If you would like your child to have a Spanish experience in July, we have information about a Spanish Camp for children 5 – 11 years old. The camp runs Monday to Thursday, 9 a.m.- 12 noon and is priced at $130 per week.
For more details, pick up a flier at the reception desk.
“Character formation cannot be taught, it comes from experience and not from explanation.”
Learn how the Montessori Method allows children to experience character.
If you want to know which foods create the best foundation for your child’s learning, don’t miss this talk!
Nutrition expert, chef and Montessori supporter D’Aun Carrell will speak at Campbell Montessori School on Tuesday, April 30 at 7:00 p.m. This is the second offering in Campbell’s 2012 – 2013 Speaker Series.
Save yourself a seat by calling the school office at 636-477-8200 or respond at info@campbellmontessori.org
Here at the end of this week, I find myself looking around at our classrooms and thinking about community. It’s been a rough week in the news, and it’s easy to succumb to despair, but before you do that, I invite you to think about simple, small expression of hope – a bake sale.
It might be a small thing, and in the face of the great needs in our society, the money raised may not be much. But in the lives of our children, in the developing psyche of a child who comes to understand through experience that she can make a difference in the world because she has already done so, it is a tremendous thing. To the children, it is enough to understand that even if the situation is not affecting them directly, they can be involved positively. They can help make the world a better place.
It takes a certain amount of confidence and courage hold that point of view, and it all starts with a small child discovering his own ability to do things, then discovering the influence his actions have on others around him, then discovering how to act in the world through his sympathy for those in difficulty. This is the journey of the developing child through the primary and into the elementary.
In the end, the bake sales and book drives are not about the money donated. They are the expression of our community supporting children learning to make a difference in the world. They are about our parents reaching out to help others and showing our children by example how to live in a community. Every time a child puts together a fund-raiser to help those in need and our families line up in the parking lot, I grow ever more pleased and proud to be part of Campbell Montessori.
Our next community meeting is our movie night tonight. I hope to see you camped out on the floor downstairs in the primary building with your children as we watch The Lorax.
We are proud of your children!
Paul Gutting
Book Drive for St. Vincent’s Home for Children. You may drop off books in both buildings.
Bake Sale for Second Chance Sheltie Rescue of Missouri. Each treat costs one dollar.
Trivia Night at VFW 2866 – Register
Campbell Montessori School – 3880 Shady Springs Lane – Saint Charles, Mo 633301
Email: info@campbellmontessori.org
Phone: 636-477-8200
Fax: 636-477-6075
A new website of some interest went live this week.
The Montessori Observer is put together by David Ayers, a Montessorian of some experience and a member of the faculty at the Adolescent Orientation. He has put together a website with a lot of documentary information about Montessori as well as up-to-date news. I found glancing through it to be a worthwhile and interesting experience, I am sure you will as well.
This summer AMI is hosting the International Montes
sori Congress in Portland. This event is a wonderful opportunity to interact with Montessorians from all over the world. The Congress was started by Dr. Montessori and is held every four years. This is the first time since 1972 that it has been held in the United States. The theme this year is Montessori: Guided by Nature. You can find more information here: http://montessoricongress.org.
I hope you were able to get out in the snow to play with your children this week, and that you will be able to enjoy the warm weather to come.
We are proud of your children!
Paul Gutting
Would you like to help us publicize our Seminar? or Register Now to Attend this free event, open to the public.
On 7:00 p.m Tuesday evening, March 5, Campbell will welcome Detective Lawrence McClain, who will tell us what we need to know to protect our children while they are using the internet.
We have printed fliers, and would like to put them in libraries, community centers, and anywhere your child has a lesson or sports practice. If you are willing to place a supply of fliers for us, please stop in the office. They are ready to distribute!
“Listen earnestly to anything [your children] want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.” ― Catherine M. Wallace
I found this quotation recently, and I really wanted to share it. Once upon a time I was a high school teacher and administrator. I found myself frustrated on occasion by working with teenagers and parents and realizing that some of the relational issues they had with each other had foundations in the early childhood of my students. Once we have children, we are always parents, and that relationship evolves as the needs of our children and the lives of our families evolve. But for those of us with very young children in particular, we need on occasion to look forward to the kind of relationships we want in the future. There are good things we can do now to help adolescence and onwards materialize as strong, positive experiences. We can start with listening.
If you are looking for more specific information about what lies ahead for your children at Campbell, there is a series of information nights going on right now. We have a night next week for parents of children heading into the lower elementary next year, and another the following week for those with children moving up to the upper elementary. Our teachers are very eager to meet with you and to share their classrooms with you. Please come on in.
Good evening everyone and thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you for coming out to support Campbell Montessori.
I asked my wife what I should talk about tonight. She told me it didn’t matter as long as I was brief. I said it wasn’t in my nature, but I would do my best.
I just wanted to take a moment to remind us all why we are here tonight. This event is a celebration of our community, and has been since its inception in 1992 or ’93 when a small group of parents gathered in my parents’ home for a dinner and an impromptu auction.
The community of parents here has long recognized what our school is and is not. I occasionally get prospective parents touring through the school who seem to ask or expect us to make their children smarter. We have these amazing materials, after all, and these wonderful classrooms. But we cannot do that. We cannot manufacture intelligence. We cannot manufacture imagination. We cannot make manifest what is not there.
So what can we do? We can carefully and intentionally prepare an environment for growth, discovery, and learning. We can provide guided experiences in the environment. We can make the pathway to potential clear, open, and inviting. And it is there in those experiences (and you know this from your own lives as adults) that you discover the extraordinary things that were in you the whole time.
My mother tells the story of touring an administrator from another area school through some years ago. They stopped at an observation window in the primary in time to watch a five-year-old see a three-year-old struggling to tie an apron. The older child approached the younger, asked if he could help, and proceeded to tie the apron without advice, without prompt, without being told to by an adult. The visiting admin looked at my mom and asked, “How do you get the children to do that?” My mother’s answer, and the one I will keep on telling you, was, “Well, you know, it is in us do that.” It is in us to help and provide service to people in need, we only need the opportunity to express it.
That scenario plays out in different ways in the toddler room, the primary, the elementary, and the middle school. Just yesterday, the middle schoolers were working on the stools which you see here for sale, and the first pair finished their work. The first thing they asked when they realized that they were finished and everything was put away, was not, “Hey, I’m done. So, I can do whatever I want now, right?” or “I’m going to kick back in the easy chair with my iPad now.” It was, “So, we can go help, right?” They only need the opportunity to express it.
It is through the independence of the classroom that we discover the interdependence of the community. And that is what we are here for tonight: to celebrate our community and to recognize our interdependence. You rely on us to prepare and maintain the environment of the school for your children. We rely on you for support.
If nothing else, please celebrate our community tonight. Celebrate what it means to be Campbell Montessori.
Congratulations!to all of our students who participated in the 54th annual Mid-America Music Association Festival. All of Mr. Vetter’s students worked very hard and worked up some pretty serious nerves to perform for the judges. Thank you parents for all you do to support your children in their music studies. The Festival provides many opportunities for growth in music for musicians at all levels. Thank you to everyone for all of your many hours of practice and hard work!
We would like to note in particular all the current and former Campbell Montessori students who participated in the festival:
Griffin Johnson, Genevieve Johnson, Aaron Woody, Rajit Sikka, Simon Matthews, Mason Baue, Jay McNeil, Gage Clancy, Manny Baez, Jesse Reidelberger, Sophia Turnell, Natalie Turnell, Michaela Buck, Kushal Rao, Andrew Komadina, Adelheide Davis, Matthew Erickson, Tyler Powell, Aley Sabala, Andrew Sabala, Reed Easterling, Dana Muenter, Caleb Anyan, and (though not a student) our own Julie Vetter.
