November News from the Elementary Community

Self-direction
 Self-Management
 Accountability
 Community responsibility
 Fairness
 

These are the many themes that our classroom community is exploring through organic interactions and through conscious community discussions. The elementary age child is actively developing his or her moral compass, which means that every social experience, even conflict, is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for the child to deepen their internal understanding of what it means to be a contributing and caring member of society. This time period in a child's life is a "practice run' of adulthood. They are held within the safety of our adult oversight while offered the freedom to make mistakes, fail, experience natural consequences, and ultimately learn and mature from these experiences. The beauty of the multi-age Montessori classroom is that the children are all at various stages in their development: providing the opportunity for younger children to have role models to look up to and for older children to reinforce their knowledge through guiding others. This dynamic of the children learning from each other provides an empowering culture for the classroom where every child is able to reach his or her own potential. We look forward to expanding the work of these themes into our great school community as we all come together at the end of this month for our Stone Soup celebration.