New Bench
We are grateful for this beautiful bench.
Author: Montessori Admin
Montessori Education Week
Please consider submitting one of the following to info@mcsslc.com to help focus attention on the value of a Montessori education:
Testimonial
You are invited to provide a written testimonial about your child’s Montessori school experience.
Quotable Quotes
Please write one or two sentences on “What I like about Montessori for my child(ren)…” or “MCS is special because…”.
Graduates
Alumni is invited to write about how their Montessori experiences have benefited them in their post-Montessori lives.
Photos
Share photos of your child(ren) living “Montessori” outside of the school setting.
Winter Sports Closing Ceremony
And just like that Winter Sports 2022 is over. These past 5 weeks have flown by. Judging by the happy (and tired) students that emerged from the buses each week it appears that fun was had by all.
Our gratitude to everyone who made Winter Sports possible.
There is nothing quite like the panic of missing snow-pants, a broken clasp on a helmet, or the confusion of 4 sets of skis that all look alike and the label has rubbed off. However, and whatever the new challenge was, the buzz and excitement of the students made it all worthwhile. Thank you to all the staff and parent volunteers who made each week possible.
Transporting eighty plus students, with gear and equipment, is no small feat. It required a great deal of preparation, practice, and patience. Our gratitude to Sabine for her time and effort to organize people, places and things. Heartfelt gratitude also to all the chaperones, staff and parents alike, who accompanied the students each week. Your support was invaluable.
Winter Sports challenged the students in so many ways. They had to step out of their regular school day schedule with several tricky transitions from eating lunch earlier, changing into proper clothing and gear, keeping track of gear and bags, moving to and from buses, meeting up and working with different groups of peers and instructors, developing new skills, and so much more. They met that challenge. We thank the students for being respectful and responsible and for helping peers in need.
Transporting eighty plus students, with gear and equipment, is no small feat. It required a great deal of preparation, practice, and patience. Our gratitude to Sabine for her time and effort to organize people, places and things. Heartfelt gratitude also to all the chaperones, staff and parents alike, who accompanied the students each week. Your support was invaluable.
Winter Sports challenged the students in so many ways. They had to step out of their regular school day schedule with several tricky transitions from eating lunch earlier, changing into proper clothing and gear, keeping track of gear and bags, moving to and from buses, meeting up and working with different groups of peers and instructors, developing new skills, and so much more. They met that challenge. We thank the students for being respectful and responsible and for helping peers in need.
Lastly, but by no means least, we are grateful to the instructors at Snowbird. They made learning new techniques possible and helped many students step out of their comfort zone to overcome fears or frustrations. Our gratitude to Snowbird ski and snowboarding instructors for making lessons safe and fun!
Please help evaluate our existing program and provide points for consideration when it’s time to prepare for Winter Sports ’23.
Utah Montessori Intergenerational Project
A successful intergenerational experiment in Australia has encouraged three Utah Montessori teachers to push forward with their dream to create a similar community in northern Utah for seniors needing care – a home where they can thrive and look forward to each new day! This community will also double as a home for adults with disabilities, where they can live and work in simpler roles, being mentored by staff and interested residents.
If you would like to learn more about the Utah Montessori Intergeneration Project please feel free to join Amanda, Nancy & Emily for an information meeting over Zoom on Wednesday February 9, 16 and 23 from 7:00-7:30 PM (MST).
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81739474014…
Meeting ID: 817 3947 4014
Passcode: 482283
Parent Participation – Tracking
Parent participation is a key part of a thriving Montessori Classroom. As a parent, your involvement reassures your child of the strong connection between the home and the school. While certain restrictions may inhibit on-campus parent participation, there are many ways to get involved. Some parents join one of our committee’s (Health & Safety, Strategic Planning, Parent School Alliance), provide food and treats for the teachers, volunteer for fundraising and service learning events. Outlined in our Terms & Conditions is the requirement of 10 hours each school year.
How do I track my hours?
Tracking your hours is a simple task. Login to FACTS Family Portal using these instructions.
Once logged in click on Family on the Menu. Click on Family Home.
You will see a section in the middle of the screen called Service Hours.
Simply click the Add + sign and fill out the details.
In Verified By type the name of a staff member who is aware of your participation.
What’s the Big Deal About Table Washing?
Many parents are attracted to Montessori because of its tremendous reputation for giving their children a great academic education. Parents are willing to spend impressive amounts of money to give their children this academic advantage. But as often as parents are impressed with Montessori excellence, they are a little bewildered that their children come home excited about mopping floors, doing dishes and washing tables. (This is what successful people hire others to do.) So there is a real disconnect between what you want, what you are paying for and what you think you are getting.
How then does Montessori get this academic reputation if all you are seeing for six months or a year is table washing and practical life? Montessori success is not built on its finished academic product but on its sure foundation. So what kind of academics comes from table washing? It is the foundation of what constitutes Montessori education which is built on an enduring set of scientific principles. The first is that you always begin with the concrete before moving on to the abstract. There is nothing more concrete in the child’s life than the exercises of practical life. Second, Montessori education begins with the development of all the senses before moving on to the intellectual. Rest assured your child will arrive. Third, Montessori starts with the control of the physical abilities as a precursor to control of intellectual capacity. Fourth, it builds physical discipline – being able to follow through and complete a project before embarking on intellectual discipline. Fifth, it significantly develops focus on details as a skill set to accomplish academic goals. There is a major difference between 2 + 3 and 2 X 3 – and it is only a minor detail. Sixth, table washing (and all of practical life) is not only a physical challenge for beginner learners but becomes an emotional and psychological building block in the development of confidence and self esteem. Real confidence and self esteem is not built on words such as “You did a good job” (whether you did or not) but is built on real achievement and mastery. For a three, four or five year old the process of successfully completing table washing or any other practical life exercise begins a pattern of success. It is a success that comes from beginning a project, working it step by step for as long as it takes until you come to the successful conclusion. This pattern becomes the model for the next stages of academic competence.
What practical life achieves in your child is first a feeling of “I can take care of myself” whether it is table washing or tying shoes. I am given a sense of security that I have some control over my environment and my place in it. Second, it teaches me how to follow steps to success. Third, it builds my confidence by having mastered some challenge which prepares me to tackle even more complex challenges. Fourth, it refines my senses and muscular control so I can effectively use all of the hands on materials in the Montessori classroom to advance my intellectual development. Every sense, every motion, every action is focused to help me achieve academically. The academic success you hear about in Montessori is built on humble and less than impressive activities that are foundational to this amazing achievement that develops the whole child and prepares him or her for significant academic success.
The Montessori Greenhouse
A concern of parents is that a Montessori environment is too protective, that children may not be prepared to face the real world. After all, a Montessori environment is made for the child, (the real world isn’t.) Everything in the environment is child size. Again, the real world is made for adults. A Montessori environment is constructed for the child to succeed – the real world doesn’t care.
So, is the Montessori environment an effective preparation to learn to swim in the real world or are children better off to be thrown into the deep end? A Montessori education is designed to master the deep end – but not today! It is designed to step by step to prepare (and help create) the future adult to master all the challenges of adult responsibility. The environment affords the protection for the child to safely build the adult they will become. The child will build the adult out of real successes gained day by day and processes learned and mastered in navigating the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and task management. It is often said in Montessori that a child’s work is his play and the irony is that when a Montessori child enters the adult world his work does become like child play because he or she has already spent the formative years mastering the tools of the deep end. The child knows how to set priorities; how to follow a plan; how to work with others; how to work through mistakes; how to develop initiative and countless other adult tools.
As equally important as the tools are, so are the emotional building blocks the child is adding to his or her life of the adult that will emerge. Blocks like confidence and competence are invaluable. Blocks like the satisfaction of working through a problem and the understanding that you can just about conquer any problem you encounter if you don’t give up. As successful as a Montessori education might be intellectually, its emotional components are far more powerful. Those emotional components only grow in the protected environment where making mistakes is not branded as failure but only interim steps on the way to success. Finishing what you start (not going seventy percent of the way and quitting or being satisfied with less than your best) can only happen in the supportive environment of a Montessori education.
As parents we need to be mindful that what we see happening in our children are the underlying preparations that are being constructed in our children because of the Montessori education. The iceberg of your child’s potential and ability is hardly visible but the bulk of it is being constructed (and growing) under the surface day by day in the protected environment of the classroom. Far more is being constructed than can be seen without the eye of time when it will come to fruition.
Montessori is certainly a greenhouse. No one plants their tomato plants outside in the deep of winter. Our Montessori seeds are lovingly planted and tended where the roots go down and the stalk grows up strong until the young fledgling plant has the strength to grow and thrive – in the real world.
By Edward Fidellow
Seed corn; five seeds planted now change what comes later.
I’m a city boy. Most of us live our lives in the city or the suburbs and have vague ideas about the rhythm of life lived by farmers and ranchers. We are blessed by their work when we go to the grocery store. We might actually know when strawberry season is (prices are lower.) But to understand the cycles and seasons gives us an appreciation for “real” life.
This is why Montessori classrooms put a major emphasis on botany and zoology – to introduce our children to the mystery and magic of springtime and harvest. Whether planting is done in pots or garden plots, to prepare the soil, to plant a seed, to water it, to watch it grow, to pull the weeds, to see it flower, to observe the fruit and to enjoy the harvest is a celebration of life.
What is the most important step in this botanical experiment? They are all important but the critical step happens long before you start the process – you have to have the seed! Where does the seed come from? (No, this is not about the birds and the bees.) The seed comes from that part of the harvest that you didn’t consume or sell. It is not part of the harvest that you get to “enjoy.” You keep the very best seed – and you bury it. Then you work and pray that it flourishes.
Your seed corn is your Montessori investment. Montessori education is expensive – sometimes even approaching college tuition. And a question often asked is, “Shouldn’t I be saving this money for prep school or college?” The best time to plant your educational seed is in the springtime of your child’s life – Now!
There are five seeds planted in a Montessori preschool or elementary that bloom in college.
- The first is order. Order is a foundational need of the child – it even has its own sensitive period in the child’s development. When a child enters this sensitive period, he builds for himself the internal apparatus that will guide his future acquisition of knowledge and give him the ability to construct all the other areas of his life. In a Montessori classroom everything has its own special place. This is not only efficient but impacts the whole psychological nature of the child. Order (especially from within) brings calmness and focus, saves frazzled nerves and produces the environment (both physical and emotional) in which concentrated work can occur.
- The second seed is initiative – learning to start on your own. Traditional schools spend twelve or thirteen years telling your child what to do, when to do it and how to do it. College is the first freedom from such constraints but it is hardly the time to begin to practice initiative that has been inactive and dormant.
- The third seed planted in preschool is the seed of mastery – finishing what you start. In Montessori you don’t take an “F” and go on. You go back and work on it until you master it. It is a major lesson (and habit) not only for school but for life.
- The fourth seed is taking responsibility. In college there is no one looking over your shoulder (or to blame.) You are the young adult expected to take responsibility. For thirteen years of traditional education someone else bore the burden of responsibility. College is not the place to begin especially when Montessori children welcome the responsibility so early and young.
- The fifth seed is curiosity. This is not so much of a seed that is planted in preschool but a seed that is nurtured, encouraged and kept alive. Curiosity is the difference between a life of boredom and a life of fascination with the world around you. Curiosity helps you not to settle, it helps you to dream, it helps you to look beyond the next hill. Curiosity can help, to not only make a living, but to make a life.
These seeds are a gift you plant in your child’s life now that bloom in college and for the rest of their lives. It is the best seed you can give.
By Edward Fidellow
Light One Candle – Thank you!
Dear Mary,
I’m writing to thank you for your participation as a sponsor during our annual Light One Candle holiday gift drive. With your support, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Salt Lake City facilitated the delivery of over $70,000 worth of much needed household supplies and other gifts to 107 recently arrived refugee families, totaling over 350 people served. We are overwhelmed by your generosity and your continued support of refugees. Thank you for standing with refugees and showing how welcoming Utah can be.
The attached PDF will act as your tax receipt. Please retain this form for your records. Values listed on the donation receipt are assigned by the donor, as we cannot provide valuation for in-kind donations. The IRC takes no responsibility in the valuation of donated goods. You should attach original receipts or copies of receipts to this donation receipt when filing your taxes.
If you would like to learn more about our work and other ways to get involved throughout the year, please visit Rescue.org/SupportSLC. Sponsors will be able to sign up for our 2022 Light One Candle gift drive starting in November 2022.
Thank you, again, for taking on the responsibility of sponsoring a refugee family or individual during Light One Candle. I am sincerely grateful for your efforts to make refugees welcome in our community!
Best,
Caitlin Fellows | Grants Coordinator | She, Her, Hers
International Rescue Committee
221 South 400 West | P.O. Box 3988 | Salt Lake City, UT 84110
T +1 (385) 424-0527
Follow us on Facebook.com/IRCSaltLakeCity | Learn more at Rescue.org/SaltLakeCity
P.S. New year, same priorities: helping refugee and new American families begin rebuilding their lives in our community. Join us! Get started at Rescue.org/SupportSLC.
FACTS Webforms (Update Contact Info)
Webforms on FACTS are used to update information for the student, parent, emergency contacts and pick-up contacts. Once you update information here, the school will be notified about the change.
Once you are logged into FACTS Family Portal using these instructions, continue to Webforms with the following instructions:
- Click on the Hamburger menu at the top left of the screen and on the menu choose School > Web Forms
- Once you are on Web Forms click on Parent & Student Information Update
- You can now choose what to update on FACTS, as soon as you update it here it will be updated on your profile in FACTS and the school will get notified to update it in other places (this could take 1-2 school days)
