Hilltop Montessori School's mission is for students to
practice responsible independence in a caring community
of curious, critical learners and thoughtful citizens.
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Next Week:
Thursday, June 4
- All School Gathering, 9-9:30am
- SummerFun Meetings, TBA
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Upcoming:
Thursday, June 11
- Final day of school for TP-UE
- All School Gathering, 9-9:30am
- Elementary End-of-the-Year Car Parade, 12:30pm
Friday, June 12
- Final day of school for MS - Graduation Event TBD
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Planning for Full Re-opening
on August 31, 2020!
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As teachers are working to finish up the school year with students in remote learning, our school administration is working to plan for our in-person reopening in the fall. We have many pieces working simultaneously to prepare for being together next year.
We have many options available to us at Hilltop Montessori School, and the ability to be nimble to meet any requirements set forth. We expect to be able to conform to group size and facilities restrictions that health and safety guidelines will call for. With a high student to teacher ratio, and flexible, accessible classroom spaces with lots of outdoor facilities, we are making plans to be open in-person on August 31st!
Some ongoing activities in support of Hilltop reopening include:
General School Preparations
- Reviewing all the guidelines from the CDC, Vermont OSHA, and the Vermont Agency of Education to plan and begin to implement needed measures (facility zoning/physical distancing, program modification, daily health screenings, PPE, cleaning and disinfecting policies and procedures, and more).
- Working with the Vermont Independent Schools Association and the Vermont Agency of Education in developing the “Healthy and Strong Start: Reopening Vermont’s Schools for In-Person Instruction, Fall 2020”.
- Holding a Staff Retreat on June 15 and 16th to go over the likely new requirements and to develop plans and summer work necessary to adapt our spaces and programs to meet them.
- Reviewing finances at the Board level to ensure that funding resources and strategies are employed (including federal and state programs) to enable us to best meet the needs of students and families.
Toddler Program and Children’s House
- Developing and implementing the health and safety protocols, staffing, and facilities adjustments for two groups of Toddler and Children’s House students at school during June and July for SummerFun, which is helping us practice for the fall.
- Renovating the playground and doorway configuration to facilitate different drop off and entrance locations.
- Our current plan is to spread out classes using additional spaces if group size is limited to significantly less than 25.
Elementary
- Limiting class size to a maximum group of 25, if that ends up being required.
- Developing plans to spread out Elementary students among more classrooms, if needed, to limit group size (using the Art Room and parts of the Arts Barn as classroom space, if needed).
Middle School
- Enrollment of under 20 students to ensure a maximum group size of under 25, if that ends up being required.
- Easily spread out within the Middle School building and grounds to have smaller group size, if necessary.
We feel very fortunate to have the facilities and staffing expertise and resources to enable us to meet the requirements that could be imposed for a variety of scenarios that might come our way. We are poised to be flexible and able to open in the Fall if at all possible!
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Remote Learning Workgroup
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We are working full speed ahead on plans for being at school in person starting on August 31, in addition to doing 5 weeks of SummerFun for Toddlers and Children’s House this summer. And this summer is also a great time to discuss remote learning. Having just had the three month experience of remote learning, we have teachers, parents, board members, and students who are primed to analyze what worked and how to create a more dynamic, developmentally sensitive Montessori experience should we ever be called upon to do remote learning again in the future.
Drawing on all these levels of expertise, we are putting together a workgroup that will likely meet every two weeks or so over the summer to share ideas about remote learning. We are beginning to develop a shared folder where we can collect resources and reflections. Several parents, teachers, and Board members have already expressed an interest in being a part of this effort.
If you would also like to participate in the Remote Learning Workgroup, or if you have specific input on this, please let me know.
We’d love to have you engaged in a small or great way, whatever your interest/availability may be.
Stay well,
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Do you remember the cafe?
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It seems like such a long time ago! So much has changed, and yet the generosity of our community is consistent. Thank you for your continued support through such a difficult time.
We are thrilled to announce…We did it!
We reached our Annual Fund goal of $60,000!!!
We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who made our 2020 Annual Fund campaign a huge success. Without your contributions, we could not have reached this goal.
A special thank you to a set of generous grandparents, and a member of the Board of Trustees who donated this week to push us over the threshold and meet our goal to support Hilltop.
Now in this time of physical separation, having this Annual Fund support is even more important than ever, as we work to bring our community together, Thank you!
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Cleaning Position Open Immediately!
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There is a position open as part of the Hilltop Facilities Team. Join the crew of folks that keep this school a safe, clean, and inviting learning environment for our students, staff, and families.
This weekday cleaning is a 2-4 hour shift on Monday-Friday evenings. The position is year-round with a flexible start date. Additionally, the position requires availability to assist weekend cleaning, event setup/clean up or to perform seasonal weekday deep cleaning shifts. Candidates should be thorough, efficient, and reliable. The position involves vacuuming, mopping, disinfecting surfaces, and removing trash. Ideally the candidate lives locally.
Please send resumes or letters of interest to our Facilities Manager,
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Hello Toddler Families,
We hope you are all getting to spend lots of time outside enjoying the beautiful weather. We would like to send a huge thank you to parents for keeping in touch with us! It has been great to hear about all the fun projects you are doing at home.
In preparation for SummerFun and next school year, it would be great to have your children practice wearing a mask. This may also help them become comfortable seeing people with masks on. Allowing them to see you wearing a mask for a short period of time each day may help them connect with teachers and students who have masks on over the summer and next year!
Thinking of you all,
The Toddler Team
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Mabyn and Joe enjoying the warm weather!
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This morning's Birch Room circle was a Geography lesson reintroducing the globe and World puzzle map with a focus on Africa. Cheryl also read Mem Fox's book,
Wherever You Are
. Then Mariam and Dora (parent of Liam) showed clothing and artifacts and spoke of their homeland and things that they eat, how the language is different, and more!
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Mariam wearing clothes from Mali.
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Jewelry, fan, and scarf from Mali.
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With the weather getting warmer, it’s time to get out and play in water! Of course there are the classics, like swimming and running through a sprinkler, but here are a few other ideas for keeping water play fun and exciting:
- Car wash (or really any toy wash): fill a tub or small pool with water and soap. Make sure to provide a sponge, washcloth, and maybe even a spray bottle.
- Water painting: fill a bucket with water and provide a paintbrush. Use the water to paint rocks (think big and flat rocks), a fence, or the sidewalk; this is even more exciting if you have a house paintbrush on hand.
- Play “sink or float”: fill a tub or small pool with water and test out different objects to see if they sink or float. Have your child guess what will happen before putting the object in the water.
- Pouring water: set up a tub with water (you could add food coloring) and provide your child with different sized pitchers and cups to experiment with. You could also add funnels and scoops for added fun.
- Ice experiments: use a cake pan to freeze a block of ice, then provide your child with a small container or salt, and some liquid watercolor or food coloring. Let them experiment with adding salt to the ice and then adding some color. If you have eye droppers those would be best for adding the food coloring.
We hope you enjoy these ideas and that they help you and your child to stay cool!
Upcoming dates:
- June 5: Pick up your last “Goodie Bag”
- June 11: Last Day of School
**If your child is an Older, stay tuned for details about a Moving Up Ceremony on the last day of school.
Have a great weekend!
The Children’s House Team
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Josephine makes a J using watercolor tissue paper from her goody bag.
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Do you know which pollinators inhabit your neighborhood? To wrap up our botany study, next week we will focus on pollinators of all kinds. Be prepared to see some exciting videos, and to get outside to observe the pollinators in your own backyard.
With only two weeks left of our virtual school, Lower Elementary teachers have been thinking about how to bring celebration, closure, and a bit of silliness to the final days. To begin, next week (6/1-6-5) will be the final week that we post assignments. The last week of school (6/8-6/11), we will not publish any new assignments. Instead, we’ll post optional review work and games to practice and strengthen the new skills and concepts we’ve already introduced. This work will not need to be submitted to us at the end of the week.
Also in this final week, LE will not hold regularly-scheduled teacher check-ins or small group lessons. We WILL continue with most of our whole-class events, including:
- Monday 6/8 Morning Meeting at 8:30am
- Monday 6/8 Live Art at 1:00pm
- Tuesday 6/9 Live Art at 1:00pm
- Wednesday 6/10 Moving Up Ceremony at 8:30am: We’re going to spend this time acknowledging and appreciating our Older students (Claire! Dylan! Layla! Hazel!) who are moving up!
- Thursday 6/11, the last ASG at 9:00!
On Thursday, we will have an end-of-year Zoom party (time to be determined soon); we lovingly cajole all of our students into attending this event, which is likely to include optional costumes, games, and end-of-the-year memories and sharing. If there are students who wish to be part of it through observation only, they are welcome to come and keep their video off.
These events and changes will all be reflected on your childrens’ Google Calendars.
End-of-the-Year Parade at Hilltop:
Finally, Lower and Upper Elementary have been scheming about a way to celebrate on the last day of school. We’ve decided that holding a “car parade” at Hilltop on the final day of school will be a nice way for teachers and students to bid each other farewell for the summer. We know you’ve really missed the daily traffic congestion at pick-up, so we’ve planned a traffic jam for the books!
Here are the details:
- LE and UE students and families arrive in their vehicles at the Hilltop Traffic Circle on June 11th at 12:30pm.
- Students will bring any work/materials that need to be returned to Hilltop.
- Cars make their way slowly up the hill and around the Traffic Circle.
- Teachers and staff will be stationed around the circle to wave hello/goodbye, pass gifts through car windows, receive school materials, ring cow bells, and generally be merry.
- After driving through the Traffic Circle, cars will make their way down the hill again, getting the chance to wave to other students/families as they come up.
- Students/families MUST stay in their vehicles for the duration of the parade.
Have a fantastic weekend!
The LE Team
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We had our first Independent Study Project (ISP), a rite of passage for our 6ths. Tucker presented the first ISP - thank you, Tucker! Who knew that Dr. Seuss had created political cartoons in the very early 1940’s targeting the ‘America First’ movement who wanted the US to ignore the carnage being inflicted on Europe by Hitler?
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A slide showing two of Suess's pre-war cartoons
denigrating the group "America First" and its isolationist views.
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Tucker fielding question after his Independent Study Project presentation on Dr. Seuss.
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Parents of the 6ths:
your student will need to present between now and the end of school. We invite you to attend these virtual presentations! If scheduling is an issue for you, especially during the mornings, please let us know how we can work together to schedule a time that works for everyone.
As the UE gears up for our end-of-year classroom museum, please know that we continue to think and plan how best to present this information and work to each other and to the Hilltop Community. As things stand now, we plan to invite everyone to view students’ work online on a platform called ‘Padlet’. Visitors may virtually ‘walk’ through exhibits of student projects at your leisure. Then we hope to have a series of panels, where our students are available live to answer your questions about their work. The specific timing of all of these events is not yet set, but we are shooting for the Padlets to be ready by next Friday, and the student panels to be on the following Monday, the last Monday of school. We use our ‘stream’ page of Google Classroom for day-to-day communication, so please keep an eye on that. Once we have our ducks in order, we will send an email invitation outlining the details.
This time of year we also think about how to celebrate our graduating 6th graders. Our graduation ceremony is traditionally an in-house affair, with just the UE community attending, steeped in tradition. A flurry of activity - mostly in the art room - would occupy the 4ths and 5ths leading up to this event. Because of our situation now, we have posted on Google Classroom a description of the normal graduation preparations by both the 6ths and the 4th & 5ths group. Please take a look. We’d like to send this group off with as much pomp and circumstance and normalcy and tradition as possible.
End-of-the-Year Parade at Hilltop: Lower and Upper Elementary have been scheming about a way to celebrate on the last day of school. We’ve decided that holding a “car parade” at Hilltop on the final day of school will be a nice way for teachers and students to bid each other farewell for the summer. We know you’ve really missed the daily traffic congestion at pick-up, so we’ve planned a traffic jam for the books!
Here are the details:
- LE and UE students and families arrive in their vehicles at the Hilltop Traffic Circle on June 11th at 12:30pm.
- Students will bring any work/materials that need to be returned to Hilltop.
- Cars make their way slowly up the hill and around the Traffic Circle.
- Teachers and staff will be stationed around the circle to wave hello/goodbye, pass gifts through car windows, receive school materials, ring cow bells, and generally be merry.
- After driving through the Traffic Circle, cars will make their way down the hill again, getting the chance to wave to other students/families as they come up.
- Students/families MUST stay in their vehicles for the duration of the parade.
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This week we began daily review classes in preparation for next week’s final exams in math and language arts. Why do we give exams? In a recent email to a parent, Finn articulated our goals beautifully:
“In general we regard the final exams in middle school (where there are no grades) as an opportunity to practice a number of skills, as well as gain exposure to the emotional and intellectual challenges the idea of a “final” offers. It is useful to commit concerted effort to a set of skills in an effort to achieve a level of mastery for it allows the student to become aware of what they know, what is uncertain, and what is unknown. Taking tests of this nature is also a reality in many of the high schools students will attend, and we believe that practice and exposure is important.”
Students also began to present their final spontaneous projects of the year. The spontaneous project is an opportunity for students to design, undertake, and present a topic of particular interest to them that is in some way connected to our studies. The subject and the manner in which they choose to share that subject is entirely up to them. In our current “River of Spirit” study we have immersed into many of the world’s religions, read lots of scripture from different faith traditions, explored faith and spirit, and even reversed the metaphor and studied the scientific and environmental attributes of water. The array of the spontaneous projects is as large as the study itself. Some of the subjects students have undertaken are the Israel/Palestine conflict, Scientology, the impacts of COVID-19 on religious practice as well as the environment, dance as an act of faith, and the Heaven’s Gate cult.
We’ll be in touch soon about graduation thoughts (things keep unfolding in Montpelier) and ideas for the last week of school.
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Relief Funds for Undocumented Immigrants in NYC
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Dear Hilltop families,
COVID-19 is affecting everyone, but I have been really feeling the injustice and unfairness of the fact that because I have a social security number I will get a stimulus check, while so many undocumented immigrants, many of whom are considered essential workers and who are in extremely vulnerable situations, will not get a penny of help. Many of them have families in their home countries that depend on their income and they do not have savings to fall back on. They cannot apply for unemployment and often have landlords that are not flexible with payments. We have decided to send part of our stimulus check to undocumented loved ones in New York. A lot of us really need this check right now, and if you do, please don't feel pressure. This message is not for you. Please keep your check and know that there are other ways you can help. But, if you are in a position that you can share some or all of your check, please contribute to this campaign and share it. We will be sending all of the money contributed to undocumented folks we know in NYC who are needing help right now and not getting it because their immigration status. If you are able to contribute, thank you. And if you know people who might be able, please share this with them. ❤️
Thanks so much,
Allison and Marco
Here is the link:
Relief funds for Undocumented Immigrants in NYC organized by Allison Korn
We have already sent money to 25 undocumented immigrants in NYC who are in financial need and who are not receiving any relief funding from the government. We could not have done this without your generosity. We know more people who are in need and would gratefully accept financial assistance.
We also know not everyone has received their stimulus check yet and we wanted to assure folks that we will keep this campaign open to receiving donations as long as people are still receiving their stimulus checks. If you haven't yet received your check and would like to donate some or all of it when you do receive it, you will still be able to. Thanks so much! Please share this fundraiser with those you know and if you are able to do so, consider donating some or all of your stimulus check. Thank you!!!
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