Adventures in Lower Elementary: Snow, Sentences, and the Practice of Peace

January did not go exactly as planned (and somehow, it may have been even better because of that).

Between snow days, MLK day, and conferences, we missed nearly two full weeks of school… and yet the children accomplished a stunning amount of work. Their resilience, focus, and exuberance reminded me that learning doesn’t stop when the calendar shifts, it just adapts.

One of the highlights of the month was the birth of our own spontaneously-created Lower Elementary Writers’ Workshop.

What began as a simple grammar follow-up lesson on winter-specific verbs quickly turned into something far more magical. When a student asked, “Ms. Katie… could we do more with this?” the floodgates opened. For two half-days, the classroom buzzed with storytelling energy as children chose their own writing paths. Some drafted chapter books, others crafted poetry, illustrated animal tales about hibernation, and even created collectible mini-books to share with classmates. Rather than directing the work, my role became stepping back, cheering them on, and making space for their creativity to flourish - exactly as the Montessori method intends.

This was a dream to witness from a teacher’s perspective as right before my eyes, everyone from first to third years collaborated to naturally experience the entire writing process together, from brainstorming to publishing, under their own self-motivated direction. It felt like a core memory in the making for these young storytellers!

We also prepared for and presented at Curriculum Day! It was really fun to see the process unfold. Students selected the materials they wanted to present, practiced their work, practiced presenting their work, even selected where they would be situated around the classroom to create optimal flow for our special guests. Thank you to everyone who was able to stop by and visit!

Academically, we dove deep into:

• Verbs and individualized grammar work (they loved discovering that all we need to create a complete sentence is a noun and a verb, so a sentence can be as short as two words … or as long as we need it to be!)

• Number sense and geometry with hands-on, concrete materials for our first years (short bead stairs, teens board, tens board, addition and subtraction boards, the geometry stick box), some Montessori classics that guide them to bridge their mathematical minds from Primary to Elementary level processing

• A much-anticipated introduction to division racks and tubes for some second graders

• Fraction concepts

• Dictionary skills, with students eagerly poring over the pages to prepare themselves to start a study of homophones

• Continued work on capitalization and mechanics for everyone

As a group, we’ve discussed kindness, community, and belonging, and explored why we come to school and what that entails for teachers and for students. This launched our series of student-teacher conferences, in which each child has an individual check-in to discuss their academic progress and goals. We created a “Pieces of Peace” group project, where each child designed a puzzle piece showing what brings them peace at school. These pieces now fit together - just like our community - as a reminder that we all contribute to a calm, respectful environment.

We also practiced mindfulness and awareness of grace, courtesy, personal space, and problem-solving using our peace feather to resolve conflicts and our weekly peace meetings to define group problems and work together to solve them. In a Montessori elementary classroom, this is essential: as children grow, they must learn not only academic independence, but social responsibility - how to share space, listen deeply, and solve problems with empathy.

Finally, Ms. Kathleen led us in a beautiful exploration of curiosity. Students reflected throughout the month on what they wonder about, what they want to learn, and why. Their ideas ranged from outer space to ocean life to how machines work to "every single math material" to who came up with the idea of animation - proving once again that curiosity is the engine of meaningful learning.

January may have been short, but it was rich, reflective, and full of wonder.