Parent Notice March 6th, 2012

Details

Published on Tuesday, 06 March 2012 15:43

Corvallis Montessori School

March 6, 2012

Parent Notice

A Successful CMS Auction

We would like to express our enormous gratitude to all of the parents who contributed to making our auction a successful one. Not only did we make $41,000 gross, but we also had a lot of fun doing it.

There was a wonderful turn-out on Friday night, the room looked festive and inviting, and a good time was had by all. This was truly a community effort as most parents were involved on one level or another. However, the auction committee did heroic work pulling the event off with less time to work with this year as the auction was held two months earlier than usual.

It was heart warming to see how the Montessori community continues even when students have left our program. Past parents returned to offer their support for the auction. We would like to thank Sharna Prasad, who started the first CMS auction five years ago, as well as several other past parents who donated items, volunteered, and enjoyed the evening.

Lisa Langeliers has been the auction chair for the past three years. We cannot thank her enough for the time and energy she has put into helping CMS provide a Montessori education to as many families as possible. Lisa’s commitment to CMS and her passion for the Montessori philosophy has been a driving force for the exhausting challenge she faced over three years, she is a true ambassador for our school and her shoes will be, indeed, big ones to fill! Thank you Lisa.

Jon Pugsley has graciously accepted the “honorable” role of auction chair for next year’s auction. We look forward to working with Jon and deeply appreciate his offer to take on the 2013 auction.

Parent Education Night – Thursday, March 8th (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.)

The primary guides will be giving a talk on the Montessori approach to teaching language in a Montessori environment. The primary guides will be discussing the importance of exposing children, in the first plane of development, to language and how the pedagogical approach responds to the child’s sensitive period for language. Parents will be given suggestions on how to offer similar opportunities to the children at home.

The Elementary talk will revolve around the approach to teaching botany and geography to elementary students. Venus and Thomson will discuss how the use of experiments, personification charts, and stories fire the elementary child’s imagination to do research beyond the lessons.

Child-care will be available and pizza will be provided. All you have to do is sign up on the notice board so that we may know how many children to expect.

Elementary Candidate

A candidate for the elementary position will be visiting the classroom on March 15th. This will be her first visit to the school and she’ll be observing in the morning and meeting with staff at lunchtime.

St. Patrick’s Day Concert – March 16th (8:30 a.m. – 9:15 a.m.)

The children would like to invite you to a celebration of St. Patrick’s Day on Friday, March 16th. This will take the form of an elaborate “Community Gathering” with songs to join in on, songs to listen to, and tin whistle music to enjoy. Everyone is invited to contribute whatever Irish poetry, music, etc. you like – no age limit.

Summer Program

Thank you for returning so many questionnaires on the summer program. Judging from the number of questionnaires returned and your comments, the toddler house will be open during the summer and we have many children for both the primary and elementary programs. The one request, of which we had a few, to offer “drop in days” or days other than the consecutive days mentioned wouldn’t be consistent enough for the program and the children.

We shall be holding a “summer staff” meeting March 16th after which we’ll give parents a more detailed account of weekly programs planned for the students. We shall also be advertising our summer program and fall program in the education section of the Gazette Times next week.

Accreditation Process

FYI – both primary and elementary consultants have visited the classrooms. This process is not a pass/fail situation. The consultants made suggestions to all four classrooms that the guides may improve the environment for the students, many of which have already been implemented by the guides. The guides greatly appreciated the opportunity to have constructive and helpful advice. We are waiting for the written reports to be sent to us. The consultants have written their reports and sent them to the AMI office. We expect to receive the reports from AMI shortly. We shall keep you informed when we hear back from AMI.

The guides appreciated the parent volunteers who came in to “beautify” their rooms and gardens before the consultants’ visits.