Cobham Montessori School

Newsletter W/C 3rd March 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

NOTICES

Coffee Morning

Following our consultation of parents regarding the coffee mornings we have moved our upcoming session from Wednesday 12th to Friday 14th March. We will be discussing how we use the Montessori materials to help children explore Mathematical concepts.

We will run the coffee morning only if there is sufficient interest- with that in mind we have created a sign-up link here- please let us know if you are able to attend or not.

As always, the Children's House will be open to any children who do not normally attend for the duration of the coffee morning.

Parent Meetings

Thank you to everyone who has attended a parent meeting so far. We love showing you what your children have been up to when they're in school every day; and we love getting insight from your perspective as parents at home. As always we can make ourselves available if there is something specific that you wish to discuss, let us know via email or at the door if you need a longer discussion.

Colin Bull Swimming Lessons

We have been gifted a voucher for one term of free swimming lessons with Colin Bull (based in Epsom and Leatherhead). If anyone can make use of this please let us know. If there is lots of interest we can draw names from a hat! The voucher is for the summer term.

Book Tokens

Everyone should have received their book tokens in celebration of World Book Day. You can spend them either on one of the Book Day books, or get £1 off any book in participating book shops. We still have quite a stash, so if you have missed out (or misplaced) your book tokens then please just let us know.

THIS WEEK IN SCHOOL

Children's House

In the last two weeks in the Children's House, we enjoyed sharing your child(ren) 's progress at the parent meetings, and we hope you enjoyed a snapshot of their days with us.

We have new fish in the fish tank; our water friends keep coming. We have beautiful and colourful Platys. 'Yes, the baby has new friends!' and 'Look at them, they look happy.'

Miss Hayley was given a book on yoga, 'Can you make it into yoga?' Miss Hayley accepted twice the challenge, and the children spent half an hour doing 'bird poses' and 'fishing poses'. 'A Busy Day for Birds' by Lucy Cousins and 'Funny Fish' from Read with Oxford collection.

We have read the book 'When I'm Feeling Angered' by Trace Moroney: ' It's OK to feel angry but not OK to hurt others when we are angry.' When the teacher asked what we could do when we are feeling angry, a child said, 'Cuddle ourselves. Another popular book is 'Why I Love My Friends' by Daniel Howarth. 'You are my BEST friend', and a friend replied, 'I am friendly to everyone in the Children's House.'

For cooking these weeks, the children prepared avocado toast (rice cake) with beetroot and olives, and Cauliflower popcorn! They collaborated and were curious to see the end result in both recipes.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cauliflower_popcorn_12307- It was delicious. We used half of the ingredients, and the other half were substitutes! The first recipe they named it 'surprise breakfast'. We encourage you to allow them to prepare snacks or breakfast for you. Offer them ingredients, and let them do the magic.

As we had many avocado stones, we ended this week doing an experiment. We put the avocado stones on cotton-wool,soil, submerged in water, in an empty container and on top of a bottle full of water. We are going to observe what happens and which environment is optimal for the stones to start sprouting.

In sports, the children have been practising football. They've played 4 Corner Game and Dribbling following a traffic light - yellow go, red stop and yellow tap the ball ten times!

This week's conversations

A child approaches with a wide and proud smile and a folded cloth in her hand.

Miss B: Oh, has Miss A helped you?

Ch1: No, I did it (the smile even wider now)

Ch2: Didn't you know? Miss A doesn't come today.

Ch3: She comes for yoga!

Playing I Spy Game

Ch1: 'Dice was one of the objects in I Spy Box. Now it's not anymore.'

Ch2: 'I beat daddy with a dice, backgammon, I like backgammon.'

Garden time. Two children playing hospital

Ch1: I'm dead in hospital waiting for a doctor.

(a few minutes later, the doctor arrives)

Ch1: I'm feeling better.

Ch1 to Ch2: Now you are dead. Stick your tongue out.

Two children who wanted to work together but have been shown different materials and have already done yoga, Classified Cards…

Ch1: I know!!! You do work at the easel, and I work here (workbench)

Ch2: YES!

Ch1: We are working neighbours.

Naming objects in I Spy

Ch: Not an elephant. It's a woolly mammoth. It has a coat, and elephants don't have a coat. Woolly mammoths live in a cold country.'

Grown-up conversation. Dreaming BIG

Ch1: When I am older I will go t oElementary.

Ch2: I will be a teacher.

Ch3: I will go to a different school. But will come to visit.

Ch4: I will be a teacher-mummy.

Elementary

We have had so much work come to fruition this week we were treated to four different presentations!

One group have spent a number of weeks on their "bug" research, looking at different insects and each producing a poster. Each individual poster was bursting with written facts and colourful, inspiring illustrations. The children took turns in sharing their facts and presenting their work to the rest of the class. The group were also invited to share their work with the Children's House later in the week where they inspired much interest and admiration.

Our next presentation was on the subject of the Blue-Ringed Octopus. The pair were inspired to create a piece of work in just a week, they researched, wrote about and illustrated a beautiful poster in a very short time-frame. Previously the pair have worked together but results took rather longer and they were both incredibly proud of their speed and the improved quality of their work. Their presentation sparked a beautiful discussion on the creature they had researched, with the other children asking probing and insightful questions. Both children were well able to answer and reason their responses and everyone gained knowledge from their shared project.

One of our older friends treated us to an in-depth investigation of the history of the toilet! As you can imagine there was much hilarity, talking about how the toilet has changed over the centuries, how much toilet paper one uses and whether boys wipe after a wee! Everyone is feeling very grateful that we live in modern times and don't have to resort to digging a hole in the ground any longer, or use the toilet with ten other people watching!

Finally, we were treated to the culmination of the WWI & II project which three of our friends embarked upon following a brief discussion (which was not intended to lead to any further lessons!) This presentation was highly interactive, with the measuring tape revealing the size of tanks, and weights to demonstrate the restrictive nature of rationing. The presentation culminated in a quiz, revealing who had been able to recall information shared by the children.

These presentations are indicative of the progression of work in the Elementary classroom, initially, children will work in parallel with one another, completing their own piece of finished work, but on a shared subject. They will exchange facts with one another but complete their own discrete piece of work that they can keep themselves. Later, after many hours of negotiation and development of collaborative skills, two children might produce a single piece of work together, sharing the writing and illustrations as well as the work involved in reading and research. Eventually, the children have developed sufficient skills that they can produce a complex piece of work, which might include several elements, at greater depth of interest, combining their skills together to make a coherent, shared, final piece of work. This process takes years but leaves the children with an invaluable skill-set which will serve them life-long.

In Forest School, we really embraced the change in season and observed the many emerging signs of spring. We went out into the park and collected wild garlic and firewood and enjoyed garlic bread back at base. Some of the younger children enjoyed being shown how to use the flint and steel to spark the fire - and discovered it isn't as easy as it appears!

World Book Day on Thursday gave us an excuse (as if one is needed) to get all the books out in the environment and explore new series for children to get their reading teeth into. Some children were heard to exclaim "reading is my favourite!", "I love the smell of books!" and "have you read this one? It's really good!". We hope you are all continuing to read together at home, one child told us this week, with a beaming smile on their face: "I've started reading for longer at home, now I really love reading".

We will need scooters for Friday next week.

We hope you are all enjoying the beautiful spring wekend!

Kind regards,

Yvonne