Taxonomy and the Animal Kingdom: Arthropods- Part Four

"Now let us imagine a man appointed to a chair of science in some university, with the task before him of doing further original work with the hymenoptera. Let us suppose that, arrived at his post, he is shown a glass covered case containing a number of beautiful butterflies, mounted by means of pins, their outspread wings motionless. The student will say that this is some child's play, not material for scientific study, that these specimens in the box are more fitly a part of the game which the little boys play, chasing butterflies and catching them in a net. With such material as this the experimental scientist can do nothing.

The situation would be very much the same if we should place a teacher who, according to our conception of the term, is scientifically prepared, in one of the traditional public schools where the children are repressed in the spontaneous expression of their personality until they are almost like dead beings. In such a school the children, like butterflies mounted on pins, are fastened each to his place, the desk, spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless knowledge which they have acquired."

-Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method

Over the weekend, the first of the Painted Lady Butterflies that the class raised from butterfly eggs emerged from its chrysalis. The children stood spellbound over the course of the day as the remaining five climbed out of their papery cases, their wrinkled wings still damp with meconium, unfurled their proboscis, and sat silently in the sunlight.

After the butterflies had a rest, the children sat quietly and peacefully (so as not to frighten them) and allowed the delicate insects to crawl across the palms of their hands.

Mud and Puddles

"The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful."

-E.E. Cummings, In Just-

After two days of frost, drizzle, and even a light dusting of snow, the storm finally cleared enough for us to don our Wellies and resume our Spring planting.

Needless to say, there was a lot of important work to be done: puddles to jump in,

mud to muck in, damp garden beds to explore with friends (populated with an abundant supply of wriggling worms, frenzied birds, the first radish sprouts, and wild mushrooms poking up between the garlic bulbs),

and one of my favorite language lessons: writing the garden. In Montessori classrooms, children repeatedly trace sandpaper letters to learn the correct formation of letters. As a result, once they acquire the finger strength and fine motor coordination necessary for handwriting, they usually explode into the "spontaneous" ability to write letters, numbers, and words. This is very exciting for the child! Upon discovering that they can write, most children desperately want to write everything (names of their friends, the menu from lunch, letters to their parents, etc). This morning, one boy appointed himself the task of making his own signs for the garden and walking outside to stake them in their correct spots in the raised beds. I must say, they turned out quite nicely.
Later, we went out as a group and planted four kinds of heirloom beans- some pretty stringless ones in assorted colors for eating (Red Swan, Climbing French, and Golden Crescent) and some for shelling (Slow Foods Arc of Taste Hidasta)- some peas (Dwarf Gray Sugar and Green Arrow for shelling), and some broccoli raab/rapini (pungent, Italian "broccoli"- actually a relative of the turnip).


We concluded our planting with a little tasting of some broccoli, sugar snap peas, and haricot vert that was very well received.

My sincerest thanks and gratitude to Anna Applebaum at Mapleton Montessori (Boulder, CO) for the "Writing the Garden" work. I never think of Summer in your classroom without envisioning children hand writing lists of vegetables they want to plant in the garden and their darling handwritten garden signs.

Eat Your Beets

"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. The beet is a melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip! The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the Autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized. The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes."

-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

It seemed like perfect beet planting weather-uncharacteristically cool for May, with intermittent drizzle and dark skies ominously threatening a late Spring snowstorm. I had planned to take the children out after the morning work period to do a little beet planting (two varieties of beets- traditional Italian Chioggia and the small, carrot-esque, Danish Cylindria variety) followed by tasting a beet dish-in this case, a Cold Beet, Blood Orange, and Chevre Salad.

The children seemed enthused enough about doing the Practical Life food preparation tasks that I had set out during the morning work period (juicing oranges for the vinaigrette and whisking together the emulsion), but, to be honest, my confidence began to wane when I showed the children a whole beet and not one knew the name of this strange looking vegetable.

For a split second it occurred to me: perhaps children do not like beets.

Nevertheless, we went out to the garden and sowed several rows of seeds,

returned to the classroom to finish our preparations by carefully slicing some freshly roasted beets, and went to enjoy our snack on the patio picnic table.

The verdict: well, I will allow the clean plates and crimson lips to speak for themselves!

Cold Beet & Blood Orange Salad

3 large beets, roasted

2T Raspberry Vinegar

1 Large Blood Orange

3T Olive Oil

1 1/2 tsp salt

black pepper

1/4 log of chevre, crumbled

Quarter beets, sprinkle with olive oil, salt, and pepper and roast in a 400 degree oven until tender (about 30 minutes). Allow to cool, then cut into bite sized pieces.

Cut orange in half. Supreme half the orange and set aside. Combine vinegar, salt, pepper, and juice and zest of the other half of the orange. Slowly whisk in olive oil until dressing emulsifies.

Combine beets, chevre, orange supremes, and dressing. Chill.

Planting Root Vegetables in the Children's Garden

"While it is necessary to give good food to the child, it still must be an educative action."

-Maria Montessori

In the Montessori community, food is used as a vehicle for education. Because fast food is so readily available in our society, less time is spent in the cultivation and preparation of food. Many children have no idea of the raw state of food (in particular, there are few children under the age of four who get to see food in its raw state).

We have a responsibility to assist young children in developing attitudes and habits about food that will contribute to their lifelong health; additionally, we need to assist children in coming to know and master their reality by working on it. In the context of food, this entails allowing the child to see how food is cultivated, viewing food in its raw state (seeing a whole watermelon, not cut up bits of fruit), participating in food preparation activities, and setting a table, serving food, and clearing a table independently (not coming to a table which is set and cleared by an adult). Like all Practical Life activities, food cultivation also aids the young child in developing coordinated, refined movement (hoeing, raking, digging, balancing a wheelbarrow, etc).

In furtherance of these goals, the children have begun planting and maintaining an organic, heirloom, vegetable garden at the school.

This week, the children began planting vegetables that can tolerate a light frost and cooler temperatures, beginning with root vegetables. We planted three varieties of heirloom carrots (Scarlet Nantes, Parisian Market, and beautiful purple-red Dragon carrots)and two varieties of heirloom radishes (Early Scarlet Globe and French Breakfast).

They turned over the soil one last time,

smoothed it out with the rakes,

meticulously sowed rows of carrots and radishes,

and exuberantly watered the garden beds.

In order to achieve a better understanding of what they were planting, the children also conducted a radish tasting and a carrot tasting, in which they were given vegetables in their "raw" state (with stems and leaves attached). In the classroom, the children have been learning about the functions and names of different parts of plants; as a result, they were particularly excited to learn that when they eat carrots and radishes, they are eating the roots of the plants.

During the tastings, the children were encouraged to make judgments about the foods they were tasting and use descriptive language to communicate their thoughts, helping them to develop a more sophisticated palate and a rich vocabulary.


Radishes and carrots are a wonderful choice for a children's garden because of their relatively quick germinating time. With a little luck they can be plucked from their beds and land on our table in no time!

Bon Appetit!

School Pictures are Available!

2009-2010 School Photos are Available for Purchase!

The results of school picture day are in... and they are absolutely darling! They even surpassed my expectations... great expressions, beautiful colors, and professional composition.

Parents will receive a complimentary group photo. Additional group photos and individual portraits are available from Studio Q Photography. Parents have been emailed a link to a special website administered by Studio Q, from which you may order prints.

If you have any questions about the packages or ordering procedure, please contact Studio Q Photography at:

Mark Quentin

Studio Q Photography, LLC

Boulder, CO

303/442-1889

http://www.studioqphoto.com/

Our sincere thanks to Mark Quentin for all of his hard work taking the photos and setting up the website; thank you for sharing your considerable talents with our little school.

Our First Farm to School Meal: Roasted Lemon and Garlic Scallion Herbed Pesto

As part of our membership in Slow Foods USA Farm to School Program, we partner with The Family Table Farm, a local farm owned by Mike and Lisel Record, to purchase naturally grown (without the use of pesticides), local produce. When the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares are delivered to the school, the children cook with the freshly harvested produce and eat their freshly prepared dish, sharing the fruits of their labor around a communal table. As the children cook and eat their way through the year, their understanding of local and seasonal produce grows.

Today marked our first CSA meal. It was particularly exciting to begin our program with garlic scallions, as they feature a common local ingredient that is nevertheless nearly impossible to find in commercial supermarkets, and because much of the preparation consists of tasks that the children can accomplish safely and independently. During the independent work period, the children had the option of performing Practical Life tasks that consisted of preparing the ingredients for the pesto.

Some of them chose to crack walnuts, carefully slice garlic scallions with child-sized cleavers (a variation on the traditional Montessori children's house "Cutting Carrots" lesson), or grind fragrant herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, and star anise) with a mortar and pestle.

The children enjoyed their fragrant dish as part of a Spring harvest lunch picnic in the company of their friends. Turns out, there were more than a few fans of the delicate lemon garlic flavor of the pesto. Several of the children happily helped themselves to seconds! Hopefully, it is the first of many great meals to come!

Taxonomy and the Animal Kingdom: Arthropods- Part Three

After repeated trips to the garden to hunt for arthropods in the leaf litter and our visit from the University of Colorado "Bug Mobile," the students have been very interested in the independent classroom works about Arthropods.

Sorting Arthropods into Insects and Arachnids has become very popular; this work is a combination of conceptual sorting and a basic math work. It requires the child to count the legs and body parts of the arthropod and use this information to sort them based upon their taxonomic description (insects have six legs and three body parts, arachnids have eight legs and two body parts)- a pretty high level cognitive operation for these two and three year olds!

Children also enjoy the larger work of sorting Arthropod three part cards into their taxonomic classes (some children have also experimented with their own classification schemes- including arthropods that bite people and arthropods that do not! An important consideration, I agree!).

The children also enjoy trying to identify the hidden Arthropods in camouflage cards (and often play games outside in which they try to hide arthropods cut out of construction paper from their classmates by applying the concept of camouflage).

The children love learning the nomenclature associated with the metamorphosis of arthropods.

And, of course, for the children who have acquired the motor control needed for handwriting, there are lots of opportunities for copy writing (coping text for handwriting practice).

These works are examples of the ways in which Montessori cultural units begin by providing the child with a concrete sensory experience and then permit them to actively construct meaning around the information they have been presented with (rather than passively memorizing facts); additionally, these cultural units reinforce and inter-relate with the traditional Montessori materials by providing additional motives (more practice and repetition) for the child to engage in math, language, and handwriting tasks.