Newsletter, January 10, 2020

HMS NEWSLETTER | January 10, 2020

Hilltop Montessori School's mission is for students to

practice responsible independence in a caring community

of curious, critical learners and thoughtful citizens.

Visit our Website Calendar

Next Week

Monday, January 13

Equity & Anti-Bias Workgroup Meeting,

9-11am

LE & UE Knitting, 3:15-4:30
MS Basketball, 3:15-4:30

Tuesday, January 14

UE Basketball Game at Putney Central, 5:30pm

Wednesday, January 15

MS Basketball, 3:15-4:30
LE & UE Knitting, 3:15-4:30

Thursday, January 16

Mountain Days

Friday, January 17

UE Basketball, 3:15-4:30
7:00 pm Middle School Society Project @ 118 Elliot Street

Upcoming

Monday, January 20

NO SCHOOL: MLK Jr Day

Tuesday, January 21

UE Basketball 3:15-4:30

Wednesday, January 22

MS Basketball Game at Putney Central, 4pm
LE & UE Knitting, 3:15-4:30

Thursday, January 23

UE Basketball Game at Guilford Central, 4pm

Friday, January 24

UE Basketball 3:15-4:30

Mountain Days

The first Mountain Day was a huge success!! Thank you to our whole community: all the parent chaperones, drivers, staff members and warming hut people; Zack Rounds, Ray Blow and Brattleboro Ski Hill team; the staff who worked to make it all come together; and the students who enthusiastically started a new tradition!!

Curriculum Morning

Maria Montessori wrote a whole chapter on “Discipline” in her book The Montessori Method . As a "Montessori” school, we share her concept of discipline which is “very different from that commonly accepted.” Her concept of discipline is based on liberty.

We call an individual disciplined when (they) are master of (themselves), and can, therefore, regulate (their) own conduct when it shall be necessary to follow some rule of life. Such a concept of active discipline is not easy to comprehend or to apply, but certainly it contains a great educational principle, very different from the old-time absolute and undiscussed coercion to immobility. - MM

Her examples of “discipline” include development of self-regulation, executive function, autonomy, self-confidence, and self-control, in short “responsible independence”. This “discipline” is encouraged by:

the prepared environment that supports each age and size to be independent and controlled
the trained teacher who uses observation more than intervention

This year’s Curriculum Morning will be held on Saturday, February 8th and will cover the topic of discipline, as it applies to our Montessori classrooms and can extend to your home. Please mark your calendar and plan to join us for a morning of information sharing about how our classrooms work to develop responsible, independent, controlled individuals. We will also share how you, as caregivers, can support this important work at home. For, “the discipline to which the child habilitate (themselves) here is, in its character, not limited to the school environment but extends to society.”

Circus Arts is in the works as an activity for the children! Stay tuned.

Toddler Program

Stereognostic Bag fun with Josephine.

Maple washing the dishes with our new friend, Olive E.

Harrison, Olive, Philex and Mabyn helping to make rice pudding for snack with Françoise, yum!

Children's House

Welcome Back!

We hope everyone had a nice break full of family and joy.

We're back into the swing of things, making many exciting new discoveries. We have been happily exploring both our classrooms with new Winter materials, and our playground, with animal tracks and snow to explore!

Have a wonderful weekend, and see you soon.

- The Children's House

Lower El

It was nice to be reunited as a community this week! Students were enthusiastic about returning to their classroom. We have been occupied with reviewing basic math skills through both games and works- numeracy, subitizing, expanded form, and math facts - and exploring the coldest, windiest continent, Antarctica.

Ask your child:

How many seasons does Antarctica have?

Can you name some types of penguins that live there?

Does it snow often there?

Do any people live there?

Is Antarctica located on the North or the South Pole?

What is one insect that lives in Antarctica?

Have a wonderful weekend!

Kerstin, Patrick, and Amelia

Kennedy and Uri look over the Penguins and their Chicks layout.

Lower El-ers practice their math facts with dice games before Morning Meeting.

Asha works on his 5 Classes of Vertebrates poster.

After grouping them into 20 groups of 10, the Youngers discover that they have 200 Unifix Cubes.

Upper El

The Upper Elementary is beginning the new year with a study of chemistry. Each student is researching an element and experiments are underway. We are starting with an investigation of heat and, particularly, how well different materials conduct heat. Ask your student about the experiment pictured here: will an ice cube melt faster on an aluminum cupcake tin or one made from plastic? Why? Also pictured are Gabe and Lucas measuring how fast the hot water in the cup cools down and the cold water in the bowl heats up, depending upon the material from which the cup is made. They were measuring and recording the temperature every 30 seconds for 9 minutes. How does a plastic cup fare compared to a styrofoam or paper cup? Check this space next week to see graphs made from the data, and you will see for yourselves.

As we move into the “Westward Expansion” phase of U.S. history, we have begun with the perspectives of some groups who predated the United States. This week we explored the huge portion of the continent that belonged to Mexico after their own revolution for independence from Spain, and the events leading to the U.S. taking over a third of that territory! The students are now interpreting historical maps to help tell the story of these shifting boundaries. In class, the Olders, as part of their cultural connections work, are reading an article about families along the border today who can trace their Hispanic and Indian roots to before the U.S. was established.

We have also begun new lit and seminar books. The sixth graders are reading Locomotion , by Jacqueline Woodson, a story of a young man learning to express himself through poetry. The whole class, sixths included, is reading Tuck Everlasting , by Natalie Babbitt where the readers are asked whether or not they would drink from a spring that gives eternal life. Would you really want to be 11 years old for the rest of time? 20 years old?

Reminders: Students are required to have adequate winter gear here every day for recess, as well as separate indoor shoes (and dry socks if needed). Labelling will also help the gear remain in their possession.

Students salute then "hit the deck" in a lively game of Captain's Coming.

Sophia & Lydia take temperatures of water during the chemistry lesson.

Knitting during read aloud.

An introduction to Mountain Days.

Woohoo...more sledding fun.

Sledding fun!

Gabe prepares onions and garlic for Monday's 'simple meal' lunch.

Students salute during the game "Captain's Coming".

Middle School

The Middle School is hurtling forward into 2020. This week we commenced our new curriculum: “Struggle for the Earth - Climate Justice”, worked on finishing projects from last term, and jumped back into math, health, and language arts.

The focus of our upcoming work is climate justice and activism. We are beginning the term with a number of guest speakers. Today we spent the morning with Abby Mnookin, an activist with Mother Up and 350Vermont. On Monday, Emilie Kornheiser and Mollie Burke, state representatives and old friends of Hilltop, will speak with us about climate initiatives at the Vermont Statehouse, on Wednesday we have the extraordinary opportunity to spend an afternoon with one of the most important environmentalists and climate activists working today, Bill McKibben, and finally on Friday, Maria and Ward Ogden from Extinction Rebellion will be joining us. We want to thank all of our guests and Nancy Braus of Everyone’s Books for arranging our time with Mr. McKibben.

Everyone is invited to our “Society Project in the Time of Climate Change” film showing happening on Friday, January 17 at 7pm. The films are being shown at 118 Elliot. For this project, students selected, interviewed and photographed a member of the wider Brattleboro community and created a digital montage. The interview and resulting montage focused on how the individual in both their work and life addresses climate change. Also plan to make a visit to the Brooks Memorial Library during January and take a look at the student created Brattleboro History books on display in the lobby. They are creative and fascinating.

Language Arts

Refreshing some old but familar skills in Language Arts.

Language Arts Participle Lesson

Building Society Project Collages

Hilltop Community

Kids’ Night Out

Friday, January 24th

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, January 24th 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!

Community at Large

Please join Finn Campman and Helen Schmidt on January 10th at the Currier Center at the Putney School as they share new bodies of work, Findings & Gloamings.

Although the work is very different there is an interesting resonance between the two disparate styles. The card below provides the details.

Art-Music-and a nibble.