W E D N E S D A Y  W E E K L Y
October 4, 2017
In this Issue


Upcoming Events

October 4
30-Day Celebration - for parent ambassadors and new families
5-6 p.m.
Great Room


October 4-5
9-12 Overnight
field trip
Camp Tockwogh


October 5
6-7:30 p.m.
Great Room


October 6
School Closed -  All-Staff Professional Day
(no child care)


October 12
Admissions Open House
Tell a Friend!
9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.


October 19
8:30 a.m.


October 22-25
Sixth-Grade Global Citizenship Action Project (GCAP) trip  
New York City


October 25-26
Toddler conferences
(all classes still in session)


October 26
Halloween parades
9:15 a.m. - Primary
11:15 a.m. - Elementary
Gym


October 27 & 30
Primary/Elementary conferences
No classes for primary/elementary only - pre-registered child care available


Message from
Head of School Lisa A. Lalama

For more from Lisa, read the Montessori Message blog.
A road map, or plan, that leads the way and provides course corrections as needed is one of the hallmarks of any strong organization. For the next three years, WMS will be working to meet the goals established by our Board of Directors in the WMS 2017-20 Strategic Plan. As a result of feedback from staff members and current and alumni parents, the board carefully considered what is needed to keep us at the forefront of Montessori education. We remain committed to serving the families and children who have come to rely on WMS to deliver a strong academic program, while also meeting students' social and emotional needs as they learn and grow. 

The 2017-20 Strategic Plan includes four major initiatives: 

1) Parent feedback over the years, along with a great deal of research, has led the board to  shift the school's endpoint from sixth to eighth grade . We are thrilled about this week's announcement that we will combine with 
PRIED Middle School and open our campus to seventh and eighth graders in September 2018. Through a combination of Maria Montessori's Erdkinder model of education for adolescents and Kurt Hahn's Expeditionary Learning model , this program will provide excellent preparation for students as they prepare to enter high school.

2) WMS strives to hire and retain highly qualified Montessori educators. The board is dedicated to increasing professional development funding and improving the existing salary structure. Our teachers build relationships with your children, striving to meet their needs each day. We are dedicated to supporting their professional growth as they partner with you, as parents, to support your child's academic, social and emotional growth.

3) The third goal of the strategic plan is to strengthen our long-term financial position by consistently balancing our budget and funding the objective of investing in teacher excellence.

4) Finally, we will continue our arts integration initiative , which began during our 2013-16 Strategic Plan. More teachers will participate in training at the Kennedy Center for the Arts as we successfully integrate the arts into our students' daily classroom experience through all areas of the curriculum. We've made great strides with this initiative over the past two years, and we look forward to extending our knowledge and practice incorporating the arts into the daily experience of our students.

In the past, strategic plans were made to carry an organization for five and sometimes 10 years. Today that is no longer true. Organizations must be more nimble and better able to assess the best practices in their field, conduct research to determine the needs of their constituents, and respond in ways that meet those needs. Our 2017-20 Strategic Plan is a reflection of this process. We are eager to move forward with you by our side.  




  
News & Notes News
Mark Your Calendar for the 
Salt Maker Faire

Please join us for our Salt Maker Faire on Thursday, October 12,  from 8:15 to 9:15 a.m. in the Great Room. Our Primary and Elementary students have been learning about rocks and minerals in the Maker Studios and we are excited to share our knowledge about salt - a rock we eat! We will be tasting salt, tasting Maker Studio-made pickles, painting with salt and exploring a salt sensory table. Please come join the fun.


 
Last Chance to Get Your WMS Gear: School Store Closes Tomorrow

Don't miss out on this school year's first opportunity to stock up on WMS spirit wear.  Order WMS logo t-shirts, hoodies and cozy flannel lounge pants through the  school store  today. This year, spirit wear is only available for purchase online and the store will be open for limited purchase periods throughout the year.  The store will close tomorrow, Thursday, October 5, so be sure to get your spirit wear orders in on time. If you have any questions please email [email protected].
Play & Learn at the Rachel Kohl Community Library and Brandywine Hundred Library
 
WMS has partnered with the Rachel Kohl Community Library and Brandywine Hundred Library to offer Montessori "Play and Learn" to
the community. Led by WMS teachers and administrators, this free, monthly class reinforces the learning partnership between parents and their young children. Parents and children learn about WMS and the Montessori Method in a comfortable, classroom-like environment with activities including a morning meeting, songs, movement and work time with Montessori materials.

Please tell a friend to consider joining us for the following classes:

  • Rachel Kohl Community Library - Thursday, October 5 at 10:30 a.m.
  • Brandywine Hundred Library - Wednesday, October 11 at 10:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m.
 
Register Today for Science Explorers: Toying Around With Science

Do you have a budding scientist in your family? Explore the world of physics and chemistry that exists in toys. Science Explorers' upcoming after-school special, Toying Around With Science, will put a spin on some classic favorites and introduce kids to some new "totally tubular" toys. Boomerangs, yo-yos, kaleidoscopes and roaring cups are all part of the fun.

Tuesdays, 5 weeks (10/24-12/5), $130
(no class 11/21 or 10/31)
3:25-4:20 for ages 4-7
4:20-5:20 for ages 6-9
Earn Cash for WMS With the Box Tops Bonus App

Earn more cash to support WMS by using the Box Tops for Education Bonus App. Turn your everyday receipts into cash for the school. Here's how it works:



You can earn bonus Box Tops in the Box Tops Bonus App in combination with the on-pack Box Tops clip and any other coupon, discount, store program or promotion.


mindfulnessFree Parent/Child Workshop: Mindfulness - Supporting 
Inner Peace

Thursday, October 5, 2017, at 6 p.m.
(Recommended for children ages 3 and up)
Great Room
 
Join the Montessori Teacher's Association of Delaware for  Mindfulness Family Night , featuring James Butler. This mindfulness workshop is an interactive learning experience for the whole family. Learn about the brain benefits of mindfulness, tips for practicing at home, how to make mindfulness fun, how mindfulness supports peace education, and how to spend time practicing simple mindfulness activities that anyone can do. This event is sure to provide tools to help ourselves and our kids be more present and less distracted.
 
About the Speaker:  James Butler works with teachers, parents and Pre-K through 12th-grade students in the Austin Independent School District in Texas. He previously taught for 13 years, primarily in early childhood. In 2016, Mr. Butler founded Mindful Classrooms and wrote a mindfulness curriculum for educators called Mindful Classrooms, which is now being used in six states, as well as in Dubai. He recently wrote the children's book Mindfulness Is .

Please contact Tina Randolph at the front desk at 302-475-0555 or [email protected] to register.

Today's Learners Learners
Exploring the Universe: 6-9 Students and the First Great Lesson

by Lower Elementary (6-9) Teacher Melissa Connelly

It all begins with the story of our beginning - the Big Bang and the resulting universe that is our home. Students in the 6-9 classrooms imagine the expansion of the universe - how the stars formed galaxies and fused hydrogen atoms into elements that formed our earth and bones and the air that we breathe today. Many might underestimate the curiosity and wonder of children this young, but Maria Montessori honored and fostered it through stories like the first Great Lesson: The Coming of the Universe. It's a story we explore at the start of each school year with our 6-9 students - the first of Montessori's five Great Lessons, which lay the groundwork for future science, geography and history lessons.


As we explore the story of the universe in our cultural studies curriculum, students explore the rules of the universe through hands-on experiments. By testing various materials in a container of water, they increase their understanding of what makes something sink or float whether in water or in our atmosphere. As they warm an ice cube in their hands to change a solid into a liquid, they can imagine how the internal heat of the earth melts rock into magma. They use their bodies to represent hydrogen and oxygen atoms with their bodies, taking each others' hands to become molecules of water. They move together tightly to become a solid, then spread out to become liquid when heat is applied, and then become even more active and spread out further as a gas before condensing and solidifying back into ice. They explore magnets, feeling the powers of attraction and repulsion in nature. At White Clay State Park's geology program, they had an opportunity to conduct tests to help them better understand the properties of rocks and minerals found on our planet.

Lower Elementary students creating the Big Bang in music class.
We also use the arts to help students get a better sense of how our universe began. In music class, Joe Ambrosino has been guiding the children as they create movements and sounds to represent their conceptualization of the Big Bang, the resulting chaos and the order that followed that continues to grow and change. With a fine artist's eye, the children have been working with art teacher Laurie Muhlbauer to recreate the patterns and colors found in the Hubble telescope's images of far-off galaxies.

In a few weeks, the children will have the opportunity to lie inside the Starlab traveling planetarium in the school's Great Room, and look up at the same patterns in the sky that people in the Northern Hemisphere have wondered about for as long as time can measure.

The questions the children ask that stem from these experiences keep coming as their understanding increases, revealing so many levels of curiosity. Questions include:
  • What was going on before the Big Bang?
  • Can you walk on Saturn's rings?
  • If you tried to land on a "gas" planet, would you fall through it?
  • And why did Pluto get kicked out of the planet family?
  • Why were we afraid of looking at the sun during the eclipse?
  • Is there life on other planets?
  • Are we really made of stardust?
These questions will lead us toward further exploration of the earth, our atmosphere, and what lies beyond as the year progresses. After all, it's only October ... we're just getting started!

The Wednesday Weekly shares WMS news and events that are relevant to the families in our community.  

Please send submissions to [email protected] by 4:30 p.m. on the Friday prior  to the issue in which you wish to include your information. Content may be edited for length and style and may be held for a future issue due to space constraints.  

For more information, contact Noel Dietrich, Director of Advancement & Communications.
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