Violin Lesson Update Dec 2010

The  children are progressing beautifully on their violins. We have moved from air bowing and plucking (pizzicato) to now playing rhythms on the violins with our bows. And we have even added background accompaniment to our songs as we play!

The children are quick to remember correct playing posture. We love to sing (to the tune of twinkle twinkle little star) as we get into rest position...

Rest position, toes in line

scrolls in front that's mighty fine

now let's take a look and see

if the bridge is peaking at you and me

Now it's time to take a bow...

I can see my toes now! 

We have begun working on learning our "finger numbers" through a "Where's Mr. 1st Finger?" game that also develops the fine motor control of the fingers that is needed for string instruments. This is definitely a favorite activity in violin class right now as many children request it each week!

Suzuki Violin Lessons!

This week was the first that many of our toddler and primary students attended Suzuki Violin lessons with Kari Wax.  Kari is a trained Montessori guide (0-6yrs) and is currently teaching at the Montessori school of Alemeda. She and her husband (who is attending MINW this year) moved to Portland from Arizona with their three children earlier this fall.

Kari is also a trained Suzuki violin instructor and has been giving Suzuki violin lessons in Montessori schools for many years. She thoughtfully combines her understanding of the Montessori classroom with her Suzuki training to provide a wonderfully rich and fun musical experience for the children!

More than fifty years ago, Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki realized the implications of the fact that children the world over learn to speak their native language with ease. He began to apply the basic principles of language acquisition to the learning of music, and called his method the mother-tongue approach. The ideas of parent responsibility, loving encouragement, constant repetition, etc., are some of the special features of the Suzuki approach.

Since an integral part of the Suzuki method is parent involvement and the CMS students attend their lessons while still in school one way that we'd like to keep parnets engaged is by posting a weekly update on the CMS blog. 

Here's is Kari's note about this weeks lesson:

Our first week of violin lessons was a great success!  I was so pleased to find that the children were all very excited to begin.  We "moved our feet to the beat" of the drum, and then we used careful listening skills as we jumped on the word "POP" in the song Pop Goes the Weasel. We sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star legato style as we pretended to smoothly swirl water. Then we sang it again staccato style and pretended to splash the water. We learned the parts of the violin through a song, made a rest position cradle under our arms, and practiced our bows.  Other highlights included tapping out rhythms both pianissimo and fortissimo (soft and loud) with rhythm sticks, air bowing with our violin bows, and practicing proper playing position.  And the grand finale to our class was plucking "POP" on our violin strings as we sang Pop Goes the Weasel. 

Great Snack Idea!

We had a very successful snack this week that I wanted to share with everyone! 

Diego helped to whisk the eggs!

Stefan and Riley helped to tear the bread!

The recipe comes from a book called The Sneaky Chef to the Rescue, by Missy Chase Lapine.  This book and her first book simply titled The Sneaky Chef are full of great recipes that utilize vegetable purees inside traditional "kid" foods,  http://www.thesneakychef.com/

We chatted a little at our parent night about the idea of "sneaking" nutrients into our kids food....is it a good idea...will our kids every learn to love (or even tolerate) veggies if they never eat them in their natural form?  Heather Garrison, Ian's mom, had a great idea that she uses with Ian. Whenever she sneaks a veggie into a food (like spinach scrambled eggs) she always offers the veggie in its natural form on the side.  That way Ian is getting a chance to taste the veggie and experience its natural texture.

This week the children made:


"Breakfast Banana Bread Pudding"

• 1 cup low fat milk (we use hemp milk for our dairy/soy intolerant friends)
• 4 large eggs
• 2 Tbl of maple syrup
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup Orange Puree (a blend of carrots and sweet potato)..we added even more of this good stuff!
• 3 large bananas mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)...you could really use any fruit (pear, apple, berries)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 Tbl of melted butter (or oil)
• 6 slices of whole-grain bread (torn/cut into 2" pieces)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease or spray a 2 quart (11x7inches) glass baking dish.  In the prepared baking dish, whisk together all the ingredients except the bread.  Add the bread and toss to combine.  Let sit for a few minutes until the bread absorbs most of the liquid (its best if it sits overnight).  Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes.  Uncover and sprinkle with a little more cinnamon and continue baking another 15-20 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the pudding is firm in the center.  Serve warm, drizzle with maple syrup if desired. 

Yummy!

Meal Times at CMS

Meal times are a wonderfully social event at Cedar Montessori School.  The toddlers enjoy all of their meals (snacks and lunch) at a large banquet style table in the dining room. The toddlers typically eat morning snack around 10:15am and lunch around 12:15pm. The primary children have snack available in the kitchen between 9am-10:30am and they are able to choose snack (2 children at a time) from the snack shelf.  For lunch the primary children arrange all the classroom tables in small groups of 2-4 settings and every Friday they put all the tables together in a large banquet style table (that's a lot of gross motor work to move all those tables)! For the children staying for aftercare a second snack is served in both the toddler and primary house around 3:30pm, once everyone has woken up from their nap.


Every meal time is an opportunity to practice the many important grace and courtesies that will help your child be able to better participate in family meals and social meals out in public. There are several basic practices that we support to make our meal times pleasant and graceful:

• The table is always set for every meal with place mats, napkins, dishes, glasses, utensils and usually a lovely floral or seasonal arrangement.  In the toddler house each child sets their own spot at the table (taking items from individual prepared baskets). In the primary house each child sets their own spot for snacks and their is usually a team of children in charge of setting all the tables for lunch time. Some great places to find child sized cutlery, glasses and dishes are Ikea, Kobos, Kitchen Kaboodle, Montessori Services http://www.montessoriservices.com and Micheal Olaf, http://www.michaelolaf.net/
• A blessing is said once everyone is ready to eat.  We rotate between two different blessings:  The Earth is Good to Me (sung to the tune of Johny Apple Seed) and This Pretty Planet
• Food is always eaten sitting down at a table (and sometimes in the grass if we are having a picnic).  If a child is interested in getting up and leaving the table we invite them to either sit back down and finish their meal or clear their spot if they are finished eating.  We respect that each child knows how much food is enough for their body.  Eating is an activity that should be giving the same time, attention and respect as any other activity in the classroom. 
• Once a child is finished eating they participate in cleaning up their spot.  Obviously a new or very young child may only be able to clean up part of their setting (perhaps a napkin or a dish) but as children grow and become more settled in their environment they participate in cleaning up more and more of their space.



We had a great turn out at our last parent night on the topic of meal times and nutrition.  Using a PowerPoint presentation Cree, Meg and Hilary discussed how we present meal times and food preparation activities at CMS.  We also presented some ideas and information from Ellyn Satter regarding "divisions of responsibility in feeding".  To find out more about Ellyn Satter please check out her website, www.EllySatter.com. 

During our parent night many of our families discussed the desire to create a "database" of lunch time idea.  We are all busy working families and we can sometimes get stuck in a "food rut" so its nice to share ideas and shake up the lunch box routine from time to time.  I think it's also important to remember that many children enjoy the same food every day and are not bothered by a "routine" lunch...as long as the major food groups are being represented and consumed at most meals don't worry that you need to be creating a new lunch box masterpiece each day! 

Several of the parents suggested a couple of flicker pages that give good ideas for lunches and focus on the "laptop lunch box" bento designed lunches.

• http://www.flickr.com/groups/laptop_lunches/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/weelicious/sets/72157623631835155/with/4987966082/

Please have look at these websites and feel free to use this blog as a sounding board to share lunch time ideas...Bon Appetite!

The Moveable Alphabet

When young children have discovered that words are made up of sounds and know some of the symbols for these sounds, they can begin writing.  Montesori suggested using a premade-alphabet, so the child is not limited by their ability to write with a pencil (we have many other activities that help strengthen a child's pincer grip and pencil control).

The Large Moveable Alphabet is made of plastic or wooden letters that the child uses to build words, phases and eventually sentences...laying each letter out on a rug. This activity is introduced to a child once he/she recognize 10-12 letters by their sound (or phoneme).  This is typically somewhere between 4 and 5 years of age.  The child is invited to think of a word and then find the letters that they hear, in the order that they hear them.  These initial word building activities are all practice "building" words rather than "spelling" words.  For the first few months that a child works with the moveable alphabet there is no redirction to "spelling" a word correctly, rather everything is phonetic.

Some real examples of the words children  have built with the moveable alphabet are:

•  elfnt (elephant)
• wlrs (walrus)
• mi cor iz blw (my car is blue)
• sprm wals et cril (sperm whales eat krill)

Unlike Italian, which is a completely phonetic language, English is hodgpodge of various languages and not phonetic at all!  To address "spelling" we introduce the child to phonograms (two letters together make a new sound for example "p"+"h" = the sound "f" and puzzle words (for example; the, we, I, their).  This is typically introduced to a child in their kindergarten year between 5-6 years of age using smaller moveable alphabet sets.

The First Post

Welcome to the Cedar Montessori School Blog.  I will be posting program information, educational information and pictures to this blog on a weekly basis.  Please check it out periodically!