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:
November 12, Tuesday
- MS Curriculum Vitae Night,
7-8:30pm
November 13, Wednesday
- Equity and Anti-Bias Work Group Meeting, 11:45am-12:45pm
November 14, Thursday
- All School Gathering, 8:45am
November 15, Friday
- NO SCHOOL, Teacher Inservice Day
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November 19, Tuesday
- Raising Problem Solvers Workshop, 7-8:30pm
November 21, Thursday
- K-LE Basketball Begins, 3:15-4pm
November 21 - November 25
November 22, Friday
For more details about the goings on at Hilltop, please see the
Website Calendar
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What a delightful Annual Fund week we had in the Arts Barn Cafe!
A huge thank you to all our teachers, staff members, families and friends who took a moment to enjoy a coffee, connect with friends & support Hilltop. We ended the week with
90%
participation rate of our current families.
Here are the final weekly participation totals, by program:
CONGRATULATIONS to Lower Elementary and Upper Elementary for achieving 100% in their programs.
Thank you to all our families for a fantastic week!:
Toddler Program: 80%
Children's House: 86%
Lower Elementary: 100%
Upper Elementary: 100%
Middle School: 81%
A special appreciation to the entire Administrative staff for baking delicious treats and making fabulous espresso drinks, keeping everyone caffeinated... we couldn't have run the cafe without your help!
Let's not forget Mocha Joe's Roasting, Vermont Country Deli, Amy's Bakery Arts Cafe for their kindness and amazing products.
Thank you to Kegan for working his magic and connecting with Scott Farm and Putney School to complete and implement this "cafe" vision. It was a dream realized. Thank you.
If you would like to support Hilltop in any way, it is not too late! Our campaign will continue throughout the school year, concluding on June 30th. Click
here
for more about our Annual Fund.
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Attention Lower and Upper Elementary!
There is still time to sign up for knitting! Click
here for a PDF version of the sign up sheet and more details, or simply
email the front desk and we can sign you up.
Please register by
3pm on Monday.
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Basketball starts in a couple of weeks! Please hand in your
sign up forms to the front desk by next
Wednesday, November 13th!
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There was a lively group of parents and staff at the
Love and Logic parenting talk last night. We were thrilled with the turnout! We all learned about using fewer words when a child has “flipped their lid” and how to help teach children the skills of self-regulation. We highly recommend attending the next session for the elementary and middle school aged students:
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Kids’ Night Out
Friday, November 22nd
Do you want to have a fun night out on the town? Are you having a hard time finding a babysitter? Do you want your children to have just as much fun as you do while you’re out? Drop your children off at our arts barn anywhere between 5:00-9:00 pm on Friday, November 22nd to have a night of fun and games with our responsible middle school babysitters.
There will be fun, games, crafts, and tons more! At least one adult and lots of fun middle schoolers will be there. We will provide snacks, and pizza is available! If you don’t want pizza, please pack a nutritious dinner or feed your child before you come. To attend KNO, your child must be in children's house or above and be able to use the bathroom independently.
This fun night for you and your kids costs only $7.00 an hour and $5.00 for each additional child. Pizza is $5.00 more for two slices. All proceeds from Kids Night Out go to the Hilltop Montessori Middle School Odyssey fund. Our businesses are an important part of our fundraising, so your support really helps!
To sign up or learn more, visit our
website.
If you have any questions, please email
Ava or
Marian
We have only 30 spots, so don’t wait, sign up now!
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Toddler Program and Children's House
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Thank you to Sara Donahue for presenting an introduction to
Love and Logic: Magic for Early Childhood Workshop
last night. A big thanks to all the parents and visitors who attended.
The workshop objectives for the evening were to:
- Discuss some behavioral patterns of the “toddler” age group (0-6 years)
- Offer the idea of parent as a teacher of skills to children
- Present some basic principles of self-regulation and teaching regulation to children
- Propose a few new “experiments” to try at home around handling dysregulation and creating enforceable limits
- Make more simple what otherwise feels complicated and hard at times- parenting
Thanks again, Sara, for a great start to this behavioral and relational strategy for use with all children!
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Adventures at Putney Mountain!
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Lower El spent time both
inside
and
outside
of the classroom recently. We were on the floor, doing math work, we were in reading groups, and we embarked on our first field trip and hiked
up
Putney Mountain. As we stood
atop
this beautiful mountain, we felt grateful to have made the trip. On a related note, the Middlers have been introduced to prepositions, which you see in bold print above. A preposition is a word that shows the relationship of a noun to a verb, an adjective, or another noun. Since it acts as a bridge between words, the Montessori symbol for it is a green bridge.
Wow! Awesome! Yes! Wahoo! Yay!
The Olders have been studying interjections in class. An interjection is a word with strong emotions. They usually end in an exclamation point (!). Interjections stand out and can stand alone. Some examples include: Oh my! Sakes alive! Yippee! Alas! Alack! Whoopee! Good grief! Unreal!
Interjections are amazing!
The
delightful
,
energetic
, and
enthusiastic
Youngers have learned about adjectives, those fantastic words that make our speech and writing so interesting. Adjectives are a member of the noun family, and the symbol for them is the small, dark blue, square-based pyramid.
We hope you have a marvelous weekend!
Kerstin, Patrick, and Amelia
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Cooper assembles the alphabet using magnet tiles.
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Kennedy and Harper focus on their adjective work.
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Hazel sets up a multi-digit multiplication problem on the Checkerboard.
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Layla and Finn settle in to their work.
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The Middlers Explore charcoal techniques.
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Kaiya works from a photo and measures face proportions.
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Talia adds the finishing touches to her portrait.
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Ciana adds shadows to her portrait.
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Charcoal hero portraits in progress.
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Ava works hard on subtle shading.
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The class enjoys Skyping with Kiersten Bayer in Ecuador where she now resides.
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Kiersten shows off her baby brother during our Skype session.
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The middle school has moved from the beauty of Upland to the community of Brattleboro. We have begun our study of place in a time of a changing climate. Last week the class went downtown and made connections with various institutions and citizens asking questions such as: “What is your business doing in response to climate change?” and “What do you think Brattleboro should be doing in response to climate change?”. Students are also pondering Wendell Berry’s posit that “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are” through exploring a selected part of Brattleboro history. They are haunting the History Room at the Brooks Memorial Library and The Brattleboro Historical Society deciphering history through primary resource materials.
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Perusing the files at the Historic Society.
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At work in the Historic Society.
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Advice from a research librarian.
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Robert Parks gives an interview lesson.
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As an example of a way to express place, students read and discussed James Agee’s
Knoxville, Summer 1915
and spent part of Halloween morning downtown in the rain and wind swept streets capturing the essence of Brattleboro through their words. Here are some excerpts:
On the sidewalk, vibrant-colored flowers sit comfortably in wooden barrels, lumped together like penguins in a blizzard. Their beauty is unnoticed by people walking, their heads bent against the drizzle, down the street. They seem rushed as if they have somewhere important to be. Their legs move swiftly and they stay silent. No one engages in any conversation….No one steps back and notices the beauty of life here. No one sees how beautiful a fall day in the rain can be.
~Marian
I went inside a building to write about this weird silence I felt. It wasn’t silent in this town, in fact it was loud. It was just, weird. My footsteps echoed all throughout the building, and along with the footsteps from the people around me, our feet started to sing in the building. And the rain pattered on the roof, and it was a silent song. They weren’t singing on purpose, they were singing because they all felt the weird silence.
~Keeshawn
Two wizened faces smile and laugh at a table beside me. Crows feet and smile lines, the signs of a life well-lived. In their conversation, they are young again, discussing Muhammed Ali and Mike Tyson. Behind them, outside, the cars splash down the road, shiny from the rain. The distant clamor of the outside world is muffled by the glass.
~Parker
The sky-gods are laughing with the trees. They are laughing at how we surrender to repetition. At how we drive cars down the same roads, eat the same bagel the same way, and live the same lives as our past lives. We rely too much on comfort and that is why we are depressed, not because of the rain. The fact of the matter is that we are all artists; the only thing that we can decide is what we are artists of.
~Finnegan
Houses decorating for Halloween, as children talk about their costumes. The sidewalk’s poetry leads them on their way. A creeping mountain in the distance looks down on all of the footsteps. Red, green, orange swirled in and ice cream sundae of trees. The whisper of snow just a step away, the scream of the rain weeping into our shoulders. Alone with downtown Brattleboro, there’s no other place I’d rather be.
~Ava
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Winter Clothing Swap
The cold weather is upon us, and Hilltop's Equity and Anti-Bias Work Group is organizing a winter clothing swap. From now until November 21st, please drop off any donations that are in wearable/usable condition in the Arts barn lobby, including:
- Coats and jackets
- Hats and balaclavas
- Scarves and neck warmers
- Mittens and gloves
- Snow pants
- Snow boots
- Cozy sweaters
- Long underwear
- Ice skates and hockey sticks
- Cross-country, downhill, and snowboarding equipment
- Snowshoes
- Any and all other winter sporting equipment gear!
Thank you for involving your family in a re-allocation of resources among our Hilltop community! Sharing is caring!
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As some of you may know, our own Mariam Diallo has been involved for many years in helping support a small group of 33 orphans in Haiti, a project that she began when she visited Haiti after the devastating earthquake in 2010.
This project is very near and dear to Mariam’s heart, and with the support of friends and colleagues, including former Hilltop staff member Sheila Humphreys, Mariam formed the
Haiti Orphanage Sponsorship Trust (HOST), a grassroots 501c3 organization, which is a vehicle of compassion and support to the children living at
Foyer Evangelique Orphanage (OFEU).
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Some of you may have read the
heartbreaking article in the New York Times this weekend about the current political unrest in Haiti which has reached a crisis point.
Pastor Duckens Janvier, the director of Foyer Evangelique Orphanage, has provided us with a much more local summary of the situation and how it is effecting everyone both at OFEU and also in their surrounding community.
Message from Pastor Duckens Janvier:
Hello to all our generous supporters, true friends of Haiti for so many years, friends of children in great difficulty.
A big thank you to all who have supported us financially during this humanitarian crisis that touches thousands of people.
Schools in Haiti have not functioned since September 15 because of insecurity and popular protests that have blocked the roads and demand the resignation of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. These problems have aggravated my economic situation since my schools are closed and I cannot help the children in my care with the income from my schools. We can only count on the generous friends of HOST in Vermont led by our brave and compassionate friends Mariam Diallo and Sheila Humphreys and their Brattleboro committee who help us to eat and find medical care to survive this humanitarian disaster that has plagued Haiti for weeks.
Thanks to the generosity of several American friends of HOST who donated within the past week, we are trying to continue to support some of the church's families and maintain food supply in our community. Your donations have allowed the children at OFEU to eat 3 times a day despite the rate of inflation on food and drinking water. Now we have a sick child at OFEU who needs a lot of care but many government hospitals are not working because of lack of equipment, electricity, and medicine. Private hospitals are expensive but I have to bring this child there despite the cost in order to get him the healthcare he needs.
With your donations, you are making a difference by saving vulnerable children! Thank you very much for your generosity! My family continues to hope for the generosity of people like you to feed families with many starving children, children who are already malnourished, and others who are dying for lack of care.
I have faith that the situation of Haiti with all these demonstrations and blocked roads will stop soon to allow people to get back to work and produce enough for their survival in this country that is already too poor.
With all my gratitude and admiration,
Pastor Duckens Janvier
If you would like to help with urgent needs during this difficult time, Mariam and her team at HOST would be deeply grateful. The best way to make a tax-deductible donation is to either give Mariam a check at school, mail a check to Sheila, or send your donation by paypal. Checks can be made payable to
Trusteeship Institute and hand delivered to Mariam at school, or mailed to 36 Cedar Street, Brattleboro, VT 05301. You can also donate via our paypal account, which is linked to
Sheila's email address.
From Pastor Duckens and everyone at OFEU, thanks so much for your caring and support during this challenging time.
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There are exciting new items and many gift ideas for your Hilltop student, alum, parent/caregiver or grandparent. What a unique gift idea and a wonderful way to show your support of Hilltop!
Our Holiday “Pop-up Shop” is only live now through November 15th at midnight...Start shopping now!
Hilltop Montessori School themed items hats, sweatshirts, t-shirts, bags and more will be available for purchase.
Please check out the website
here
now.
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From Hilltop alum Julia Fedoruk and Hilltop Trustee/parent Alix Fedoruk:
Carry Me Home's annual Greek Supper Benefit will be on November 16, 2019 at Centre Congregational Church from 5-7pm. The supper will be $15 for those 12 and over, $8 ages 6-11, free for those aged 5 and under, and a maximum of $35 for a family. Please save the date on your calendars, and sign up on the forms in the lobby if you are able to donate ingredients, cook dishes ahead of time, or help out on the day of the event. Carry Me Home is in its 5th year collecting gently used clothing for people fleeing zones of conflict, in Europe as well as here in the US. We sort and pack most Fridays, 9:30am-noon at Centre Church, and new volunteers are always welcome. We are currently collecting winter clothing only: for children, tops, bottoms, and jackets for ages 4-7; for men, thin dark socks, jackets, t-shirts, all sizes S-M only; for women, leggings and jeans sizes M-L; for all ages, new/unused underwear, and sturdy winter shoes/boots. Donations may be placed in the box in the entryway. Checks to pay shipping costs (tax deductible) may be made out to Carry Me Home, and left with the front desk, or you may go to
Click Here
to donate via Paypal. For more information, please visit us on Facebook (
CarryMeHomeWithLove
), or contact Alix and Julia at
carrymehomecampaign@gmail.com
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How to Encourage Cooperation - without yelling, nagging or bribing
Wednesday November 13, 2019
We will discuss five ways to use routines, curiosity questions, “When/Then’s”, and playful interventions that will effectively motivate your child’s improved behavior.
Presenter: Flora McCormick, LCPC
November 13, 2019 04:00 PM in Mountain Time (US and Canada)
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