Vol. 5, Issue 4: December 2018

Message from Matt Simberg, M.Ed.

Dear Parents, I have been doing a lot of reflecting lately on various components of our school's framework and one of the most important is our organizational structure. There are models of organizations that have been around for decades. I was introduced to many books on the subject during my three year AMI Whole School Leadership course, but the resource that supports what I am most drawn to is called “Reinventing Organizations.” You can learn more about it here: http://www.reinventingorganizations.com/ In the beginning of December, I graduated from a three year Whole School Leadership Certification Program that is connected with Loyola University in Maryland and led by a very well respected facilitator from the Montessori Community. I studied one particular model, called the Teal Model, in depth and found that it is a great foundation for my vision for the future of organizational leadership and created a new model that resonates the most with the Montessori philosophy. To conclude my certification program I wrote an almost fifty page practicum that is based on creating an integrated model incorporating various theories which foster open-mindedness, encourage individual and team creativity and are adaptable in this fast paced culture. A Montessori School is a very fascinating organism made up of complex individuals. You and your children are a part of an organization that is in an ongoing process of creating and adapting an integrative and inclusive organizational model, which facilitates an effective synergy between members of our community. I hope to share this model in greater detail with other Montessori School Administrators through MSOE and with the support of the Whole School Leadership organization to help them create more internal and community-wide harmony. I want to become a catalyst for effective organizational leadership and continue the mission of providing a mindful, collaborative and authentic Montessori experience for families.

Parent and Other Associations

Dear Parents, Some of you know that I have been waiting for the right time to eventually start a Parent Association. Ultimately, I feel like it is time to begin the process of starting a Parent Association for the 2019-2020 school year! There are things that I have begun working on, but need to finish. The short list is criteria, By-Laws, and purpose. I know there are a few members of our community who have been a part of a Parent Association before. At this time, I am not asking anyone to commit to being on it. I just want to see what the interest level is from you by asking you to fill out a survey. Click here for the survey. In the interim, I am also thinking about and working out the structure for it. Fundraising I know that Parent Associations do fundraising for the sake of the school/classrooms. However, I think we would greatly benefit from an ongoing fundraising committee, a small group of parents who would be willing to dedicate their talents to fundraising for the school outside of our community. This group could be a subcommittee of the Parent Association and the Chair of the P.A. could communicate to me anything of necessity. Please let me know your interest by clicking on the link and filling out the form. Marketing We have done very little marketing thus far. Minimal amounts have been spent on promoting in Facebook. I am happy to say many of our families are from word of mouth! It is understandable that marketing, at some point, becomes paramount. Are there parents or family members of parents who would be interested in “marketing.” I am thinking collaborating with myself and Patty for marketing materials and being willing to visit/go to various places spreading the word of our impending move and just about our school and what we offer etc. Please let me know your interest by clicking on this link and filling out the form.

Board Members 2019

Dear Parents, MSOE is in search of adding board members. As we are getting underway to make the move to Moorestown and there is a projection for significant growth over the next two years, I would like to expand the depth and number of our board members. We are looking for a CPA, Entrepreneur, Lawyer, community leader, and anyone else you think might help to make a positive contribution to our community. The criteria for being on the board is that no one on the board can be related or married. They need to be outside of our parent community. There has to be an availability to commit to meeting a minimum of four times a year. One of those four meetings is allowed to be missed. Consecutive meetings cannot be missed and as long as they are not consecutive meetings missed, one of those meetings can be via phone call. Candidates should be committed to the mission and betterment of the School. A willingness to go above and beyond is a plus. There may be requests to contact individuals for potential events. A candidate should be willing to put in up to four hours a month to help with a given activity or proposal. Also, there should be a willingness to review emails or receive minimal phone calls from me should something come up that needs board approval or if I need advice from board members for a given situation that is not a decision for me to make on my own. The commitment is for 2-3 years depending on the amount of board members we have and availability. I am very much looking forward to see who you might know that can be a part of the board. Click here to make a recommendation.

Toddler

Dear Parents, I hope that everyone had a wonderful Holiday season spent with family and friends and I wish a Happy New Year to all! Here at school we started the Holiday season by celebrating Hanukkah! Janine Perez, Idan and Emilio’s mother, was kind enough to continue her tradition of coming to our school and making latkes for the entire MSOE student body and staff! The latkes were delicious! Thank you to Janine, Idan and Emilio for teaching us how to make yummy latkes and especially for providing them for our food tasting activity! We painted our hands to make a snowman handprint onto pot holders for a special gift for our families! We experimented with marble painting to make Dreidels, Christmas Trees and Presents! The colors of the month were silver and gold, so we used silver and gold paint at the easel, made beautiful silver and gold glitter play-dough angels and snow balls and sorted silver and gold bells.   We learned all about Hanukkah and Christmas Traditions. We counted Gingerbread Men and Christmas Wreaths in the Math Area and sorted Christmas Lights in the Sensorial Area. Happy Birthday to Eleanor and Emilio who share a birthday, Eleanor turned two years old on December 21, 2018 and Emilio turned three years old on December 21, 2018. Thank you all for attending our Winter Concert, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! I am so very proud of the toddlers; they worked so hard practicing singing the songs and all did fantastic! Please help me welcome two new students to our class. Theo and Ryan will be joining our Toddler Class when we return from Winter Break in January. Theo’s sister Stella is in our Primary Class, as is Ryan’s brother Ethan. I am looking forward to seeing you all and chatting with you at our Parent/Teacher Conferences on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday January 23-25, 2019. As always, please contact me should you have any questions or concerns about anything!

Primary The Primary Newsletter will be sent next week.

Elementary

Dear Parents, Can you believe it? We are almost halfway through the school year! Observing the growth and the experiences with your children thus far has been. Again, this past month has been filled with a variety of activity. The children learned about Hanukkah from two different parents. They made book marks for you with a needle and string as well as coasters seeing a reaction with liquids that they have not experienced before. Their language and math skills were enhanced this month. All of them learned more about ancient history. There were lessons about the animal kingdom, including animals of their own environment. They learned more about the relationship between the sun and the earth. Older children began learning more about natural experiences like geysers, volcanoes and hot springs. Some children learned a little about physics with simple machines. I worked with some children on their communication when feeling frustrated or experiencing a conflict with a classmate. We continue to practice our eye contact and handshakes. It is so cute to see how excited the children get to shake my hand and show off how well they do it. Children continue to learn about being more independent, when interrupting is okay and that interrupting can happen when someone is working on something and not just talking to another person. Believe it or not, some children in this 6 year span think they know it all. So, I have had conversations with children about understanding how they could feel that way, but that there is still so much for them to learn about any given topic. We continue to work on inspiring them, while also teaching them that there are just times we have to do things we do not particularly like and to find the joy in doing it anyway. One consistent thing I have to share is the constant surprise communicated by so many students at how quickly the day seems to go by. This is practically everyday by some of the same children and a variety of them. I feel the same way. What this tells me is that we are regularly in a state of flow throughout the day, which is of course the goal. On a different note, I am always looking to improve and meet the needs of not just your children, but you too. After having conversations with other schools, and a few parents at our school, I really go above and beyond when it comes to Transparent Classroom. It is no easy workload to be on top of virtually everyday regarding tagging and sharing. What are your thoughts on the amount that you are receiving and the quality of the content? Are you thoroughly reviewing pictures and clicking on links for lessons tagged? Is it too much? Is there anything missing that you would like to see more of regarding comments? I do appreciate feedback I have received from parents and really enjoy the little notes back from parents based on what they are seeing and reading. It is just important to me to be as thorough as possible and continue to find ways to bridge the gap between home and school. Maybe there are things from a Montessori school perspective you would like to know more about. Please let me know! Also, I am curious, what are you appreciating so far about what you have experienced from your children since September? Let’s make our 2019 experience even BETTER!

Adolescent The month of December was full of so many great experiences for the adolescents as they continue on their journey towards social organization and practicing balance, which is the theme in our class for this school year. It is so pleasant to see that the students have gained a real sense of camaraderie despite each of them being so unique. They often spend time together outside of school, whether it’s at a party, a sleepover or a trip to the movies. They enjoy participating in the weekly end of day pickup of bread at Panera, which goes either to the homeless or to support the farm. The students helped prepare for and welcomed two horses to the farm this month. Interacting with horses provides many emotional benefits including building confidence, a sense of self-efficacy, assertive communication skills, and developing awareness of emotional communication as horses are very sensitive to emotional and verbal cues. These are skills that adolescents will be learning how to master. The students love to groom the horses, teach them new tricks and learn how to care for them as well as proper safety protocols when working with horses. Back at school, the students are really looking forward to the MMUN conference and have been diligently working on their position papers. Some of the students also asked to be on the speaker's list to give a speech at the Model UN conference in May. They still need to do a lot of fundraising for the conference. Please help the adolescents raise money for their Model UN trip by clicking here for our GoFundMe page. This year, our students were interested in participating in Hanukkah celebrations so we had a Menorah in class and one student volunteered to read the blessing everyday while her classmates lit the candles. They also enjoyed eating latke, which were made with love by one of our parents. Another parent volunteered to come in and give a Hanukkah presentation. The students enjoyed playing dreidel, which turned into a great math lesson in probability. In math, the adolescent students have been exploring a variety of real-world proportional and linear relationships. When given a challenge, such as how to determine the height of the school’s flagpole or the Knowwhere Farm’s barn, they considered a variety of methods and subsequently developed the corresponding algebra and geometry theories to apply to the challenge. Other practical explorations included using unit rates and proportions to determine which retail purchases were a “better buy,” which ingredient ratios to use to scale recipes or match paint colors, and what time/speed/distance estimations to consider in planning a trip.  The students continue to follow a self-paced curriculum that has been aligned to and surpasses NJ state standards. They are encouraged to adopt a problem-solving approach, work together when practical, evaluate whether their conclusions and solutions make sense in a real-world context, and to develop their ability to communicate both process and results. The adolescents also enjoy putting their marketing goggles on and learning to see things from a marketing perspective, understanding the true motivation or intention of a thing. They enjoy thinking critically and analyzing different marketing campaigns. In December, they came across a geofencing campaign by Burger King, which encouraged customers to visit a McDonald’s in order to unlock a coupon for a one cent Whopper from Burger King. They talked about whether this was a good idea, who the target market was and how effective of a campaign it was. Then they carried out the experiment. The nearby Burger King happened to have a McDonald’s across the street. The students did not care to eat the Whopper, but it was a fun experiment and a good learning experience. The adolescents have really enjoyed engaging in hands on chemistry experiments such as the carbon snake and foam eruption as well as visiting our virtual reality chemistry lab. They explored measuring specific gravity using a hydrometer and discovered different textures through the digital microscope. One student did a great and thorough presentation on light and sound waves, so the students are sensitive to both visible and invisible waves all around us. The students love when what they are learning is applicable to life. The specific gravity of a floatation solution is important for accuracy when testing samples under a microscope, such as the samples collected from the farm to make sure the goats are healthy. They also were very interested in using math to discover how many minutes they spend listening to their Spotify account during the year after studying the data report. It gave them a different perspective on time. The students enjoy giving presentations, teaching one another what they have learned, and interacting with the elementary students. This month the adolescents have been learning a lot about money through a mini-course that one student volunteered to teach. They have had great discussions on budgeting, taxes, debt, investing and interest. The students are very conscious of the value of money as they prepare for their MMUN trip and continue to fundraise . They are looking forward to taking a trip to the Mint and the Federal Reserve in Philadelphia in January to culminate the mini course and will be starting a new mini course on practicing hygge, (a Danish practice of consciousness, a certain slowness, and the ability to not just be present but recognize and enjoy the present. It’s the practice of cosiness, charm, happiness, ‘contentness’, security, familiarity, comfort, reassurance, kinship, and simpleness.) These are all great things to practice. Our morning meetings consist of a time of stretching and breathing, a word of the day, a review of this day in history and a some conversational Spanish. On Fridays, our community meeting includes a student led reflection, a review of what went well that week, any issues, thank you's, compliments and business. The students take turns and volunteer to lead the meetings, which is also great experience and practice in staying on task. The morning meetings are balanced with independent work cycles where the students study various academic subjects including English, math, science, American and world history. Before breaking for the holidays, the students reviewed the science and math behind the winter solstice as well as the way in which many cultures of the past and present celebrate it. They were reminded of how the delicate balance of nature has been celebrated for thousands of years. This is a great example of the holistic nature of the Montessori curriculum.

Mindfulness with Mrs. Marcella

Mindfulness in December focused on calming our thoughts, grounding ourselves, being present, letting things go, being aware of how we are feeling, and expressing ourselves. We had great fun practicing these skills with slinkies, a breathing ball, tower building, circle sharing, and the students' favorite - bubbles! Recommended book of the month: I AM PEACE, A Book of Mindfulness by Susan Verde.

Elementary STEM Scouts

In Elementary STEM we are still working with Edison the robot. After learning what he can do, we tried getting Edison to do what we want it to do and so far it's been challenging. Our scouts did however figure out how to maneuver Edison through mazes they made and through tunnels. They programmed Edison to change direction by clapping or piloting it with light. Next modual we will will be making slime!

Cooking with Mrs. Jamie

Recipe of the Week- Taco Salad! Kids love making this dish! With a child-safe knife, your child can cut up lettuce, dice tomatoes, cut & scoop out the avocado. Next, they can add in corn, black beans, taco seasoning and squeeze lemon into the salad! The last part they can help with is TASTE! This was a crowd favorite recipe when taste tested at MSOE in the primary room!      Ingredients-  1 Cup Corn 1 Cup Black Beans 1 Cup Tomatoes, Diced 1 Avocado 1 Cup Romaine Lettuce Chopped 1 Packet Taco Seasoning 1 Lemon Squeezed Enjoy with tortilla chips or in a soft shell wrap!

Tips To Keep Your Family Eating Well in 2019!   1. Eat Seasonal : Fresh produce has the most nutrients and therefore is healthier. Shop for seasonal produce grown in your area. 2. Hydrate Sugar-Free:  Encourage your family to stay hydrated but not with those sugary juices. Try some great combinations like cucumber mint, watermelon basil, and cherry lime water. 3. Save Time & Don't Cook:  When there's no time to cook, prepare options like blended soups, spiralized raw veggie dishes, bean and pasta salads, no-cook kebabs & taco salads (see recipe)  4. Make Homemade Deserts:  Store-bought treats are loaded with added sugar. A version of homemade ice cream is by pureeing whole fruit and putting it into molds or even add greek yogurt for protein. 5. Pack Your Own Travel Food:  Most of the time traveling means eating lots of fast food. Avoid this by packing fresh fruit, mixed nuts, or even whole grain crackers. Super easy and convenient!

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