Room 3: As part of their recent study of owls, Room 3 students have sharpened their visual discrimination skills by sorting pictures of barn owls, spotted owls and great horned owls. This month, they are learning about nocturnal animals.

Room 4: This month Room 4 students are exploring the elements of dance and music as they dive deeper into the story and production of "The Nutcracker."

Students have been listening to the music of Peter Tchaikovsky and noticing the differences in instruments, tempo and volume. "The Nutcracker" also sparks further discussion of various December holidays and different aspects of the holidays that are important to families around the world.

Room 5: Amid the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, Room 5 teachers have been focused on making their classroom a quiet retreat. The children used a mortar and pestle to grind lavender, which they will use to make lavender-scented dough. They are also expanding their “steady beat” exercises - part of their arts integration curriculum.

Last week they tapped out the beat on different areas of their bodies, and this week they are adding movements.

Room 6: Last month, Room 6 students focused on forest animals, including bears, foxes, raccoons and deer, and discussed what names to use for their babies and what foods they eat.

As Thanksgiving approached, they read books about the holiday and discussed things they were thankful for. This month they have been discussing family traditions related to Christmas and Hanukkah. Last week they explored the menorah and the meaning of the candles and decorated paper Christmas trees. 

Room 16: In the last month, Room 16 students learned about their five senses, which they used to explore the WMS woods.

Before Thanksgiving, they visited Newlin Grist Mill, where they learned about waterwheel power and blacksmithing.

This month, students have been learning about different holidays and traditions around the world and sharing our own traditions.

Room 17: Leading up to Thanksgiving, Room 17 discussed thankfulness and how to show gratitude. Their fall unit on apples concluded with tasting three different kinds of apples, sharing descriptive words for each apple type and examining the parts of an apple. They also voted for their favorite: Gingergold.

This month, the students are learning about animal hibernation and adaptation for the winter season, as well as different celebrations of light around the world.

Room 19: Along with an introduction to the holidays celebrated by their classroom families, including Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, Room 19 students are focusing their attention on what it means to give through a community service project.

They read Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree” and decided to make their own Giving Tree project. They teamed up with the Ministry of Caring’s Adopt-A-Child program to collect new and gently used winter clothing, toys, games and other essentials. They decorated the tree with winter items such as mittens, hats, gloves and scarves.

This month, they are also learning about the Swedish Festival of St. Lucia. Throughout Sweden, towns are filled with the aroma of gingerbread. They look forward to decorating gingerbread cookies together next week.

Room 20: Last month, Room 20 students began learning about bats. They discussed the similarities between bat and human hands and fingers, learned what bats need to survive and how they indirectly benefit our everyday lives. Drawing on what they learned, they created bat information books. The kindergartners featured bats native to Delaware, while the younger students' books included facts they chose as a group. They worked with art teacher Laurie Muhlbauer to create bat-shaped books with accordion-folded paper for the wings.

This month, they're shifting their focus to how animals survive changing seasons, including hibernation.

Lower Elementary

How does a city or town provide what residents need? The 6-9 students are creating their own cities based on where they imagine they might live, work and play 20 years in the future. They laid out drawings of houses, buildings and parks, and then thought about what was missing. They began adding roads, schools, a police station, an amusement park, video game stores, restaurants and a landfill. The children then worked in groups to plan the layout of an effective city, experimenting with concepts like zoning for homes and businesses and having noisier areas like hospitals and roller coasters away from quiet residential areas. The next step was to lay cities next to each other to look for possible conflicts, such as whether a landfill at the edge of one city might encroach on a neighboring town resident's backyard.

Next they explored how they might share resources like an airport, power plant or military base, what local laws, rules and policies they might need, and what laws should be universal so all their cities will be successful and safe. They discussed what might happen if people don’t agree on these laws, which helps introduce them to the complex concept of the need for different levels of government for leadership, creation of fair laws and enforcement of rules.

Upper Elementary

Students were thrilled to host their grandfriends for Grandfriends' Day before the Thanksgiving break. As part of their ongoing study of immigration, they worked with their grandfriends to design quilt squares with details about how their families arrived in Delaware, and used their squares to make pillows.

After wrapping up their famous immigrant projects (on display across from the 9-12 classroom), the students discussed whether the United States is a melting pot (where different groups melt together to form a common culture) or a salad bowl (where groups are brought together but keep their own distinct qualities) or a mosaic (groups co-exist in society). Last Friday, the students traveled to Philadelphia to learn more about mosaic art at Magic Gardens and explore murals that depict immigration.

This week, each 9-12 student chose a state to study. They will create scale models of their states out of cookie dough, and next week they will bake, decorate and eat their cookies.

Middle School

Middle-schoolers have been working hard to complete their Montessori Model UN papers, which were due yesterday.

They have been reading "Piecing Me Together" by Renee Watson, about a teen girl named Jade who believes she must get out of her poor neighborhood if she's ever going to succeed. Students have been meeting once or twice a week in their small book club groups to discuss the book, work on comprehension questions and review vocabulary.

Middle-schoolers will be helping with Room 19's Ministry of Caring Adopt-a-Child project by wrapping all of the gifts they collect. 

This week and next, students will travel to Philadelphia to wrap up studies related to World Wars I and II. This week they will head to the Holocaust Awareness Center, where they will meet with a Holocaust survivor. Next Tuesday, they will visit the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to explore primary sources, and the Philosophical Society, where they will tour an exhibit on 18th-century map-making.

When they return from the winter break, they will begin studying the Cold War.