Respected Banyan Families,
We want to thank all the families for the contributions to our auction basket – thank you so much! Our classroom basket auction has overflowed with valuable tools for the little hands. We appreciate your continuing support to our school. January has just jumped over us, and here we have only four more months left for the school year to finish. Banyans have been focusing on independent and group work in the classroom. Every day we are learning to be kind to one another, expressing our empathy towards others, helping our friends, taking care of our classroom environment, resolving problems appropriately and loving people, nature and the universe. Let us learn to practice the universal language “Love.”
Primary students will participate in friendship exchange with other primary classrooms. It is an in-school event which will happen on February 15. The love and play event is a family event, and it will be on February 9. February is going to be a busy month filled with various activities.
The focus of the month: The transition from School/work to back home!
We always focus on the morning transitions, the first transition for the day, to help our kids transition from home to school. We spend time in the morning to get ourselves and our kids ready to start our day peacefully and to help our kids smoothly transition from home to school. We help them get enough sleep, healthy food and our love and care to start their day slowly.
“It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.” Dr. Maria Montessori
Also, every morning, the teachers at the school carefully prepare the classroom environment and their inner self to welcome the students so we are well prepared for the day to send our kids to school and to go to work or to do the house chores. We are putting the maximum effort to peacefully start our day for us and to our little friends. This first transition is a most sensitive transition for our kids.
Now we are away from our kids for hours. We spend those hours focusing on our work or house chores while our kids are at the school. At the end of the school hours, our children are eagerly ready to come back home and spend the rest of the day with us. Our time and patience in the morning with the first transition helped our kids go through the day.
However, wait, if the morning transition is the first one for the day, do we have to face another transition for the day? We may say, “Our kids are happy to come back home from school and that is a smooth transition. They love home, and they like to see us back and be with us at home.” So why do we need to focus on this second transition?
This second transition is mostly for us, for the parents, because our kids go through various transitions throughout the day at the school, for example going from the playground to the classroom and vice-versa. Moreover, now they are ready for a smooth transition back home. The transition from work back to home is more sensitive for adults, and we rarely put effort to work on that as we usually do in the mornings to prepare ourselves for the day. We tend to forget the importance and need for it.
Here is the big question for us, are we getting ourselves ready to welcome our kids back home, who is coming home with lots of stories to share? Are we prepared for the second transition; from work/home again to receive our kids from the school? Let us think about it and find the ways to make ourselves welcome our kids back home and be present with their little minds and be connected with them. We all have our unique ways to prepare our spiritual selves. Get ready and set our goals for the second transition for the day!
“We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe and are connected with each other to form one whole unity.” – Dr Maria Montessori
February Primary Events
Love and Play February 09 , 10:00 to 1:00
Primary families responsibility to set up and break down the event
Parent Education Evening February 27 @ 5:30pm
February Unit Studies
Solar System, Types of Biomes, Animals and Cultural Studies
Lovingly,
Ms. Karthi and Ms. Desiree
