Health and Wellness

Yoga - Children's Meeting House offers a creative and child-focused Hatha Yoga program to our all-day pre-primary and elementary children. Our program is adventurous, playful and celebratory with creative activities to match children's joyful spirits. Art, song, role playing, and journaling all have a consistent place in CMH yoga classes. Quiet and reflective moments are also integrated through meditation, breathing techniques, and creative visualization. Parents are also invited to attend their children's yoga classes.

Physical Education - At Children's Meeting House (CMH) we recognize that physical activity in an important part of a child's overall development. Through participation in weekly classes we strive to develop positive lifetime attitudes towards physical activity and exercise. Our curriculum is focused on elements of communication, cooperation, conflict resolution, safety and respect for self and others. Students engage in an assortment of dynamic activities helping foster the development of motor skills while simultaneously offering opportunities for challenge, enjoyment, self expression and social interaction. Classes are typically held outside on our beautiful school campus encompassing 7 acres. In the event of inclement weather, we utilize our large multi-purpose room. As always, parents are invited to visit.

Library

The Children's Meeting House library is an exciting and dynamic place. We are dedicated to assisting students in their enjoyment of reading and pursuit of lifelong learning. All students visit the library during the week. The Pre-Primary enjoys a story each week and checks out a book of their choice. The Junior and Senior classes are participants in the Accelerated Reader (AR) program. Research has shown the AR program improves students' reading skills, making reading practice fun and exciting for every student. This program gives continuous feedback to personalize instruction so every student achieves maximum success.

Each year the library has a Book Fair that offers specially prices books and educational products, including new releases, award-winning titles, children's classics, interactive software, books for parents, and current bestsellers from more than 150 publishers.

Parents are always welcome, please stop by!

Music

Dalcroze Eurhythmics - Each week the all-day Preprimary children join Mike Flohr for Dalcroze.  Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a method of teaching music through the use of large locomotor movement, simple games, and improvisation.  It was developed by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze during the beginning of the 20th century to help his conservatory students become better musicians.  The influence of his pedagogy can be experienced in Orff Schulwerk as well as the Montessori Music curriculum that was devised by Dr. Montessori and Anna Maria Maccheroni.  Montessori and Maccheroni went to Geneva, Switzerland, to study with Dalcroze before developing the curriculum that is now used in Montessori schools around the world for the instruction of music.  Many parts of our Montessori Music curriculum are taken directly from the work of Dalcroze.  It is of great benefit to rejoin the fullness of the Dalcroze pedagogy with the Montessori curriculum.  The method is used to teach rhythm, ear-training and solfege, and dynamics, and other musical concepts through music, movement, and song.  

A typical 30 minutes of Dalcroze at CMH consists of some of some of the following elements.  First the children will come in and take off their shoes.  They do this so that they may feel the connection of their foot as it strikes the floor with each pulse of music that they hear when it is time to get moving!

The children come and sit in front of the keyboard.  At this time the Dalcroze instructor guides them in a song or a game that helps them to focus their ears on listening and their bodies to responding to some simple direction through a fingerplay, song, or other game.  Once the children are in an attentive listening state and their minds are focused they are ready to begin a time of large locomotor movement in response to music.  The children will listen for various music and move their bodies with it.  The music may be marching (quarter notes), giant steps (half notes), fast running (sixteenth notes), jog run (eighth notes), skipping (dotted eighth, sixteenth), gallop (sixteenth, dotted eighth), or spring is here (triplet eighth notes).  At a later point they will come to learn the name of these rhythms as well as the symbols that represent them.  Whenever the music stops they freeze.  They will also respond to other things that they may hear, such as accents, with their body.  Next the children are invited back to the keyboard for some work with pitch.  We sing some simple songs in the key of C major and then we play some games that focus on pitch.  We might do some echoes with various pitches and we also might do some rhythmic echoes using drums or we might focus on the skill of balancing, hopping, or other rhythmic games.  We always end our class with a game that involves the children responding to a sung story or other movement that allows for some improvisational movement.  Every week we follow a similar sequence and increase the level of complexity as the children are ready for the challenge.  In all--as in much of Montessori--the children don't know that they are working hard or learning, they think they are just having a great time and can't wait to come back the following week! 

Singing Circle - Singing Circle has been a unique part of CMH for the past 33 years. Each week the Preprimary and Junior children look forward to singing circle with our veteran teacher and guitar player, John Phenix. This is a time when the children gather together in a circle and sing songs. The songs are a mix of children's songs, traditional folk songs and songs made up to teach children concepts, such as, counting numbers, days of the week, months of the year, the continents and the planets. Singing Circle has become a time for learning, as well as, a time for fun.

S.E.E.D.s (Students in Ecological & Environmental Discoveries)

"All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today." -Indian Proverb

By exploring beyond the walls of our school into our woods, fields, meadows, pond and creek, we nourish the children’s innate curiosity about the natural world. Research shows that connecting children with nature has far reaching effects, from improving academic performance to enhancing psychological and physical well-being. It develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, decision making and stimulates creativity.

Our out-of-doors "hands-on" curriculum focuses on activities that are indigenous to our area. Examples of activities would include; learning how living organisms are affected by their environment, conservation, natural dying, maple sugaring, investigation of trees, plants, insects, birds, mammals, animal tracks. fossils, astronomy and much more.

We need to plant the early seeds of understanding the interrelationship between nature and humanity, which will lead children to a sense of responsibility and stewardship in caring for our earth.

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." -Albert Einstein

Spanish

The Spanish program at CMH is very extensive. In addition to learning the Spanish language all groups learn about some of the key Mexican celebrations including Independence Day (September 16), Day of the Death (Nov 2), Posadas, Cinco de Mayo. These lessons include a description of the celebration as well as hands on activities and have the purpose of reinforcing awareness of Mexican culture and traditions. Once a year Juniors and Senior groups learn about another Latin countries like Spain, Argentina and Puerto Rico.

Children in the Pre-Primary level attend Spanish class one day a week. They learn basic vocabulary like colors, numbers, shapes, farm animals, family members, body parts, basic parts of the house and food. For the classes is used different learning materials like pictures, small animals, fruits,books,coloring pages and of course kids keep busy making crafts related with the topic. They enjoy singing songs in Spanish.

Children at the Junior level attend Spanish once a week. The vocabulary they practice are similar to those described for Pre-Primary, but at more advanced level. They begin learning basic gramatical rules like the usage of articles, adjectives and simple verbs like *to have* *to like*,etc... They start practicing good pronunciation and asking simple questions.

Children at the Senior level continue to practice and build on previously acquired skills. They begin the use of verb conjugation in present tense and grammar rules making complete sentences and read them. They use a web program to practice hearing vocabulary and answer questions.

Pottery

Again this year, we were excited to offer pottery lessons to all-day pre-primary and all elementary students. Students have made pinch pots, sculptures, slab and coil pots. Older children have learned about masks from around the world in class and then have had the opportunity to create one of their own. Students were able to paint some of their pieces and have them glazed with food safe glazes.

This year our ceramics program was offered for 6 weeks, but we envision the program expanding in the next two years. The addition of a pottery studio complete with a new kiln and pottery wheels, and summer clay workshops for both children and adults will make our art program unique.