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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Upcoming Important Dates
Tuesday, December 18
- 8:30 - 9:15 am, Children's House Workshare
Thursday, December 20
- NO All School Gathering
- 8:45 - 9:45 am, Lower El Author's Tea
- 2:00 - 3:00 pm, Upper El Museum
Friday, December 21, Noon Dismissal
- 8:30 - 9:30 am, Upper El Museum
- 9:30 am - 12:00 pm, Upper El Gift Making
- 12:00 pm, Cookie Swap and Raffle in the Arts Barn
Winter Break, December 24 - Jan 4
Students return Monday, January 7
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Cookie Boxes: $10/box at the Swap
Raffle Tickets for sale at the front desk and at the Swap:
$2 each, 3 for $5, or 8 for $10;
Raffle drawing promptly at 12:30
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Recently, some of the Children’s House and Toddler Program teachers attended a training on “Raising Children in a Violent Society” by Scott Noyes. The workshop focused on violent media and its effects on children’s development. Some of the information may be familiar to you, but we found some interesting and perhaps surprising facts as well.
According to over 3000 studies, children are affected by the violence they see on screen. Less than 20 studies exist that take the opposite stance, and a number of those were funded by the media industry. We wanted to share some of the things we learned with you. According to Mr. Noyes, 3 things are consistently shown in the research, as quoted below.
- Children who see aggressive problem behaviors on television tend to rely on those behaviors in real-life.
- Children who view T.V. violence see other people as "enemies" and become less concerned about other people's pain.
- Children begin to show less remorse about their own and other people's aggressive behaviors after viewing violent television.
Unfortunately, “violent media” is not just targeted to adults. Even programming specifically geared to very young children often has violence and other troubling themes. Most popular include the death of a mother, girls in need of rescue by boys, and the physically strongest characters always winning. Violence is often committed by the “hero” characters, sending the message that violence is ok if you are a “good guy” and that a “bad guy” deserves to be hurt or killed. Since children always think of themselves as the “good guy” during conflicts, this creates a terrible model for problem solving! Today’s children’s media is also far more violent on average than what we saw just 2 or 3 decades ago.
All of this begs the question of how we can best support children in this kind of climate. The workshop offered a few concrete suggestions, including the following:
- Watch programs with the child and talk about the behavior choices.
- Reduce the violent program diet. After that, educational programs may be all that is allowed.
- Less effective but a step in the right direction would be making a deal, "You may watch this program as long as you don't act that way.” (This kind of impulse control is often far too difficult for young children to be successful.)
- Provide media education by offering activities like asking children to count how many times a character hurts another character.
- And, of course, just turn it off! (May be easier said than done, but the best solution possible.)
Wishing all of you a lovely and relaxing weekend!
-The Toddler and Children’s House teachers
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Handwashing at the handwashing stand
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Sophie S. reads a book to Cheryl.
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Connor experiments with the knobless cylinders.
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Kaleb works on the hundred board.
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Oliver and Mazin throw a "snowball".
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This week, as part of our big push to master multiplication facts this month, Older students were introduced to a work known in Lower El as the decanomial layout. During this work, bead bars are laid out in a geometric pattern as the corresponding math fact is spoken aloud. For the impressive grand finale, we stacked all the squares of the decanomial into the Tower of Squares pyramid.
For Middlers, synonym study has provided some great opportunities to talk vocabulary. For instance, what does "facile" mean? What is a synonym for "decay"? Can you find one for "weary"?
Youngers are learning about digraphs now. You can ask your child what a digraph is. Spoiler Alert: Two or more consonants that make a single sound. What are some examples of digraphs?
We are studying biomes. A biome is a community of plants and animals living together in a certain climate. Biomes include oceans, wetlands, deserts, temperate and tropical forests, and grasslands. Our new biome map of the world is on the shelf. Lower El students are used to working with individual biome continent maps, and this new material brings the world together and allows them to compare biomes from one continent to the other. Three levels of command cards encourage them to think more deeply about the biomes in each continent. Also as part of this work, children have been playing "the question game," which invites them to think about every aspect of a biome: the climate, soil, water, plants, animals, and human impact.
We look forward to welcoming you to our
Author's Tea next Thursday, December 20th, at 8:45.
Enjoy your weekend!
Kerstin, Patrick, and Amelia
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Leo and Matai proudly working on the decanomial layout as a way of practicing their multiplication facts.
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Ayla works on a command card as part of our study of biomes.
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Esme and Eleanor explore a Question and Answer layout related to the characteristics of the seven biomes.
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Patrick and his reading group work on sight words.
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We had a great time on our field trip to BMAC! Here are some pictures:
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THE WORK HAS BEGUN ...
The auspicious sounds of cardboard being cut reverberates through the art room; gooey hands work to create paper mache models; electric wiring is set to reveal light bulbs and buzzers correlated to your responses for a Q&A or true/false quiz game; clay structures, now dry, await a coat of paint; the sewing machine hums along stitching needed costumes; microscope and stereoscope are dusted off to reveal points about animal physiology... In the frenzy of activity, teachers chase down students, admonishing them to add more details, transition words, or punctuation to their research paragraphs.
Yes, preparations for the first UE museum of the year are well underway.
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SPOILER ALERT!!
For the first time ever, we are offering up our full menu of museum topics to ignite your curiosity. Bring your dancing feet, for you might be invited to join in a spontaneous rendition of the Tsamikos--a Greek line dance. We’ll see you
next Thursday, Dec. 20 (2-3:00 p.m.) or Friday, Dec. 21 (8:30-9:15).
- Giant sloth and wooly mammoth (Abby and Kiersten)
- Electric eel and electric ray (Ava and Luci)
- Greek columns (Cara)
- “Firsts” in the history of first ladies (Carmen)
- Dance in ancient Greece (Ciana)
- The Komodo Dragon (Corbin)
- Barrel making in colonial times (Davey)
- Sea Jellies, and the Box Jellyfish (Finnegan and Tucker)
- Roman Gladiators (Gabe and Lucas)
- Wolf-dog comparison (Iris)
- The ballista (Luke and Pete)
- Roman colosseum (Max and Talia)
- Lizards: gecko and thorny devil (Mark and Will)
- Athens vs. Sparta (Morgon and Rhys)
- Presidential assassination attempts (Parker)
- Expansion of presidential power (Shoshi)
- Animal fur (Skyler)
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Also, the 6th graders have been working with Jaime in health class this month to focus on internet safety and digital health. Topics include digital footprints, strategic searching, and internet privacy. To encourage dialogue at home around digital health, the students have been sent home with tasks to complete and "Family Tip" sheets to read through with their families. For more information and to explore resources that we've been using, please visit
Common Sense Media
. For any questions or to share any thoughts, please feel free to
email Jaime
directly.
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In the middle school, we often talk about the importance of actively engaging with our history. The painfully true but often stated mantra of being doomed to repeat history if we continue to be willfully ignorant of our history is often brought up in discussions as we navigate the difficult waters of our collective national story. We read and analyze a wide array of primary source materials but still our past can feel very distant from us and we understand it only in an objective academic manner. This week we took a different and much more personal approach. Students presented their “Where Do I Come From?” projects. In this project students were asked to investigate their origins in this country. The project process took place alongside our exploration of immigration in the United States. Once students determined an ancestor that emigrated from somewhere else, they gathered as much information about them as they could and then in a collective burst of research and creativity represented their story. Students created journals, diaries, stop action animation videos, paintings, timelines, and slide shows. When all the stories are put together, the remarkable fabric of our country is clear. For this project we followed a different mantra: the more we know about our past, the more we know about ourselves.
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Where Do I Come From Presentation
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Where Do I Come From Project
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The Story of Grandparents' Arrival
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THANK YOU
to Skyler Jean Nunez-Alvarez for her artistic eye in lobby decorating!
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The UE elective finished the Mud Kitchen, which will be part of the Children's House playground. They also expanded the Bead Frame to quantify up to 100,000 and added wheels to a table used by AfterCare.
A group of Middle School students have been working with Kegan, Milo, Finn and Nora Friday mornings to complete various projects on campus. They posted signs on our property boundary, assisted in setting up theater lighting, built a lid for the MS compost bin, built light boxes for the AfterCare program, and put new "feet" on their classroom chairs.
These community service projects have been a great way to engage students in the tending of our shared community. I (Kegan) appreciate the enthusiasm and focus students have brought and look forward to our spring projects.
THANK YOU!
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THANK YOU
to
Hazel Pizza
for providing delicious pizzas for the students and staff every week! Yum yum! 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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Cheryl's centerpieces will also be for sale at the Cookie Swap on the 21st.
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NEYT Presents
Rags
What happens after
Fiddler on the Roof
?
NEYT answers this question in their wonderful new production of
Rags
, an uplifting musical that tells the story of Jewish immigrants during the height of the great wave of immigration flooding into America from Eastern Europe in 1910.
The show is chock-full of extraordinary musical numbers all framed within a moving and inspiring story about love, loss, courage, faith and what it means to be American. Don't miss it!
Rags
performs
December 6-8 and 13-15 at 7pm, and December 8-9 and 15-16 at 2pm
. Tickets for these performances are $15 for Adults, $13 for Seniors, and $13 for Students.
Tickets may be purchased in advance at
www.neyt.org
, in person at the NEYT Box Office, or by phone (802) 246-6398 from 12-5pm on Wednesdays. The show plays at New England Youth Theatre, 100 Flat Street in Brattleboro, Vermont.
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