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:
Monday, January 21
- No School - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Tuesday, January 22
- 9:00 - 11:00 am, UE Trip to Brattleboro Museum of Art
- 3:15 - 4:30 pm, Baking and Language Electives; UE Basketball Practice
Wednesday, January 23
- 3:15 - 4:30 pm, MS Basketball Practice
- 6:00 - 9:00 pm, Board Meeting
Thursday, January 24
- Winter Sports! (No All School Gathering)
Friday, January 25
- 5:30, UE Basketball Game at Putney
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Important Future Dates:
Tuesday, January 29
- 9:00 - 11:00 am, Open House for Prospective Parents
Wednesday, February 6
- 7:00 - 9:00 pm, MS Poetry Night
Friday, February 8
- 1:30 - 2:30 pm, UE Poetry Performance
Saturday, February 9
- 9:00 am - 12:00 pm, Curriculum Morning - Geography, Diversity, Anti-Bias - All parents are strongly encouraged to attend. Childcare provided. More details below
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The Spofford Skating and Sliding Society
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Save the Date - February 9 - Curriculum Morning
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Please mark your calendars for the morning of
Saturday, February 9th
! This is
our most extensive annual Montessori parent education program
. This year, we will focus on the Geography curriculum that has been a key component of the Montessori curriculum for over 100 years. We have materials and lessons at all levels that celebrate the commonalities and differences of people and places across the globe. We have further enhanced these areas recently through our lens of “anti-bias”.
The program will be from 9-12 with a pizza lunch and potluck salads afterwards. Please join us that Saturday for a journey through the Geography/Diversity/Anti-Bias work of our school.
All parents are strongly encouraged to attend. Childcare will be provided.
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The Hilltop Board of Trustees held its monthly meeting this week. Here are some of the highlights:
We fulfilled our fiduciary responsibilities by reviewing and approving the draft budget and proposed tuition rates and structures for 2019-20. Thank you to Deb, Tamara and the Finance Committee for their hard work! Developing a budget is challenging, as we never quite know where enrollment will land, and it can change at any time. A major change from prior years in Hilltop’s history is that we are now building a planned draw from our endowment into the budget, rather than approving it mid-year. This means we can continue to support families, faculty, and facilities and not cut back on our programs!
As part of our ongoing education about what it means to be a Trustee, we had an engaged and spirited discussion about the ways in which we do well as a Board and the ways in which we could do better. Some ways we could do better include doing exit interviews with outgoing Trustees, recruiting Trustees in more diverse places, and developing a mentor program to pair incoming Trustees with veteran Trustees.
We are planning our annual Open Board Meeting and Chili Cook-off! The agenda is almost set, and the chili competitors are starting to line up. The Open Board Meeting is the evening of Friday, March 22, and is coinciding with Kids’ Night Out to provide child care for all who would like to come. This year we will be focusing on the ongoing themes of Diversity and Equity, and how we have been working on these themes at a Board and school level and how that translates into lived experiences for parents and students. We would love to see you there!
As always, we want to know if there are things we can do better. And, we are also looking for a couple new Board members. Please reach out if Board service is something you are interested in!
Stay in touch,
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As the year progresses, the toddlers are focusing for longer and longer periods of time. This has been encouraged by leaving the children to concentrate and not interrupting their work. It has also been achieved through working with progressively challenging activities with more steps that require deeper engagement with the materials.
Some popular works fitting within this framework are the gluing box, table scrubbing, and the stereognostic bags. While gluing and table scrubbing are pretty self-explanatory activities, the stereognostic bags (aka mystery bags) may be less familiar to some.
Today David received a lesson on the stereognostic bag. Together Ellie and David took turns pulling enticing objects (in this case a random collection but could be related objects or sets of matching objects) from the drawstring mystery bag. With fanfare Ellie named the objects - honey dipper, beet, statuette, button, rubber duck, turtle, scrub brush, and bag. David was encouraged to explore the materials and notice their attributes. Ellie noticed aloud, "The statuette is heavy and feels cold. The beet feels soft on one end and smooth on the other."
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The collection of objects is revealed and named.
As the materials were named one by one, David returned the objects to the bag (and sneaky Ellie got a sense of how well he could identify the object by its name). Now it was time to play the game! Ellie reached inside the bag, chose an object, held it thoughtfully in her hand and then named it - what suspense! - before pulling the object out of the bag.
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"It's the honey dipper! I guessed it!"
By now a few bystanders had gathered to watch the lesson. David knew how to play and was ready to have a go.
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David concentrated as he reached into the mystery bag.
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David named the scrub brush - and confirmed, it's a scrub brush!
Cheering, smiles, joy, rapture, yay! The game continued as long as David chose to use the work. Other friends were invited to give it a go. Done together or alone, the stereognostic bag was fun!
But what if a child named the wrong object, you may wonder. No worries! Each discovery was greeted with joy and excitement - "You pulled out the button! Good for you!"
Have a cozy weekend - enjoy the snow.
Ellie, Marco, Sarah and Amanda
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A child hurriedly scoops up his work materials and tosses them into his tray, quickly thrusts the tray on the table and races across the room to get a new work before another child reaches it. On their way, they are stopped by a teacher, who not only asks the child to slow down, but also to return to the work to put it away in its exact order, with each item in the correct compartment. The child is then reminded how to hold the tray with two hands and to “ever so gently” place it carefully on the shelf before walking to the work they were interested in. Perhaps that work is now being used, and the child now becomes upset and begins to cry.
One might question the actions of the teacher in this instance. After all, the child was finished and ready for a new work, and the teacher’s stringent enforcement of the rule resulted in him not getting a turn. But is that what really happened?
In a Montessori classroom, we believe that slowing down our bodies and our hands by working with care and precision is important. We want to encourage deep concentration in every part of a lesson, including setting up and cleaning up because it helps us to focus our minds. When a child calmly walks to and lays out a new work they are opening up a focus and mindfulness to the task at hand. When a material is put away carefully it is also ready for the next child to approach it in an ordered way.
The child in the example wasn’t really finished with their first work, nor ready for something new. If they had been allowed to take the work, they would have brought all of that disorganized energy with them, likely banging materials around and haphazardly using the material before quickly moving on and repeating the cycle. The adult expected the child to follow classroom expectations and gave the child an opportunity to practice patience with waiting for something. It was hard. The child was upset. They cried. But that’s ok. It’s ok to feel sad. It’s ok be frustrated when limits and boundaries are enforced. Challenges are part of learning.
So go easy on yourself the next time you set a limit and your child is angry, or sad, or even says they don’t like you. It’s ok, and it means you are giving them the opportunity to learn from their actions and do the important work of growing up.
REMINDER: Please periodically check your children's extra clothing boxes (located in the classroom bathrooms) to see if they need to be restocked. A good time to do this is just after outside drop off.
SAVE THE DATE: Our next work share will be on
Wednesday, March 27th
from 8:30 - 9:15.
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Zhong Yi practices pouring.
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Sylvia works with animal tracks.
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Sid uses water to paint on rocks.
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Cooper makes a book about winter trees.
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Thank you to those who came to our Tuesday afternoon work share to see what works your child is doing, and to hear about ways to support them in learning their math facts. Our next work share will be on
Wednesday, March 27th
from 3:00 - 4:00 pm,
focusing on an area of our language curriculum.
This week, the imaginary hand on our Clock of Eons traveled further around, as we presented the Archean, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic Eons. New life was forming in the waters of the young Earth, called cyanobacteria (otherwise known as blue-green algae). Oxygen was released into our atmosphere, making Earth hospitable to many new (microscopic) life forms. Earth was becoming what scientists now call the "Goldilocks planet:" neither too hot nor too cold, too dark nor too light, too wet nor too dry. The Phanerozoic Eon is divided into three eras: the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic (our current era). We will be presenting more stories of the biodiversity that appeared during these eras in the weeks to come.
Clock work is in full swing now, and everybody is practicing some area of telling time on an analog clock: full hour, half hour, quarter past and quarter to. Practicing telling time at home is a great support to what we are currently doing in the classroom.
Oceania, that part of the world that includes Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and other islands, is our current continent study. Ask your child what they have learned about so far: What is the name of a reptile, bird, or mammal they have read about? Is Australia a large continent? What is unique about its continent status (spoiler: it is a continent, an island, and a country!)? What are the biomes that are found in Oceania?
Enjoy your snowy weekend (Remember the milk, eggs, and batteries.)!
Kerstin, Patrick, and Amelia
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Claire and Layla complete a layout on the days of the week.
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Esmé and Dylan work on an epic layout of Australian animals.
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Jade and Harper work side by side.
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Oona and Hazel work on an Australia Biome Reader layout.
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Olders delving into bead chain work for their study of multiplication facts.
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This week the group moved forward with our small group research on different animal phyla, our poetry, math of all sorts, word study, and finishing up a batch of lit books. Fourths and fifth have been studying the physical geography of the Silk Road trade routes. A few students took it a step further to research the highest mountains in the Himalayas, then graphed a comparison between these mountains and those of our own New England. The sixth grade has finished making maps that show when the various territories entered the US during the 19th century and from whom we gained this land.
We also have a renewed push on math facts, with the goal of all of us knowing our multiplication facts to 10 by February break. A new set of flashcard packets is getting lots of attention. After learning each set of facts, students move to the next packet which includes “both ways” (8 x 3 as well as 3 x 8). The “times itself” packet (the squares of numbers) are a favorite. There is a good deal of momentum and camaraderie among the class for this work right now.
Enjoy the weekend’s snow!
Upcoming dates:
UE Trip to Brattleboro Museum of Art Tues., Jan. 22, 9-11:00 a.m.
UE Poetry Performance, Fri., Feb. 8 at 1:30 p.m.
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Students practice giving and following accurate oral directions with Wendy.
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Gabe and Lucas work on their art-based poems.
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Ciana and Abby practice math facts with flashcards.
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Corbin and Skyler practice math facts with flashcards.
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Edwin de Bruijn gives Will and Rhys a ride.
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Poetry continues to play a large role in our day to day classroom life. In morning circle, students are reciting from memory an anthology poem of their choice and presenting their guardian poets. Every student has selected a published poet to study and be their muse throughout this poetry study. As the study enters its final weeks (although poetry is never absent in the middle school), students regale the class with a short biography and critical appraisal of their chosen poet along with two memorized poems. So far we have heard from Robert Frost and Gary Snyder. The finale of our study, Poetry Night, takes place on
Wednesday, February 6 at 7pm in the Arts Barn Theater.
On this night celebrating language and image, the audience will hear students recite two of their own poems as well as view the premiere showing of poetry inspired student films. A lovely reception will follow. All are invited.
On Friday morning we had the honor of hosting the current Poet Laureate of Vermont, Chard diNord. Chard has published six acclaimed volumes of poetry and once taught at the Putney School where he had the privilege of teaching the then young student Finn. Chard led us in a humorous and useful poetry activity, we shared poetry, and learned something of the life of the poet. It was a delightful visit.
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Chard deNiord (poet laureate) reading in our class.
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Curling on Lake Spofford.
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We play the poetry game with Chard.
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Marian explores the lake.
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Alexa in the curling spotlight.
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Start your day off right.
Proceeds will support the Middle School's Odyssey Fund.
Thank you!
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Girls On The Run and Heart and Sole
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Girls on the Run and Heart and Sole are coming to Hilltop Montessori School this Spring!
What is Girls on the Run?
Over a period of 10 weeks,
girls in 3rd through 5th grades
can participate in an after-school program like no other.
The Girls on the Run lessons encourage positive emotional, social, mental, and physical development. They develop important strategies and skills to help them navigate life experiences. We start with helping the girls get a better understanding of who they are and what is important to them. Then, we look at the importance of team work and healthy relationships. And, finally, the girls explore how they can positively connect with and shape the world by completing a community impact project they design together.
What is Heart & Sole?
Over a period of 10 weeks,
girls in 6th through 8th grades
can participate in an after-school program like no other. Throughout the season, the girls make new friends, build their confidence and celebrate all that makes them unique.
The Heart & Sole lessons encourage positive emotional, social, mental, and physical development. They explore and discuss their own beliefs around experiences and challenges girls face at this age. They also develop important strategies and skills to help them navigate life experiences. We focus on the importance of team work and healthy relationships. The girls explore how they can positively connect with and shape the world by completing an individual project called Extending the Girl Wheel, where they reach out in small meaningful ways to an individual or group in their community.
Physical activity is woven into our program to inspire an appreciation of fitness and to build habits that lead to a lifetime of health. At the end of the season, the girls participate in a Girls on the Run 5k event. This celebratory, non-competitive event is the culminating experience of the curriculum. Completing the 5k gives the girls a tangible understanding of the confidence that comes through accomplishment as well as a framework for setting and achieving life goals. Crossing the finish line is a defining moment when the girls realize that even the seemingly impossible IS possible.
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THANK YOU
to
Hazel Pizza
for providing delicious pizzas for the students and staff every week! Sccccrrrrumptious! We still and always will ♡ 🍕!!
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BIG THANKS
to
Brattleboro Tire
for donating our Hilltop van's winter snow tires and for rotating them each year!
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The 97th Annual Harris Hill Ski Jump is around the corner! The dates are February 16 and 17.
Tickets for the event are on sale at Zephyr’s Designs and Galanes Vermont Shop both downtown on Main Street. OR you could get in free by becoming a volunteer! There are many opportunities for mature teens and adults to help out for a few hours on either or both days! (2 or more shifts gets you a free Harris Hill tee shirt too!) For questions or to sign up, contact Kathryn Einig at
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