened bananas in a small bowl and set aside.
Mix baking powder, baking soda, flour and sugar.
Add mashed bananas and oil. Stir well. This batter will be very thick.
Spoon ingredients into a greased (or spray with Pam) a 9x5x3" loaf pan or muffin tins.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for approximately 15 to 20 minutes for muffins. (35 minutes for small loaves)
Squirrel
Hello Squirrel Toddler parents!
Autumn is here and the pumpkin talk has started! The children have been interested in talking about what they see outside of school. We are always encouraging and feeding the children's desire to speak. Even if our little friends are babbling, we have a conversation back and forth! This gives them the feeling that what they have to say is also important.
In September we encouraged the children to use their words to express their needs to us and their friends. Our biggest lesson is modeling. We model, model, MODEL!
Common phrases we model for the children:
“Would you like more water?” We wait for a response and then model for them “Yes, please”
“I need help, please” When a child is fussy and whining to get our attention.
When a child says a wrong word, we do not correct them but instead just give the word.
Language is a big developmental milestone for every child, at this young age, they absorb so much! Speaking to them slowly and clearly, giving them time to process supports them immensely in this milestone. Singing and reading books also helps them to obtain more words!
I cannot wait to see you all at our Charity Event on October 21st! Let us get our dancing shoes and boogie to some disco jams. This is for a great cause to help support our children under 5 to experience authentic Montessori education.
