Calling all painters! We need your help building and painting sets for the musical. Students and parents are needed and no experience is necessary.
When: Saturday, April 8, 2:00-6:00
and Sunday, April 9, 1:00-5:00
Where: The Duvall’s house (ask a staff member if you need directions)
Additional information: Parents need to stay with kids grades Pre-K, K, 1, 2 &3. BYO snacks and drinks and wear old clothes.
Our Middle School students (Grades 6-8) are out and about on their annual spring trip. This year’s destination is St. Louis, Missouri.
On our first full day we participated in a mock trial of the Dred Scott case; visited the Gateway Arch; took a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi River; and visited the Kosciusko Graffiti Wall (a space for street artists to legally express themselves). It was a fun-filled day!
Check back tomorrow to follow along as our trip continues.
It’s our second full day in St. Louis with the Middle School students, and the major attraction of the day was the City Museum:
“Housed in the 600,000 square-foot former International Shoe Company, the museum is an eclectic mixture of children’s playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel made out of unique, found objects. The brainchild of internationally acclaimed artist Bob Cassilly, a classically trained sculptor and serial entrepreneur, the museum opened for visitors in 1997 to the riotous approval of young and old alike.”
With caves to crawl through, sculptures to climb on, and even a 10-story slide, the students had an active day. After the museum, everyone headed back to the apartments for a little “chill” time.
Tonight we will go to Escape the Room St. Louis for some challenging puzzles and more fun as we try to decipher the clues to escape the room in an hour.
The Middle School trip to St. Louis wrapped up on Thursday with the students planning the day themselves. Before the trip the class was given a list of St. Louis attractions and were encouraged to look them over and think about which they were most interested in seeing.
The St. Louis Zoo and St. Louis Art Museum were the two attractions chosen by the students. These destinations also gave us an opportunity to work on the Practical Life skill of taking public transportation.
It was then time to bid farewell to St. Louis and we all walked down to the Greyhound station for the long overnight journey home.
St. Louis was a fun and exciting week, but still, our Middle School students cheered when the bus driver said “Miami University” as we entered campus.
Primary recently continued their exploration of Africa by shifting their focus to Ghana. Although it is a small country, about twice the size of Ohio, it has many unique characteristics. It is where the well-known kente cloth originated, woven on looms by the Ashanti people, as well as other arts and crafts.
Ghana is home to the Kakum National Park and its canopy walkway, which allows pedestrians a unique view of the rainforest at the canopy level. We were also very excited to discover that Ghana is the world’s second largest producer of cacao!
Primary students spent a week exploring Ghana with books, photos, artifacts, and games.
Our gnome-friend Reade visited all of our classrooms yesterday to kick off our annual Read-a-Thon fundraiser. The Read-a-Thon is a fundraiser for our school library and summer reading books. It works through sponsors; this year, sponsors will give money based on how many minutes a child reads (or is read to) each day. Your child will bring home a booklet to list sponsors and log all those minutes.
After a quick speech from Reade, students met with their partners (Lower Elementary with Middle School, and Primary with Upper Elementary) to spend some time reading together. Pictured above are the Lower Elementary/Middle School partners.
McGuffey’s Read-a-Thon goal for this year is to read for a collective 1,440 minutes, or one full day!
Oxford-area yoga instructor Jill Levendaris joined our Physical Education classes on Friday, April 7 so we could be among the more than 40,000 children to participate in the second International Kids’ Yoga Day. Jill guided the students through the poses that children around the world practiced for the occasion.
Afterwards, students were asked to name their favorite poses from our yoga instruction during fall semester and we did them as a group. It was a very nice way to end the week.
The Read-a-Thon enters its second week today! Our students have been focusing on reading at school and home. Several of our students are challenging themselves to read 24 hours on their own! This is our academic fundraiser so we’d like to encourage the students to make sure to ask family members and friends to contribute to help us raise money for our school libraries and our summer reading program.
It has been an exciting Read-a-Thon so far this year with the addition of our Monday Read-Ins with partners, visits from Reade (the reading gnome), and exciting Mystery Readers.
Read-a-Thon wraps up this Friday with our second Mystery Reader. Last week Mayor Kate Rousmaniere visited to read to the students and talk a bit about her role as the Mayor of Oxford. Who will show up this Friday? It’s a mystery…
Students in Lower Elementary have a lesson in their MindUP curriculum every Wednesday in place of Specials (Art, Music, and PE). The MindUP curriculum teaches the latest scientific information about the brain to offer strategies for helping students to focus their attention, improve their executive function skills, build resilience, and develop optimism and a positive mindset.
Last Wednesday, these students practiced their balance with two exercises. For the first exercise, all students stood apart from each other in their outdoor classroom and tried to balance on one leg for 30 seconds; then, they tried it a second time, this time concentrating on a focal point somewhere within their range of vision. It was amazing to see the dramatic difference between these two attempts. With a focal point to concentrate on while balancing, students wobbled much less. For the second exercise, students practiced walking heel-to-toe on a straight line of tape on the ground, with a pyramid beanbag balanced on their heads (students just finished sewing these beanbags with Ayelet for their Practical Life curriculum).
After both exercises, we discussed a few questions, such as: how did it feel to balance on one leg? (“My other leg hurt!” was a common response). What did you choose for your focal point? (Fence posts, stumps, trees, and other people were mentioned often.) How did the beanbag change your balance? (“I couldn’t look down!”) We discussed how we can focus and think clearly when our bodies and brains work together, and how our brain’s ability to focus improves when we pay attention to the signals our bodies send us.
We have been fortunate to have the help of two wonderful interns over the course of this semester at McGuffey. Alyssa Cook has been working in our Primary classroom, and Sarah Burke has been working in our Lower Elementary classroom. Their time with us is almost up, and we wanted to make sure to recognize them for all of their work and the gifts that they have shared with our students. While we will certainly miss them, we know that their futures are bright and filled with fun.
Thanks, Alyssa and Sarah!
As the pictures above show, sets and costumes for “Singin’ in the Rain” are coming along well. Last week, there was an open work session at the Duvalls’ house where students and parents could get creative and paint sets. We made time for some choreography work, too.
Can you find the music room? It now looks like the backstage at a theater because it’s become a sea of costumes and props. It’s fun to imagine how this will all come together to create a magical experience for both audience and performer. Please plan to see the shows May 4 and 5 at the Oxford Community Arts Center.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Club meets tomorrow (Sunday) at the Oxford Lane Library from 1-3pm. Tomorrow’s meeting is scheduled to be held in the Havighurst Meeting Room (upstairs). Should we be moved to a different space, we will post a notice on the front door of the library.
You can always check this page on our website for Pokémon Club dates and times. Matt’s final meeting with the Pokémon Club will be on Sunday, May 7. If you are interested in leading Pokémon Club in the future, please contact Matt or talk to him at this week’s meeting.
The art curriculum in Kindergarten Studio is one that builds throughout the year. Starting with two dimensional drawing, children then explore a variety of three-dimensional art, fiber arts, and then end the year with woodworking. The woodworking unit is placed last intentionally, as children are proving their ability to respectfully manage real tools throughout the year. By spring, they are excited to take this big challenge!
Kindergarteners have spent the last few weeks learning how to use hammers, saws, and hand drills, and recently tackled their first project—a simple sailboat.
A handful of students in Lower Elementary planted their classroom’s gardens yesterday. This was part of a combined Science and Practical Life unit that has been ongoing for the past month, and has seen students selecting which seeds they would like to grow in the garden, designing their own seed packets in order to familiarize themselves with the kind of information that seed packets often display, using that information to make choices about the layout of the garden, and then finally, planting the seeds.
Our students planted red and orange poppies in the flower-box by their playhouse, birdhouse gourds in the flower-box by their patio, and kohlrabi, melon, beans, and edamame in the garden bed near the sunroom.
The Upper Unit was treated to breakfast for lunch this week thanks to the work of our Grade 4 class. During our Democratic Meeting, this group of students created a proposal to have breakfast for lunch once a month which would be planned, shopped for, and prepared by the students. The proposal passed when it was voted on by the entire Upper Unit and a new tradition was started.
The members of the Breakfast Club created their menu and shopping list, and then met this past Sunday at Kroger to do the shopping. They gave up their recess to stay in and cook the meal which consisted of pancakes (regular and gluten-free), bacon (regular and vegetarian), and scrambled eggs. With maple syrup and chocolate chips for the pancakes plus orange juice and milk to drink, it was quite a meal!
It is always exciting to watch our students take the lead in these activities and see where it takes them next.
As our annual musical is coming together and everybody has been practicing their lines and their dance moves, there has been a lot of work going on behind the scenes! And we all know that the musical wouldn’t be complete without art.
Costumes, props, and sets are all in progress and have been a major part of our Art classes lately. From Grade 1 through Grade 8, everybody took part of the great adventure of prop-making. Grades 1-4 have been working on party desserts props, using papier mache and creating very light and yummy looking chocolate truffles. Upper Unit students colored them and decorated them to make them look even more delicious. Some students used sewing to create chocolate-dipped strawberries, and for a while, the first word that everybody said when they walked into the art room was: Yummy!
Today, Grades 1-8 tried on their costumes, and excitement was in the air! Hats, vests, skirts and fancy scarves were everywhere. Characters are starting to feel more real and are getting ready for show-time! It is so much fun to put on some bright colors to go along with the wonderful music.
The nicer weather allows Primary students the opportunity to take enrichment outside. Today we painted—with our feet! We don’t have many photos to share, as the teachers were busy putting paint of the feet of some very eager artists. They worked together to stomp out a fantastic piece of art.
Read-a-Thon has ended and the minutes have been tallied. The McGuffey Montessori School students met and shattered their goal of 1440 minutes (24 hours).
The final number of minutes read was a staggering 16,371! That is over 11 days of reading! Thanks to all the students who raised money for McGuffey’s literacy programs such as classroom libraries and summer reading.
We appreciate all the time and effort our students put into the Read-a-Thon, and we hope that passion for reading stays with them through the summer. Reade and the reading gnomes are gone for now but they’ll be back next year!
McGuffey Grade 7 student Lauren Bierer is sharing her talents in volleyball with our students. Lauren plays for Edgewood Middle School’s team and approached the PE teacher about teaching volleyball to our students. She was asked to prepare some drills and activities to help our students gain the fundamentals of volleyball.
Our students worked with Lauren on the skills of passing, setting, and serving. They enjoyed the variety of drills and are looking forward to another session with Lauren to learn more about the basics of the game. Thanks, “Coach” Bierer!
Pokémon Trading Card Game Club meets tomorrow (Sunday) at the Oxford Lane Library from 1-3pm. Tomorrow’s meeting is scheduled to be held in the Havighurst Meeting Room (upstairs). Should we be moved to a different space, we will post a notice on the front door of the library.
Tomorrow will be Matt’s final time leading Pokémon Club. We hope to share details soon about the program’s future!
