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This week at our school’s summer camp, there are some old familiar faces. Some campers attend other local schools and visit us only in the summer. They spend time getting reacquainted with Wilmington Montessori School, the outdoors and each other. There are others who are with us most every season of the year. It is fun to watch them all come together, enjoying their time, recalling summers past and anticipating what they will do this year: how it will be the same and how it may be different.
Summer is a time for most of us to slow down, to look around and see what’s new, and to enjoy the familiar summer routine – a routine typically quite different from the school year. We hear so much about “summer slump” and losing the hard-fought skills that were acquired during the previous nine months of school that we sometimes forget what summer is all about. It is the time to relax a bit more, catch up with friends and explore. Summer for all of us is much like the camp experience for children. What were your summers like as a kid? What did you look forward to? As you continue to read with your children, play games and perhaps practice some math facts, I hope you find some fun and relaxation in the long days of summer.
As September has come to a close, so have our daily read alouds in the WMS Learning Commons. As you may know, the past month featured many WMS friends reading to the children each day. Our special guests included Board members, grandparents, parents, staff members and, yes, even dogs. The children enjoyed the great pleasure of singing a song to get started and hearing about favorite characters in literature. Each day was a little different – though the routine remained the same.
Reading aloud is one of the most important things we can do for children. Read alouds offer the opportunity for children to experience books they may not be quite ready to take on by themselves. The characters come alive through the different voices, expressions and mannerisms that the reader brings to them. Children learn how a book “sounds.” Most of us can’t recall how we learned to read. What we know through research is that reading is multi-faceted. Children move from learning letter sounds to forming words by grouping letters together to eventually reading fluently rather than plodding along word by word.
