2022 Newsletter Term 01 | Issue 05 – Farmhouse Montessori School

APRIL

Fri 8th – Last day of Term
Fri 15th – Good Friday
Mon 18th – Easter Monday
Mon 25th – Anzac Day – Public Holiday
Tues 26th – All Students Return
Tues 26th – New Starter Orientation – 3.45-4.30pm Elouera
Fri 29th – Staff Development Day

MAY

Fri 6th – Mothers’ Day: Primary 9.00am-10.30am
Fri 6th – Preschool Mum’s Mixer – 7.30pm – Preschool Campus
Mon 9th – Fri 13th – Parent Teacher Conferences: Burbangana & Elouera
Wed 11th – Primary School Tour 3.30pm
Mon 16th – Fri 20th – Parent Teacher Conferences: Kindergarten & Cooinda
Tues 10th – Fri 20th – NAPLAN

Click HERE to see further calendar dates.

Dear Farmhouse Montessori Families,

We are nearing the end of a busy first term and are inviting you to read the last edition of the Farmhouse Newsletter for this term.

At the commencement of this school year with children returning to classes, teachers, and peers, we had little idea of how the start of the year might transpire or what to expect given the long period of online learning and Covid restrictions that we had. Two years of disrupted learning and Montessori school life, particularly for 2021, left their mark on all of us, particularly children. For our educators this meant focussing on reconnecting children with Montessori learning and work habits, routines, and classroom etiquettes. Our dedicated staff made particular effort to model and remind children how to interact courteously, collaboratively as a group and to respect and support one another. In the younger year groups, children again needed to get used to leaving mum and dad at the gate and needed time to feel that same level of comfort and contentment they had previously, and our staff have been wonderful in working with our families. Routines and lessons of grace and courtesy, next to the many other wonderful learning experiences offered, played an important part in children’s activities over the last few months. The Farmhouse team are looking forward to having children back after a well deserved and joyful Easter break.

Farmhouse Chess Club

Farmhouse Montessori School is delighted to announce the launch of our very own Chess Club from the beginning of term 2.

The Chess Club will be trialled on Monday’s from 3pm to 3:45pm in the Akiya Conference room and is open to students from Kindergarten to Yani. The club is of course supported by staff but will be parent facilitated. There is currently a small team of parents organising the club and they welcome further involvement. If you have an interest in chess or would like to volunteer, please reach out. Otherwise, you can sign your children up and indicate your interest in volunteering on this google form. We can accommodate up to 16 students each Chess Club.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out. We are very excited to bring this opportunity to the community as we have seen a wide interest in the game across our classes.

Harmony Week

This year’s Harmony Week was filled with a variety of cultural activities for children across both campuses and ended with an open classroom afternoon for our families. Primary parents were invited to come into classes to view projects and work prepared by our children. Many thanks to all parents and carers who have come to visit and who have enjoyed time with the children in classrooms.

Students from the primary campus extended an invitation to the preschool and all of our Kindergarten children were up at North Head for a morning participating in a range of cultural activities.

Looking towards Term 2

We have of course been planning on events for the coming term. Some of the events we would like you to look out for on the calendar are:

Parent Education – Cosmic Education in the Primary
Parent Orientation for preschool families – Let’s talk about Montessori primary
Mother’s Day
Parent Teacher Interviews
Meet the Primary School Team – discussion with primary parents (face to face)

I wish you all a wonderful Easter break and look forward to seeing you at the start of Term 2.

Best wishes

Sabine Adigun | Principal

This week in Elouera we made our famous hot-cross-buns to take home and share with our families! This recipe uses our basic bread recipe but adds some festive ingredients, we enjoyed tasting the currants & cranberries and smelling the cinnamon and mixed spice. We also used some new baking/cooking skills to make the hot cross buns, We practiced our bilateral coordination when we used to hands to roll the dough into balls and we practiced our spatial perception when we lined the balls up on the baking tray.

— Corinne, Sarah & Nina

Montessori classrooms are divided into mixed-age groupings, such as from 3 to 6 years, and the students stay with one class and one teacher for an entire 3-year cycle. The mixed-age classroom is fundamental to the Montessori method. Older students have the chance to become mentors to their younger classmates, while learning and practicing important leadership skills. Younger children naturally look up to and emulate older children, and so in a classroom with a range of ages, there are always natural opportunities for a child to be a leader. Older students can learn the joy of teaching their younger peers.

Children learn a great deal simply by observing. Watching older children do their work not only provides a model for how to proceed, but it also motivates young students to practice and achieve mastery over their tasks. Both younger and older students have a chance to implicitly develop a “growth mindset” by observing all three years of the learning process in one classroom. Watching younger students progress from one material to the next teaches older students the value of practice and hard work. Conversely, younger students look up to their older classmates, and look forward to reaching their level of ability.

— Amanda, Teresa and Claire

Celebrations

Young children are at their stage of development of beginning to understand who they are in their community and in the global community. This involves becoming connected to their world and one of the ways we show this is through the participation in traditions and practices of their family and different communities. This week we have been working on how different cultures celebrate Easter. We have been using craft and cooking to support this experience. Reading stories about other children in other cultures celebrating the same event but differently helps children become aware and respectful of similarities and differences of other cultures, heritage and traditions.

This week we made marshmallows to share with our families as well as dyeing hard boiled eggs.

– Jenny, Catalina, Jo & Angela

Over the term in sustainability we have discussed ‘reducing’ how much waste we produce and also ‘reusing’ again and again eg our water bottles and lunchboxes. The children enjoy listening to stories, creating their own art work to represent their learning and playing ‘the choices game’. Children are given an item eg a take away coffee cup or a plastic bag then they go and make a better choice, a keep cup and a usable bag, and everyone congratulates them “good choice!”

We want the children to appreciate and respect their environment, to feel engaged and empowered as they contribute to a sustainable future. “You are never too little to make a difference” and our little eco warriors make a difference every day.

– Dawn

This term has been an important term for Aikya as a stage 2 Montessori classroom. After the lockdown hiatuses of last year and the consequent interruption to the children’s learning on so many significant social and emotional levels, it’s been wonderful to have our children and families back and to reconnect them with classroom routines and work habits. Our families are imperative to supporting the development of social skills, emotional intelligence, and academic well-being within the children over time.

The Montessori classroom community is unique from any other learning setting. Children are actively challenged to collaborate and contribute to class life, meaning every individual is vital to the community. This term has seen the children return to this learning journey.

It was terrific to invite our parent community to share in our learning environment this past fortnight. The children were proud to show off their “big work” on continents and show parents around the classroom.

It has also been inspiring to see the ride to school group persevere each week this term. Furthermore, next term will see the start of our Chess Club, again bringing the community together to support the children’s growth.

As I’m sure you can feel, we have missed the connection to our community, and we are thankful for all your collaborative efforts.

– Harshitha, Toby, Thomas

The last two weeks of school we have been busy completing follow up work and finishing on going projects. For language, we have been focusing on writing syllabic poems. Some of the children have created beautiful haikus and cinquains following a given structure. Sometimes it’s hard because we have to look for specific words that fit the right syllables.

Other children have been studying the Industrial Revolution and how it affected migration to Australia. We have looked at old photographs and paintings and discussed why people migrate to different places. On the other hand, some other children have been learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander customary way of life, and have enjoyed creating Identity maps.

We celebrated Harmony Week and had the chance to invite families in to present our projects on different countries and cultures of the world. This year, we learned about Greece, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Cuba. It was great to be able to share what we had learnt with our loved ones in the classroom.

We hope everybody has a lovely holiday and we are looking forward to seeing everybody back for term 3.

— Laura & Thomas.

PRE-SCHOOL CAMPUS (Kindies)

We’ve continued with crochet and rest work, writing our own beats. We’ve also started building musical layers with our new song ‘Make Some Lemonade’.
We learnt the beat, the rhyme and added some body percussion, broke into 3 groups to play them all together on the glockenspiels and our bodies. Layer upon layer, like building blocks!

PRE-SCHOOL CAMPUS (Juniors)

For our other classes, we have been trying very hard to coax Mr Sun to come out with a song! We’ve been learning about the musical alphabet with a chant to help us remember! Lots of work on ‘dynamics’ – our musical word for soft and loud, often referred to by the kids as ‘dymanics’ because it’s a hard word to get around!

AKIYA

Akiya have been learning all about the music fundamentals of rhythm and pitch. Using body percussion to play drum beats they have learnt about. ‘Whole’, ‘half’, ‘quarter’ and ‘eighth note’ rhythms…Yes!.. We’re using some maths fractions in music!!! On Xylophones they have learnt about the notes on the musical staff and how to play some classic riffs and melodies all together like ‘7 Nation Army’, ‘You Can Call Me Al’ and ‘We Will Rock You’.

YANI

Yani have been learning all about the Ukuleles this term. By learning to read tablature (TAB) and chord Diagrams the students have been playing and singing ‘Let It Be’ by the Beatles. The students have also learnt how to play a C major pentatonic scale on the Ukulele with some even using this to improvise their own solos!

MONTESSORI BAND

The band has made a great start to the year and has been working hard on an arrangement of Believer by Imagine dragons. They also started playing TNT by ACDC last week and it sounded excellent after just 1 rehearsal….All in preparation for Evergreen Music’s Hard Rock camp in the upcoming school holidays! There are still spots available for the camp and you can find out more and book online here!

https://www.evergreenmusic.com.au/holidayprograms

We can’t wait for another term of music making. Have a wonderful school holidays!

Learn to PLAY Music
Learn to LOVE Music

…Be a Musician for LIFE!