October 2021 – Mr. Patrick & Mrs. Buonadonna

Dear Greene Towne Families,

As we make our way into November, I want to start by thanking you all for not letting a Halloween on a Sunday completely derail Monday back at school! I expected some sugar hangovers, but everyone was remarkably composed on November 1st.

Now that we’ve had a decent amount of time together, we are so pleased to see stronger relationships forming among our students. Our first year students have been developing strong bonds with each other over work and play, and we hope they are telling you all about these. Our second and third year students have really been building a more defined cohort, and doing so naturally. As each one of them is given opportunities to model behavior and demonstrate work to younger students, they are simultaneously noticing that the work that the K’s do is becoming more attainable. And those K’s have had a nearly insatiable appetite for new challenges this year. It’s all we can do to keep up with them. There is a lot of work to do in the beginning of the year to get everyone on the rails – and we can all still expect some moments off the rails – but it’s wonderful to see how far we’ve already come since September.

When parents and teachers look at the time students spend in the classroom, we of course have different vantage points. Some students might come home on Friday with a dozen paintings, or they might have strung up a new bracelet seemingly each day. It’s important to note that what gets sent home is only a small part of the work we do together every day. These items are valuable artifacts to our students, and the processes of making them have developmental value. There are products of work, however, that we can’t send home. When a student has a breakthrough working through an addition problem with the bead materials, or when a student notices a younger student looking sad and offers them a nearby seat at circle, or when a student splashes water all over the floor while scrubbing pumpkins and knows just how to clean the area up for the next person – we could go on with more examples – these are the moments of progress in the Montessori experience that we can’t send home in a Friday folder. They are happening around us all the time.

We hope that you will notice some of these moments in the photos for this month’s blog and we look forward to sharing the moments that can’t fit into a folder with you at our upcoming conferences. If you have not yet signed up, please do so as soon as possible. We also ask that you notify us if you are opting to attend your child’s conference in person, which is an option this year.

Have a wonderful weekend and stay healthy!

Mr. Patrick and Mrs. Buonadonna