School Communication
Friday, June 12, 2020
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
We had a joyful graduation ceremony last week for our eight Secondary Level graduates. Wednesday morning, Elisabeth Miles, Matt Robbins and Paula Preschlack drove to each house and delivered the diploma with a rose, a graduation yard sign, a personalized book of child photographs and the class’s yearbook. It was so fun to see our graduates in their driveways! In the Zoom ceremony that evening, each graduate gave a speech for us with their extended family members present. It was a memorable, poignant but joyful, experience!
Amidst the emotions of ending an unusual school year and of the recent national news, we hope you are also finding solace and light in the beauty of these first weeks of our midwestern summer. Nature is a place for healing and inspiration. In the outdoors, we can give our children and ourselves time to process the important conversations happening in the world and in our own homes. This is a time to live deeply in just one day at a time, and to find optimism in taking the long-view when it comes to making decisions. These months will pass and a brighter future is always on the way.
Forest Bluff School expects to be open for students to attend in person in the fall! We want to be in the building with the children as much as possible with constant attention to their safety.
If we have to work remotely again for any reason, we have created a great plan! Please review the appropriate attachments of our Remote Learning Plans at the bottom of this message.
Tuitions for returning families have been reduced, as you will see when you receive them this week, to account for the uncertainty of the times. By enrolling to reserve your children’s places as soon as possible, you are committing to being part of this community and all that it provides. This active, vibrant learning community is what makes Forest Bluff special!
The Forest Bluff Directors are spending this summer preparing for all possible scenarios and considering the challenges of the 2020-2021 school year. This month, the Directors started to design the structure of our Remote Learning plan for Option A (see previous message), which you may recall is for families who choose to be in person as much as possible, and to switch back and forth to remote learning as needed.
To design our remote learning plan, Directors and school leaders attended webinars, read many reports and articles for educators, consulted with experts, and compared notes with many teachers, both in the Montessori and conventional school communities. The collected information helped us come up with the best plan. Gratefully, we also incorporated the questionnaires most all of our parents shared with us. It was encouraging to see that parent remarks aligned closely with what the Directors observed during the last two months of this past school year. This demonstrates continuity within our school community and shows that our parents know so much already about the Montessori approach; working together creatively to serve the children’s needs makes us an even stronger community than ever!
Upcoming All-School Events
Supporting you in your roles as parents is a big part of what we do at Forest Bluff, and we see direct, positive results in the children themselves. In this coming year, we are putting together some all-school events that will be virtual (or recorded for Forest Bluff parents unable to attend if held in person):
-Montessori From the Start audio lectures and Zoom discussion groups for parents of ages 0-6
-Montessori Approach At Home lectures and Zoom discussion groups for parents of ages 6-14
-Book Discussions on Zoom in small groups
-Continuing Education Evenings as Zoom webinar presentations for all parents to view
These will be led by Paula Lillard Preschlack or another Director, with email invitations from the office to Forest Bluff parents only. They will address relevant topics as we see them arise, such as homeschooling challenges, family discussions about equity and anti-racism, or managing children’s anxieties. We look forward to continuing these conversations and growing together!
The Remote Learning Plan
Below please find the Directors’ Remote Learning plans for each age group:
Primary Level Remote Learning Plan
Elementary Level Remote Learning Plan
Secondary Level Remote Learning Plan
Adjustments and changes may be made to these later, based on updated information over the summer and observations of children’s responses in the fall on a weekly basis. Giving you this outlined plan now will make you feel confident to commit to Forest Bluff for this upcoming fall. Your children’s intellectual knowledge, motivation to learn and sense of responsibility for their learning, close relationships with their Directors and their social experiences with others, are prioritized in these plans. The Remote Learning plans differ from one another to reflect the characteristics and developmental needs of each age level. They address:
The structure of each work day that reflects the classroom day.
That the children will be held accountable for their learning.
Ways instruction will be delivered.
The fact that physical learning materials may be borrowed or created for use at home.
That individualized work plans and meetings with the Directors will guide student progress.
How Directors will give feedback and encouragement to children’s work.
Director availability for individualized conversations with parents.
* The Remote Learning Plan for Option B, which is completely online and for the same tuition, is still being created and will differ from what is shown here for Option A for the entire classes of children. Please inquire with Admissions Director Lynn Jessen if you are interested in being on the waitlist for Option B, or have questions about it.
Updates Over the Summer
As you know, we had hoped to resume a brief summer session in late June. However, given the current CDC instructions for school programs, we conclude that it is better for your children to spend time in more relaxed outdoor camp settings or safely with your families during these beautiful summer months. During this time, they can play, explore, socialize, and adjust slowly to the restrictions that may be required of them when we return to school, such as wearing masks and giving a wide berth to others. We want them to be ready to focus on their participation with their Forest Bluff Directors without undue strain; waiting until late summer also gives us adults time to see what changes from CDC and the state–if any–will be part of our school lives in the fall, and to plan to make these smoothest for the children.
Please note: Forest Bluff will start early, on Monday, August 24th,* in a staggered fashion, pending state directive, our county’s phase, and updated CDC guidelines. We will notify you in early August of more details for the beginning days.
Children are incredibly resilient, courageous and joyful, by their very nature. During these tumultuous times, Forest Bluff School is one of the most hopeful places to employ our energy, even as our days and routines have changed immeasurably. We look forward to a positive fall with great connectivity! We continue to be deeply grateful for the support and optimism of your remarkable families, and we look forward to being with you and your children again.
Warmly,
The Forest Bluff Directors
*The same number of weeks of the school year are being offered: A later adjustment will be made in the 2020-2021 calendar to add a week of no school in the late fall or winter to accommodate flu season, a virus outbreak, or another anticipated interruption. We will notify families as far in advance as possible to plan for these presently unknown dates. This is a common trend for schools, high schools and colleges for this unusual year. Thank you for allowing for this necessary flexibility.
Email Number XIX
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
You have received many emails from us this spring, and you can expect them to taper off now. Please be sure to see the important email from last Friday, May 22, explaining our school plans and enrollment options for the fall, and look for an email from us on June 12th with information about Forest Bluff’s future Remote Learning structure. Please check your inbox over the summer for monthly updates about the school’s start date (we may start early this year) or any other announcements. These will be posted on our website as well, under the FBS FamiliesTab/School Communication. Here is the remainder of our all-school news for the 2019-2020 school year:
We invite you to our Reverse Parade, this Saturday, May 30th at 10:00-10:15am:
Please come in your car (no bikes or walking) to drive by Forest Bluff School in a Reverse Parade. Simply drive into the parking lot, turn right, and slowly proceed around the cones and past the school building where the Directors will be standing and waving to you and your children. Please do not get out of your cars or stop your car; you can repeat the loop if you wish to. You and your children are invited to shout hellos and wave out the windows; you can also make signs or decorate your cars if you wish. This is a festive and special way for your children to see their Directors–socially distanced–and see that the school is still here, waiting for them in the future. We can’t wait to see you!
If your child left medications or personal items at the school, you can pull aside near the table in the far northwestern corner of the parking lot after you drive through the Reverse Parade. Please stay in your car and a school employee will bring your items to you in a labeled plastic bag.
THANK YOU to our Directors and staff!
Our Directors are an outstanding team; Iuditha Jager, Abbey White, Haley Tate, Maggie Kelly, Melanie McEneely, Kaiti Anderson, Debbie Secler, Ann Marie Nedeau, Sarah Robbins, Regina Sokolowski, Elisabeth Miles and Matt Robbins. Please join me in thanking them for their exceptional efforts to provide you and your children support in this year and during the very challenging past two months. Our Business Manager Cindy Alexander, Maintenance Superintendent Steve Willard and Office Manager Trish Reidy have given us all long hours and unwavering dedication. We also thank our assistants, and especially Mary Jane Parr, who has worked at the school since 1994! Ms. Parr has been a fantastic assistant in the Primary and Young Children’s Community classrooms, spanning 25 years from Anne Lawton Mahon’s Directorship to Maggie Kelly’s. Always there at 7:30 in the morning, snowstorm or no, Mary Jane loved your children and dedicated much of her life to this school!*
Feel free to send any notes of gratitude for any Directors, employees or classroom assistants to the school office. No gifts, please.
We’d like to close with some recent words from two Forest Bluff alumni:
As I am now finishing up my second year of a Ph.D. program in Inorganic Chemistry, I have found myself thinking of my Montessori education often. I honestly think that it was my time at Forest Bluff that prepared me more for my current position of a full-time researcher than any of my years in high school and college. Because what do I do all day in the lab? I think of experiments to do that seek to answer key questions that I am interested in. I explore different ways of synthesizing new molecules and record my observations. It is up to me every day to figure out what I want to do, ask older lab members and post-docs for help, and think deeply about what I observe. These are exactly the skills that Montessori equipped me with: independence, curiosity, integrity, resourcefulness, perseverance.
And what about now that labs are closed, and I can’t do the experiments I was planning on doing? My Montessori education taught me that sometimes life is hard, sometimes it rains all day during a Secondary Level work trip, sometimes someone else is using the material you hoped to use that day. But then you motivate yourself to push through, or take a break and do something else. I have been slowly working from home on writing a paper with some labmates, and I have also taken this time to read books, plant vegetables on my balcony, and try new recipes. Life is so rich and wonderful, and I am so grateful that I learned how to take each day as it comes, with grace and resilience and creativity.
One of the most vivid lessons I learned in my elementary years was what it means to be resourceful. I remember my Upper Elementary teacher discussed it with us one day as an entire class. She reminded us that she wasn’t always there for us to answer questions—either she was in a lesson, or working with other students, etc. She reminded us that we can almost always find our own solutions to things without her direct help, and she encouraged us to try those options first before going directly to her. At the time, this meant ask an older student for help. It meant use a paper clip instead of a staple to put your work together until the teacher was finished teaching a lesson and could get new staples from the closet. It meant think about a problem in a new way, or put it away and come back with fresh eyes later—a practice that tends to miraculously create new solutions. It meant assess what is available to help you with your problem before having someone else fix it for you.
From another:
My 10-year-old self became proud of the innovations and adaptations that my Forest Bluff teachers encouraged me to create through resourcefulness. I was reminded that I could be quite independent, and didn’t need adults to solve my problems. This is the independence that I am so grateful to my Montessori education for fostering, and this resourcefulness has helped me get through this incredibly challenging pandemic. Yes, it is scary. Yes, I am facing challenges that I never knew I’d face, like finishing up junior year of college online and living in complete isolation (my parents are currently living out of the country so I remained on my campus when all the other students went home). And here’s the thing—there is no adult who can fix these problems for me. No Upper Elementary teacher to check my work. I’ve had to come up with my own solutions to the simultaneous lack of normal activities and increase in psychological burden that this pandemic has brought on. But Montessori prepared me to take stock of the resources I do have available: I have the time to get back to crocheting, to bake, to call up old friends. I can take a pause from coursework that is seemingly impossible, work on something else like a crossword puzzle with my sister via Zoom, and return with fresh eyes. I have gotten through the end of the semester, and I know that I have a base of resourcefulness fostered in my Forest Bluff Elementary classroom over half my life ago. If next fall ends up being online as well—bring it on! My crochet hook and I can handle it.
Warm regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack for the Forest Bluff Directors
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
If you’re anything like me, you have been feeling very frustrated by the constant uncertainty, the inability to make decisions based on so few facts, and having to wait to be told what we are and are not allowed to do. “What is going to happen next?” means something very different to me than it did a few months ago when we had a little more control in our lives! It is hard not to feel discouraged and down. But…
HERE’S LOTS OF GOOD NEWS!:
For the 2020-2021 school year, you can pay your tuition in two parts. The first semester, which runs September-December, will be a reduced cost. You will be billed in July.
In January, we will begin the second semester, January-May, and the tuition cost will return to normal if we are able to resume a regular in-school schedule at that time. You will be billed accordingly in the late fall of 2020. If the uncertainty of remote schooling is still predicted for the second semester, tuition will again be reduced.
You will have two options to sign up for the fall semester, and both cost the same:
Option A
School is open in one of three scenarios and you choose to participate fully in whichever one is being offered at any time:
Scenario 1: In a normal capacity, following CDC guidelines
Scenario 2: In a hybrid capacity with daily visits to the school in small groups and supported home learning during the rest of each day
Scenario 3: The building is closed to students but Directors are giving instruction through a Remote Learning structure—see below.*
(If school is open but we have to close for a few days or weeks, we will switch to the Remote Learning structure for every day we are not in the building, then back again when the building reopens. Directors and students will stay in the same learning cycles so that learning is not interrupted).
Option B
Whether the school is open in full or part capacity, you may not feel comfortable or be able to send your child to school until a vaccine is available and/or the COVID-19 risk is removed. In this case, we are happy to announce that you can enroll your Primary or Elementary aged child in our on-line Primary group or on-line Elementary group for the semester. Each group of children—one Primary and one Elementary—will be its own “class group” and will work with each other and one of our Support Directors for the semester.
Primary and Elementary trained Iuditha Jager will lead the Primary group; Elementary trained John Dickson will lead the Elementary group. Both are savvy with online learning and have been Montessori teachers for many years. Spaces are limited, so if you are interested in this option, please let the office know right away. This group will not be able to switch to the in-class option until the semester is over. But, when they return to school in January or in the following September, these students can resume in their regular classroom with their original Director and classmates. All Directors will stay closely involved to coordinate your child’s academic progress and ensure a smooth transition.
* Remote Learning structure: Our Directors are creating the Forest Bluff Remote Learning structure for Options A and B and finding many possibilities! Collecting information from our colleagues near and far has given us many ideas, as have the questionnaires from our previous email. Thank you if you already sent your questionnaire responses in; if you have not yet, please do so next week so that we can consider your input as well. We will be ready to present more details of the Remote Learning plan on or around June 12th. In the meantime, we can tell you that it will provide students of all ages with a daily schedule and work plan, instruction and accountability, and that we are finding many more creative ways to use computer programs such as SeeSaw, Zoom and Google Classroom that will meet our needs. Group instruction and regularly scheduled meetings will be part of the program. We are also looking into ways to make Montessori learning materials available when children cannot be in school so they can still have as much of their school experiences at home as possible. We are excited about it!
More Good News:
Unlike most other schools, Forest Bluff School is optimally positioned to comply with CDC guidelines and therefore more likely to be open for in-person learning:
-Every classroom has its own side door for access that does not require a teacher or children to walk through the building to get to their specific classroom.
-Every classroom has space and numbers of children that allow for social distancing and moving through the spaces without having to pass closely, for instance, furniture is all movable and have large spaces between them.
-Every classroom has its own bathroom for the children in that group to share and only one person at a time uses it.
-Every classroom has two sinks in it for that group of children to wash their hands frequently.
-Each child has his or her own drawer to keep their own work.
-Children can use their own pencils and belongings and keep them in their individual drawers.
-Learning materials can be used individually then disinfected and covered with sheets until sharing is allowed.
-Children can spend time outside working on their class patio and still be seen by their Director, patios are part of every classroom.
-Our rooms have ample air flow with many windows, wide, open spaces and high ceilings.
-To play outside, we have prairie paths and open spaces to run and play games at social distances
-Parents can pick up and drop off their children easily from multiple side doors.
-Children do not have to move from one room to another for each class subject and there aren’t different teachers for every subject, so exposure between numbers of people is already very limited.
-When permissible to go to other spaces in the building, children can get to any other room by outside doors and do not have to pass through communal spaces in the building (i.e. hallway or stairwells) to do so.
-We have two enclosed rooms in our building where a sick child can be safely quarantined while waiting to be picked up if necessary.
-We have an ample supply of equipment, information and plans for handling this COVID-19 era.
-And lastly, we have an on-site registered nurse as one of our Directors, Maggie Kelly.
So as you can see, we have many reasons to be optimistic about next fall and we look forward to adapting and thriving together! Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
Save the Date!
On Saturday, May 30th, please plan to drive through the Forest Bluff School parking lot between 10:00 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. for a Reverse Parade! We are waiting on permission for this event from the Lake Bluff Police Department; details to follow next week.
Thank you, parents:
You have all been just amazing this spring. At every one of our Director meetings over Zoom, we share stories of the inspiring conversations and creative ways that Forest Bluff parents have found to support your children to learn at home. To say that none of what has transpired would have happened without you is an understatement! You set up home working spaces, collected items, made materials, followed many of the ideas the Directors gave you and parents came up with many of your own. A treasure box of ingenuity came out of all this!
We are also amazed by the children. Last week, one parent agreed, sharing that she was so touched that she almost cried when she saw a ten-year-old boy sweetly reading to her four-year-old over Facetime, as Forest Bluff “Big Friends/Little Friends”. Children have been connecting with each other, writing reports and presenting them to their classmates, making and testing boats made of tinfoil and airplanes made of paper to determine the most aerodynamic designs, painting, making materials at home to continue their math and language, and baking and cooking. More than anything, they are developing their independence and creativity without relying heavily on the adults around them or on external entertainment. They continue to impress us with these clear results of the Montessori approach made visible by their activities, ingenuity, eagerness to connect with each other, and motivation to keep learning. Rather than being a time of languishing, our community embraced this time out of school as an opportunity for growth at home. This is directly related to your parental efforts and support: THANK YOU!
For Forest Bluff class pictures this year, please send your favorite photo of your child doing an activity from home this week with his or her beautiful face clearly in view. Please email this to your child’s Director in full resolution by choosing “actual size” when emailing. We will make and distribute a PHOTO COLLAGE for your child’s class photo at the end of the year.
There is a new blog post that we hope will give you a burst of inspiration if you need it as you finish up the school year at home with your children: Please find it at https://forestbluffschool.org/author/forest-bluff-school-blog/
Email Number XVI
Planning for Next School Year
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
As we finish our school year on May 29th, the Directors and I are dedicating our full energies to planning for next year. We continue to be hopeful that Forest Bluff will be open in September. At the same time, we are preparing for specific scenarios that may arise in this era of COVID-19, and are therefore designing a new Remote Learning structure by gathering information from many sources, including neighboring schools, educators across the country, and school organizations.
The international Montessori community is discussing how to best support children when the screen becomes the dominating option for students and teachers to connect. By incorporating this information and looking at what other schools have done during this recent school closure, Forest Bluff will build a defined structure to support children’s remote learning that best suits the learning styles and developmental needs of children at each stage and age. The results will differ from what we did this spring and will be more specific and sustainable. Our Directors are excited with some great ideas for how to use technology, create a Montessori materials lending library, and to work with your children if they have to do so remotely. We have terrific resources coming our way, along with our Support Directors for next year, who will help us and your children to embrace this challenge with enthusiasm!
Please find the attached questionnaire below for you to give us your input. Please type your answers right into the word document, and then email it to office@forestbluffschool.org as an attachment by selecting “share”. We will be looking at your responses before May 29th; thank you for sending this back to us as soon as you’re able to!
We will present Forest Bluff’s Remote Learning plan for next year in an email in June, and will include the scenarios of school-in-session vs. possible closures/remote learning, that we are preparing for. This way, you will know what we plan to do and what to expect before you make your tuition payment.
Our most important goal through this is to continue to be a strong, connected community at Forest Bluff that can endure such times. To keep focused on the long view, envision the children back at Forest Bluff School running through the prairie grass and busily working together in their beautiful classrooms. This will happen!
Gratefully,
Paula Lillard Preschlack For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number XV
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
Last week was particularly discouraging with the rain, cooler temperatures and hearing that much has to happen before schools will be allowed to reopen in Illinois. It is hard to believe that we are in this situation, it’s tempting to lash out, hard to be patient, and tempting to succumb to worrying. Then, we pick ourselves back up again…Our only choice is to try to be optimistic and prepare for different scenarios. Later this week, you will receive an email describing how Forest Bluff School is beginning to prepare for next year, hoping for the best and making plans for anything that may happen!
In the meantime, one thing we can each control is how connected we stay as a community. Our success in this area is something worth celebrating: At Forest Bluff, we now have over 60 students who paired up last week as Big Friends/Little Friends, writing letters to each other and visiting regularly with video calls! More children can still sign up; please let the office or your child’s Director know if your child wants to be a Big Friend or a Little Friend to another Forest Bluff student. Directors will also continue to call parents to check in and offer guidance, make video calls to individual children, hold Zoom meetings for older classes, and continue to design work plans for every child. The children have been doing some very creative and inspiring things, alone and together. We also have several virtual events coming up, like the Book Fair that begins today; we encourage you to bring more books into your house, and perhaps connect with other families further by exchanging books with Forest Bluff friends in the summer after your children have read them. We also have the virtual Drama Workshop next week that will bring all of the Elementary children together in groups for dancing, singing, scriptwriting and fun games. These are just some of the ways we are connecting. Keeping these connections active helps to ease the loneliness and to find some joy with our Forest Bluff friends and Directors in this month.
We also encourage you to look to Montessori’s approach to support you and your child’s well-being: Dr. Montessori found that chosen, purposeful work is a powerful “normalizing” force in children’s lives. A physical task for a small child, like washing something, caring for the home or cooking a meal is an all-senses, full-mind experience that both calms and centers them while helping them to think. For older children, the mental tasks of writing a report, building something with blocks or creating their own musical, does the same. We are a species that needs self-directed tasks to steer us towards productivity and a sense of accomplishment. For children, their “productivity and accomplishment” simply means development; their job is to form themselves, every day. By providing children with home environments that encourage this formation, you enable them to come out of this time more self-motivated in their learning and confident in their choices for action. Finding something productive to do is often the best remedy. This is the way we can prepare for the future, a little bit each day.
To keep ourselves going through this period and to be positive for our children, it is also important to fill ourselves up by investing in our own well-being, as adults. This is a good time to try a meditation app, yoga or a prayer group, to look for positive podcasts to listen to and find uplifting on-line courses or lectures. Whatever makes you feel better directly affects your children, as well. By rebalancing ourselves, we free our children to focus on their own needs. And much of the time, the children are the ones who lead us back to hope and optimism. The Montessori worldview that they are growing up with is a positive one that can revive and strengthen them to look for solutions and build themselves into the kinds of people our world needs. Let’s actively cultivate this hope for a renewed world, together!
Warmly,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number XIV
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
While we are all eager to know what will happen next, we have to take our plans at Forest Bluff week by week. It is hard to accept that change can only happen as new information arrives month by month in Illinois, for our country, and for the world. But the compassion, camaraderie, and inspiration in our Forest Bluff Community – from the Directors, parents and children – has been immense. At our most recent virtual Director’s meeting this past Thursday, one member teared up as she reported how proud she is of her students. “The way these children are responding, the ways these children are adapting, is just amazing,” she told us, and we all agreed. To read more specific stories of what students are doing, see the latest Reflections on Homeschooling by our Upper Elementary Director, Regina Sokolowski (attachment below), see the photo gallery, and be sure to read your newly added Parent Reflections under Reflections on Homeschooling. You and your children are what makes this school’s story a positive one!
Montessori children really do lead the way: Some of our students are sewing fabric face masks, writing their own newspapers, graphing the daily stock market changes, and one decided to make a video demonstrating how to bind your own books at home. The creativity and ideas coming from our students are limitless: young children are even making their own Montessori materials using everything from colored paper and scissors to cereal boxes, wires and beads, so that they can practice their math and language skills during their work times at home. This shows such determination, ingenuity, and a love for learning.
To help families connect more directly with one another this month, we have some fun things in store:
On May 11th, all families will receive an invitation to a virtual Book Fair by the Lake Forest Book Store. Parents will be emailed a catalog of selected children’s books to purchase using an on-line order form. You will be able to purchase your books and pick them up at the Book Store’s curbside, within days of ordering. This will spark some new enthusiasm for reading, which gives your children valuable “homework” to last right into the summer months.
From May 18th to 29th, all of our Elementary students will be invited to a 2-week virtual Drama Workshop with our Drama Directors and Joshua French. They will lead short Zoom sessions with groups of Elementary children to study dance, songwriting and scriptwriting. Between sessions, children will be encouraged to create their own scripts, songs and dances, and to share them with each other.
On Tuesday, May 19th, the Young Children’s Community will have a Zoom party, called the Mother’s Day Necklace Exchange, for children and their mothers to see one another’s bead necklaces made by the children.
We also want to help every student connect with other Forest Bluff children, even with a student of a different age and classroom whom they may not know. Please tell your child’s Director if you are willing to let your child contact a younger Forest Bluff child to be a Pen Pal, or if your younger child would like to be the recipient of 5-to-10 minute FaceTime calls from an older child. Older children will receive a write up of guidelines and suggestions to help them in these endeavors. You can also send a quick email to office@forestbluffschool.org letting us know, “my child would like an older Forest Bluff student virtual visitor to contact them and say hello on Face Time” OR, “my child would like to receive and send letters with a student in another class, as a Pen Pal by regular post mail. The Directors will match students up as Little Friend/Big Friend in pairs.
This is a wonderful way for children of different ages and classrooms to meet each other and form relationships. For the children who have begun these activities to try it out, we are seeing joy and comfort for both sides of each pairing. Although this is completely voluntary, every child in the school may want to take advantage of this opportunity. When we are all together again some day in person, it will be delightful for our community to gather with a new layer of familiarity!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number XIII
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
As we head into the last week of April, this is a good time to look at what your family has accomplished in this “homeschooling” period so far. You HAVE accomplished a lot, even if it does not feel that way: You have established some kind of daily routine, there’s an area for your children to “work”, you have tried some suggestions from Directors, and you have spent a great deal of time together as a family. Many children have done projects, studied or practiced intellectual skills, and cooked meals. Hopefully, they are also helping you to care for your houses and gaining some new independence, as well. And all the children are learning and growing, even when they are playing, reading, and exploring: they are exercising their abilities to problem solve, self-regulate and to think creatively. I encourage you to look for things to be proud of, no matter how small, and to cheer yourselves and your children with this positive outlook.
In May, the Directors turn their attention to another important aspect of this period of being kept apart: how is this affecting us and our developing children psychologically, as human beings? We are certainly meant to be together, making this a time of grief, loneliness and anxiousness for many. What can we do to address this, so that we can also build resilience, optimism and gratitude? How will our children be affected when this period is past us? At Forest Bluff, educators value the development of the whole child, and that includes encouraging the parents who model for them. Our Directors will arrange group learning opportunities, resources and social connections to help our students and parents with this most important aspect of everyone’s well-being, starting in this next month.
One of the ways for you to feel connected to the community is by checking our website under the FBS Families tab, where we will continue to post information. To find out what one another has been up to, please see the new Montessori Homeschool Gallery for some shared inspiration. You can send more photos to info@forestbluffschool.org to add to this gallery. If you would like to share a personal insight or perspective, we welcome these as well! One parent wrote to us about growing up in another country and how this influences her perspective of what her children are learning now, which we will share with you. This is a way to feel closer to one another even as we are physically apart. The written word, and stories, are a powerful way to feel connection to another person. This is true of artwork, music, and any other form of expression. As the Directors collect resources to introduce your children to more stories, writing, song and theater, please look at May as an important time to celebrate what makes us human even in a digital time. We welcome your ideas, as well. Let’s look for ways to build an even closer community for the children in our midst!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number XII
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
This is a fascinating time for educational institutions, parents and students around the country as we examine how children can learn outside of school. For many schools, initial efforts at switching from classroom-based practices to hours of “on-line learning” are not producing desirable responses, and some are falling back now to the recent state-wide recommendation of minimal time to spend on schooling at home (see insert below). Although it initially requires more time and effort for you as parents to take a Montessori approach to learning at home, the benefits will begin to show in meaningful ways. If you are not seeing such results, please pause to read through the material we have written to help guide and support you and call your child’s Director for more tips and strategizing. There are informative emails and many documents of activities under the FBS Families tab on our website, Reflections on Homeschooling, and numerous Forest Bluff School blogs advising what to do at home with your children right now.
This period is especially challenging because you are also working from home and have many other tasks to attend to. Hang in there! Creating a home base for learning is worth every bit of effort, because out of this period, there will be a definite result: your family members are developing a more lasting approach to learning throughout their lives, whenever and wherever they are! Our suggestions include how to involve your children in caring for your home and routines of the day, so that your family gains a stronger, lasting way of lightening the work load, as well.
By applying a Montessori mindset to this remote learning situation, Forest Bluff focuses on inspiring students to continue the same self-teaching practices at home that the Directors promote in the classrooms. Parents are reporting success with setting up a work environment for their children, providing three hours each morning for quiet time of concentration –and, with coaching from Directors – guiding their children to pursue intellectual interests. Older children typically demonstrate more independence than younger ones because they have had so many more years of developing their independence, but for all families, this has been an opportunity to cultivate a home life that involves reflection, learning, and pitching in to help one another. Naturally, younger children require more attention, and the Directors are actively working on ways to offer more possible help to families with the youngest children.
Our Directors continue to aim for winning balances of guiding and giving ideas for intellectual and developmental work for every child, to the degree each parent asks for. For this next month, the Directors are thinking of Montessori’s playful approach to inspiring children to repeat, memorize, and learn information. Now that you are off to a start with the harder parts of homeschooling, we will focus the month of May on the FUN of learning with Montessori! There are countless ways to use the academic tips and suggestions we are posting on our website and turn them into games and improvisations that incorporate colorful artwork, song, dance, poetry, music and theatrics. This gives children the chance to repeat and master important information, while also enjoying variety. As we continue to add content, Directors will help you and your children explore the riches available in the environments around you, in your homes and outside.
While frustrating to be told we cannot yet return to our normal lives, we will somehow weather the storm of this virus and the subsequent impact it may impose. Those of us with no seriously ill family members are fortunate, and we must keep in mind that health concerns are the impetus behind this current mandate. While being home with our families right now can be miserable at times, it can also become a special period we look back on with some reminiscence. When will we ever have this opportunity again, to just stop and take stock of our lives, of what is most important to us, and appreciate our children’s development? We can run from it, or we can embrace it. We are already hearing incredible stories from Forest Bluff families about what you and your children are doing. We are so, so grateful for these moments of success! They are keeping the Directors going in their major efforts to help you on line and over the phone. Please keep sending your photos and stories to info@forestbluffschool.org, where we are compiling them to share with everyone. You are the living, breathing example of the power of the Montessori approach in the hearts and minds of children!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
While the current chart below from the Illinois Department of Education recommends far less than the three-hour work cycle each day that Forest Bluff recommends as optimal to build concentration and focus with purposeful work, we hope that seeing the minimal standards helps to ease any pressure you may experience. It also demonstrates that all educators are recognizing the value in activities that Montessori has always promoted as part of our curriculum:
Email Number XI
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
As you are probably aware, Illinois Governor Pritzker announced yesterday afternoon that schools must stay closed for the remainder of this academic year. Our Directors will continue remote learning support through May, and cancel Summer Session*. However, we are still monitoring whether we could safely offer three weeks of half-day classes at our school building the last two weeks of June, for no additional cost. We will announce whether this becomes a possibility by the end of May. Meanwhile, realizing that we have to accept more time at home, we will adjust our plans and look forward.
As soon as we have explored options for all school events for the remainder of this year, we will inform you. We are hoping, for example, to offer a remote two week, part-day Drama Workshop to all Elementary students, a virtual Mother’s Visit celebration for younger children, and a remote Book Fair for everyone. And we may be able to have an in-person Beach Picnic or a Graduation Ceremony if we can postpone them to late June. As all institutions are having to explain, we will make plans, and then adjust them as the dates approach and new information comes in. For this moment, we will look forward to the month of May, and continue our remote learning structure, which will be briefly reviewed in an email coming to you on Monday.
Meanwhile, our Finance Committee is hard at work, strategizing on how to ease the strain some of you may anticipate for next year’s tuition. Fortunately, Forest Bluff’s frugal approach to expenses over many years has prepared us to weather such a time as this. Every family will be contacted with an individual phone call in early June to discuss the options that the Committee can propose. You and your children are integral to what makes Forest Bluff School the special place that it is, and we are grateful for your strong, resilient spirits as we forge ahead!
* All Summer Session and Drama fees will be automatically rolled forward as a credit to your child’s 2020-2021 tuition.
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number X
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
The Directors continue to be hard at work producing more content for the website under the FBS families tab, making individual calls to parents and conducting meetings with students to keep track of work plans to support the children’s learning at home. They are also now adding some video content for younger students and live group meetings for older students, (these will come to you in emails). This has been a launch into using technology that we’ve never had to implement before!
You chose our school because we promote real life experiences over technology-based ones, so we know that you don’t want your children spending more than a minimal amount of time on devices, and we agree that is best. Only access the videos and live meetings as much or as little as you see fits your family’s current needs.
As we use technology during this time, we must request, for the safety of all our students, that a parent always be present to supervise any computer, iPad, iPhone or screen activity for children and adolescents of all ages. This means being within hearing range and maintaining that the screen faces a common area, always. All emailing, texts, live meetings and even phone conversations should not be private, but approved and supervised by parents. This not only helps young people learn the etiquette for such communication, but it protects them.
It is especially important to realize that although Forest Bluff School is keeping up with the latest in cybersecurity practices, parents should assume that the internet is never completely secure, so please stay aware and updated with your own devices. Let us know immediately if you detect any breach or virus, and we will do the same. We want to keep your children and your devices safe! Thank you!
Be sure not to miss the recent blog written by Paula Lillard, “Through Darkness to the Light,” now posted on our Forest Bluff website. We hope that you find encouragement and inspiration with our website content and through the individual attention from your children’s Directors. It is so hard to be separated from one another, but we hope our connections are growing even stronger as we reach across to help one another. It has never been more clear how much people care about one another and the children in our Forest Bluff community, as it is right now!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number IX
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
Starting this Friday, our Directors have decided to try using some technology to give the children more connection to their school, classmates and Directors. What the Directors put together for each level will differ by the developmental characteristics of each age group. These will be offered to you through emails.
However, we maintain that the most effective way to help you and your children from your homes is with the constantly evolving content we are providing on our website, the individualized Director discussions with you over the phone and live individual conversations between the Directors and their students over age six. Forest Bluff is different from most schools: we put more time and energy into individualized attention for each child’s unique personality and developmental needs. In a remote setting such as this, we have written content and phone calls to switch to. There is no complete “switch over” to technology in a real Montessori sense, the way there is with the traditional setting of teacher-directed, and more abstract-style learning. Ample on-line programs are available, many for free, but none are endorsed by the Association Montessori International, which is our guide in education. As we confer with teachers from other schools to avoid what is not working well about on-line teaching, we are filtering out what is most successful and transferrable. There is no blueprint for any school to effectively replace classrooms with screens; it has to be experimented with, carefully and thoughtfully. For a Montessori setting, based in dynamic experiences with the live, three-dimensional environment, we are limited by technology and it is not our first choice.
We would like to clarify the resources we have been providing thus far:
- Individual weekly contact from Directors to every family to answer questions, share ideas, give advice, and compose work plans.
- Young Children’s Community and Primary: At the younger levels, this occurs with Directors corresponding directly with parents by phone, goals are decided on, and progress is tracked. Parents may call Directors more often, as needed.
- Lower Elementary: Each parent and child are contacted once a week or more to share ideas and talk about work goals for the week. Parents may call Directors more often, as needed.
- Upper Elementary: With their greater level of independence and accountability, weekly communication occurs between Director and student, either by phone call or video call. As necessary, supplemental resources are provided, as well as follow-up communication with parents.
- Secondary Level: Students meet live with their Directors individually and in a group. They exchange work by email, and follow their individualized work plans independently.
Thus, the level of expectations, abstraction, and parent involvement appropriately reflects the stages of development of children from ages one to 14.
- Directors are available on their temporary phone numbers at any time during school hours on any weekday. Please call them as needed for how to direct children to keep learning at home.
- Created content to view on our website, which is expanding every week:
- Activity ideas to add to your children’s work plans
- Reflections on Homeschooling with a Montessori approach
- Weekly blog articles to inspire and inform you
- Audio lectures for parents by Paula Preschlack and the Directors
We will now add the following:
- YCC: Directors will create short videos talking to their students. Paula Preschlack is making audio versions of Montessori from the Start Lectures.
- Primary: Directors will create short videos of themselves reading aloud or talking to the students.
- Lower Elementary: Directors will create live meetings for students to hear a story lesson each Friday at 9:00 to inspire follow-up work.
- Upper Elementary: Directors will conduct live student group meetings a few times a week for social interaction and inspiring group ideas for work.
If you have questions, please call us. We are grateful for your positive support of Forest Bluff as a school, the leadership, and the Directors. Those of you taking the time to read the emails we send and to check the website seem to be having the most positive experiences; we encourage everyone to do this, it will help you!
If you do have a complaint, please pause before putting these in written form. Texts and emails can come across as more severe than the author intended, and your future relationships with your children’s Directors are so important! We ask that you speak positively about the school, the leadership and the Directors amongst yourselves and to each other, and call the school directly if you need to speak with school leadership: Paula Preschlack, Lynn Jessen, Paula Lillard, Anne Mahon, or Haley Tate. Negativity that is fed by group texting or emailing is strongly discouraged in our school, where grace and courtesy are, and will always be, founding principles.
This is very hard on all of us, and especially for those of you trying to get work done at home with your children there, right now. We understand your frustrations and anguish. We are doing everything we can to try to help, and the Directors have many ideas to share in your phone conversations. The truth is that this will not last, and that this time will come to pass. Please focus on the long-term, and remember that Forest Bluff School, with the classrooms, materials and the Directors will be there after this is over. We are grateful to every one of you for working together with us through this challenging time to reach the best possible outcomes. We are already exploring options for returning to the school in some capacity if we are allowed to do so. As we try to be present in the moment with our children, let’s keep our sights on the future!
Email Number VIII
paulalillardpreschlack.com
Email Number VII
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
We miss our wonderful days with your children in the classrooms! We know that your children miss their friends, working in stimulating intellectual environments with Montessori materials, their numerous interactions throughout the day, and their teachers who guide and encourage them. Meanwhile, the Directors are working hard to generate content for you on the website FBS families tab, more Reflections on Homeschooling, and blog material. Our primary focus of energy will continue to be individual phone calls to each of you this week, and keeping track of each child’s progress. Every family is so different, and every individual child is unique. To best meet your needs, this Montessori principle of addressing individual differences has resonated in phone conversations with you.
In our discussions with one another and in our on-line meetings on Thursdays as a faculty, we are bringing together the themes, questions and experiences, both positive and challenging, that you shared with Directors in your phone calls the first week. We will continue to respond to these relevant themes as we create further content to support you. We are also considering possibilities and formats, and this will evolve thoughtfully and cautiously, making sure we stay focused on what is developmentally best for all the children. We are grateful for your questions and comments, which we take fully into account. Everyone is in uncharted territory! The Directors are grateful for your positive input and encouragement, too.
Three general questions we heard last week were:
- How do I get my child to work when he/she doesn’t want to? What counts as “work?”
- How do I manage multiple children of different ages, competing for my attention or interfering with one another’s activities?
- How can I give my child the social connecting he/she is craving right now, during social distancing? Can the school provide some kind of screen-based experience for them? (This is being considered carefully, and we are exploring options).
We are continuing to post new documents on our website to address these questions and more. The Directors and Paula Preschlack continue to meet remotely, discuss and plan every day. Paula Lillard and Lynn Jessen are helping us in all areas. Meanwhile, remember that the Directors welcome your calls to their Google numbers, and want to help you!
In response to your children’s needs to connect with others during social distancing, do what seems best and most positive for your family and situation. Elementary aged children, in particular, think more abstractly than younger ones, have stronger needs to interact with others their own ages, and may be asking to “see” their friends. As mentioned in a previous email, you might consider arranging a Facetime appointment with a friend to share what they have been working on, play together with their toys, or converse. Using widely available applications, you can arrange for several friends to see one another at the same time, too, and perhaps share a group project together and encourage one another. Please be sure a parent is present, in the background, to supervise any on-line activity.
While social experiences are met this way, the Directors’ priority this second week focuses on supporting children’s intellectual development in their homes. Most schools, across the country, are switching to a form of on-line school days to continue the teacher-directed learning that their classrooms are based on. While that may appear initially positive for some children, and convenient for parents who want their children to be kept busy on screens during their days at home, the second and third weeks of this format have yet to show how well this works for learning. This is an area where Montessori’s approach, that fosters the development of every individual’s self-directed and multi-dimensional quest to learn from the immediate environment, has longevity. Rather than trying to supply the insatiable appetite children have for “fish” (knowledge), in Montessori we want to help every family learn more about “how to go fishing” (search for more knowledge).
Expanding the Montessori approach at home can be initially challenging in the first week or so, but your energies will pay off as your children get the hang of treating your homes as places to continue their intellectual growth. Don’t give up! Ask your children’s Directors for suggestions. Some of your children are more challenging for you at home than others, and some of you have other serious pressures right now. We are all under new stresses. Be genuinely kind to yourselves, and trust the suggestions of your children’s teachers; we understand the challenges of helping children develop, and we are here to help you understand the ways that we ourselves find to be most effective.
We also want to help you find new inspiration through each other. We are working on building a website gallery to post the photos and anecdotes you share with us about your experiences at home with your children during this time. The Directors are hearing some really wonderful, incredible stories about what you and your children are doing! If you have some success that you would like to share through a photo or a brief description, please send this to info@forestbluffschool.org, with a photo in actual size/full resolution. Lynn Jessen will collect some of these for this future gallery to be shared. In the meantime, we are using the public Forest Bluff School Facebook and Instagram pages, for you social media enthusiasts to “like,” and follow. We hope that these avenues -the website gallery and social media- will help you connect with your community of like-minded parents at Forest Bluff. You are all amazing and have such great ideas and experiences to share with each other!
In the meantime, you may enjoy listening to this audio version of the presentation our Directors gave on Tuesday, March 10th at Forest Bluff School: “Adaptability as the Foundation for Inner Equilibrium.” We suggest downloading it to listen to while you walk, do a task in your house, or if you get a chance to sit and relax. You might just listen to one director’s section at a time, or you can listen all the way through. https://soundcloud.com/paulapreschlack/forest-bluff-directors-presentation-adaptability-and-montessori
One thing I am certain of: Your family will rise out of this crisis with a new outlook, some new routines and habits in your homes, and stronger than ever as teams. We wish we did not have to go through this period away from the classrooms, but let’s make the best of it by finding the ways to augment your children’s experiences of the Montessori approach while at home. Ultimately, getting back to our school campus will be a joy that we will all appreciate, anew!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number VI
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
On this first official day of starting your Montessori “homeschool” experiences, we are impressed and heartened by the anecdotes, photos and ingenuity you and your children are sharing with us! What an incredible group you are. Please continue to check the website for more ideas and resources. The Directors began calling you today, and will continue to support you in the weeks to come.
As you may be aware, social distancing is now recommended through April 30th on a national level. In the best interest of our community, Forest Bluff will adhere to these guidelines by remaining closed for the month of April, and we will update you as the guidelines evolve. This month will be a time to develop a new routine in your children’s lives; we are here to help you make it positive in every way possible, and to support you with any challenges that arise.
Please do not hesitate to call the school office at 847-295-8338, or reach out to your individual teachers at their Google phone numbers with questions. Let us know how we can best help you and your children. As your children’s needs evolve over the days and weeks, we will adjust and respond, just as we do in the classrooms with the children growing and changing all the time. The Montessori approach is based on adaptability, encouraging resilience, level-headed problem solving and forming inner equilibrium. The children in our lives, and we as adults alongside them, are now called to dig a little deeper into this approach, and we believe it can help us through these weeks, as a community.
Our goal at Forest Bluff is to continue to be a source of guidance, inspiration, and comfort for your family. Thank you for sharing your lives with us and navigating these months, together.
Warmly,
The Forest Bluff Directors
Note: For community news and inspiration from one other’s homeschooling experiences, please follow us on Facebook (@ForestBluff) and Instagram (forestbluffschool) and share with us and with each other how your children are doing.
Email Number V:
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
Starting tomorrow, Monday, March 30th, your children’s teachers will begin calling you* to give you individualized education plans for your Montessori-style “homeschooling.” We will provide information and support to keep your children learning in their own homes through these phone conversations, and with the homeschool ideas and reflections we will be posting on our website under the FBS Families tab. Although it is not the same as being with their teachers and the materials in the prepared environments of their classrooms, your children will gain some new abilities and develop further while they are home, too. Please do not stress about this time out of school; your children are far more independent about learning new things than many children have been taught to be, and they can do a lot of exploring, creating, reflecting and practicing when following their interests and self-motivation. It is this spirit of living in a constant quest to learn, no matter where you are or what day it is, that Montessori fosters and which you can promote, as well.
Just remember that in most schools, much of the day is spent in transitions and there is little time for independent study and reflection. In Montessori, children are used to working for longer periods and without constant direction. To mimic their Montessori days, make it a goal to have three hours of quiet work time each morning, and allow the rest of the day to be practical life, exercise, play, relaxation or family time. You can arrange these afternoon activities to happen while you are continuing your own work. If you can do this, you have the perfect “home school” going.
*Each Director has set up a temporary phone number (with a 224 area code) to be used specifically for this period of school closure. Should you miss the call, you can call back on that number and leave a voice message with your availability. Teachers will get around to every family, and you might choose a certain day of each week to touch base so that calls can be evenly spaced. Their new phone number allows each Director to work from home, many of them with their own families to care for, just for these unusual weeks. They are all so eager to hear about your children since they last saw them! We encourage you to write down your questions and the information teachers give you during your phone calls, and they will do the same.
Here are some general things to consider:
#1: Montessori children watch an adult do something, then they are allowed to try it on their own and repeat it at will. Provide some choices, interact to show your child something or inspire an interest, and then leave them to explore on their own. That “work period” when they are on their own is when they dive in to concentrate and learn. This means that the teacher does not sit next to your child at school all morning, giving her full attention to them for hours, and neither should you. Help each child get started on something for about five minutes, then get busy either alongside them or in another part of a room of your home so that they have the feeling of independence from you. While you are “working,” they are working. If they finish something, they may need you to help them get a new activity started or have a variety of choices set up so they do not need to interrupt you. Your goal, just like a Montessori teacher in a classroom, is to add very few new “lessons” a week to their menu, and only as they need them. Less is more! Concentration, connection with an activity, and independence are the goals. Your children may come up with many ideas for themselves and create work to do. This whole approach nurtures innovation and work ethic in your family.
#2: Montessori children are used to monitoring their own performances, not being judged or critiqued by an adult. So, refrain from judging the work they bring to you or on what you see. You can ask them what they think of it, or make a remark like, “You worked really hard on that!” or “I can see that you enjoyed that work,” or “It looks like you’re feeling good about what you did.” Or you can simply smile reassuringly when they show you something or you see what they created. That is actually the best! This allows your child to own his or her own process and this fuels more activity.
#3: Montessori children need a work space in your home and a set period of time when everyone is quietly working, including the adults. Lay out options and choices, and remove distractions, (such as beeping phones, screens or pets). This space can be the same each day, with two or three activity choices added every few days. Children can repeat things they enjoy, and work with something as long as they choose. We recommend making this time roughly 8:30-11:30 a.m. every day. This gives ample time to clean up from breakfast, change into daytime clothes, and afterwards to clean up all of the work space and prepare lunch together.
Please go to our website and look for “Homeschool” volumes by level and “Reflections on Homeschooling” under the FBS Families tab. This is where we are uploading activities, suggestions for routines, and further resources for each age group. These will expand as time goes on. Please keep in mind that this content is meant to be used as reference during your conversations with your teachers. They will promote individual plans and goals for each child, which will look different for each, just like it is in the classroom. Your teachers will utilize these lists in their conversations with you, and can filter and direct you towards the ideas they think will work best for your children.
Meanwhile, you can use those documents like a “menu” to choose from. You may want to print some out to reference, peruse ones for different age levels, or change the activities slightly to match your family and children’s stages of development. Just don’t “over think” it! Remember that the entire country is in this boat together at the same time, and those doing on-line learning classes and homeschooling programs are not necessarily getting more or less than your children. It’s just different. Your primary goal is to continue a love for learning and learning about anything counts. Through that comes concentration, the necessary foundation for education and character!
Your children have an amazing intellectual structure from their Montessori experiences so far, and they are resilient and creative people. Spending time with you in their homes following their curiosity and tending to the practical elements of life is the most important gift you can give them at this time. Let our support and ideas inspire you, but do not worry that you need to do all of what we suggest. If you can do nothing else, just read aloud to them as much as you’re able. Prioritize your family’s health and emotional well-being, and do what you need to do. We are all looking forward to the day we can be with your children in the beautiful Montessori environments again. They are incredible people!
Warmly,
The Forest Bluff Directors
Email Number IV:
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
Here we are, in the middle of a spring break that does not look like anything you imagined when you planned it. Amidst the challenges and disappointments, there still are opportunities. These are opportunities for your children with connection, creativity and quiet concentration. There are many activities that we hope your family has some time to do, and perhaps you are looking for new ideas! Reminder: these are just ideas for you to take or leave as you desire, not expected or required in any way.
Before we dismissed the children for spring break, the teachers and many of the students came up with lists of suggested activities to do at home. Below, we have compiled many of them directly from the lists the children made themselves, which are all good for vacation time. We believe that all of these activities are beneficial for your children’s education in a holistic sense. Creativity, concentration, and processes provide a deep foundation for future intellect and work ethic. We will provide intellectually-oriented activities in our Monday, March 30th email as you settle into more of a “home school” mode after this initial week.
Consider reading all the lists for each age level: Younger children may be able to do some of the activities for older children, with greater support, and older children will be able to do the activities listed for younger children with greater independence and complexity. Especially in times of sensing anxiety, children of all ages need a sense of purpose and to be active with their bodies and minds…in fact, that helps us as adults, too.
For Infants and Children Under Age 3:
(See https://montikids.com/montessori/ for an abundance of activities you can do at home with your baby or toddler and simple advice like, “How to wash a baby’s hands.” Past Forest Bluff Directors, Margaret Jessen Kelley and Stacy Keane contribute to this website’s content, so we know it is a good source).
More ideas for the youngest children under age four will be given in an upcoming blog. Please look for that at forestbluffschool.org/blog
Young Children’s Community:
- Bake bread (http://lindseykubly.com/2017/04/crusty-no-knead-bread-recipe/ provides a recipe that is easy enough to make daily).
- Prepare food for meals together with a colander, potato scrubber, a cutting board, little bowls and a child-safe chopping knife as needed.
- Make meals using the crock pot or slow cooker.
- Wash a table, chair, floor; scrubbing or cleaning with soap, water, and a scrub brush.
- Children these ages love order and routines, rituals and lining things up in rows. Try to incorporate some of such actions of your own choosing, such as a daily pray or poem time, lighting candles for meals, creating a space for solace or arranging the shoes in closets. Young children soothe themselves and organize their ideas through such actions. (Primary aged children, do too)
- Go for a long walk and talk about all the sounds you hear…see if what you hear on your late afternoon walk are different or some of the same.
Primary:
- Make cookies, bread, scones, cupcakes (freeze the extras).
- Help with breakfast, lunch, or dinner (each child can take a night of the week to help their parent).
- Clean or straighten a room or a section of a room.
- Sing songs alone and with others; Write down the verses or make up new verses.
- Write a little story and draw a picture. Younger children can dictate it to an older sibling or adult.
- Play “I Spy” in a room of your house or looking out a window.
- Clean the yard and garden to get ready for planting.
- If you can find a recording of a common Illinois bird, listen to it and go on a walk listening for that bird, or look in a guide book then go out to search for just three things.
- Go on a walk and notice the signs of the season.
Lower Elementary:
- Sew or knit.
- Build paper airplanes and find out which design works best, record and rate them.
- Make a word search.
- Write a letter, note, or message to someone, maybe even someone in your house.
- Write a story, maybe from the perspective of your pet or an insect living in your house.
- Camp in a tent or inside your house in a fort you make.
- Use things in nature to build a fort or a miniature fort for a toad.
- Make up a new dance and show your family with an evening “show.”
- Memorize a poem and recite it to commence dinner.
- Make gifts for others and create a treasure hunt for them to find them.
- Practice a sport or skill.
Upper Elementary:
- Origami, make friendship bracelets or make crafts.
- Do handwork: knitting, crocheting, sewing, needlepoint.
- Make up a card game, your own board game, or any kind of game.
- Bake; double or triple the recipe for an added challenge with fractions and math.
- Interview a family member and write up their answers.
- Make puppets and give a “show” for younger siblings.
- Listen to an audiobook.
- Create a code and speak that language with a family member for a whole day.
- Collect rocks and sticks to use for crafts, or to determine their types later with a guidebook.
- Build and do an obstacle course.
- Practice yoga or another form of physical exercise daily.
Secondary Level:
- Make a meal for the family to relieve parents. Choose a couple nights of the week, or do all the lunches for the week.
- Suggest the family eat dinner in different places, like by the fire pit one evening if you have one.
- Ask an adult whether you can tend a fire, the grill or the fireplace, somewhat supervised.
- Surprise your family with a picnic inside or outside.
- Make a spring reading list for yourself. Set a goal and a schedule to aim for.
- Teach your family a card game or start an evening board game to continue indefinitely.
- If it’s fun for your family, start some practical jokes for each other.
- Straighten up the garage or basement to prepare for spring, or learn how to tune your own bicycle.
All ages:
- Each child can take a night to help prepare dinner
- Teach a family member a new skill (maybe Dad doesn’t know how to knit)
- Organize a room, closet, or drawer
- Clean out toy shelves and give donations to charity
- Board games, card games, puzzles (many can be simplified for younger children)
- Make scavenger hunts for each other (Ideas: Items you might find in the yard or woods, items from a list your child writes)
- Take a nap or lie down and listen to an audiobook
- Read, read, read (Children to themselves, adults to children, children to adults (only if they want to) and even adults can read aloud to adults)
- Play, play, play! (Research shows that this is extremely important for development; this time at home is an amazing chance to have enough time to really play.)
In the weeks ahead, please call the office if you need more ideas or you have specific questions about your child. We will share more blog posts and these emails will keep coming your way. For more information see our past emails on the School Communications page of our website (under the FBS Families tab), and read over past blogs as well. Your children’s individual teachers will call you in the weeks ahead. They look forward to checking in with you and your children to discuss some suggestions and work plans to keep learning.
This time is undeniably challenging. It may also make us stronger as parents, people, and a community. Thank you for adding your strength and generosity of spirit just by being yourselves! We are so heartened by some beautiful stories we are hearing from you about what your children are up to so far. Your children are the future!
Warmest regards,
The Forest Bluff School Directors
Forest Bluff Email Number III:
Dear Forest Bluff School Community,
This coming Monday, March 23rd, we will send you an email with ideas for activities at home during spring break. These are just ideas! You get to pick and choose, or do none of them, it is up to you as a parent. We want to keep you feeling supported and connected to Forest Bluff School. In the meantime, I wanted to give you an idea of what is projected for the weeks following:
As Forest Bluff School responds to recommendations about re-opening our building and resuming classes, it now looks likely that we will be unable to return well into April. This could change, of course; so much is unknown. All school events, gatherings, conferences and meetings will be postponed until it is advised to resume. We will definitely keep you updated. Everyone here at Forest Bluff is so grateful to you for working with us and caring about the well-being of our whole community.
The Directors and I are preparing to give you “remote learning ideas” that are more intellectually-oriented, beginning the day we were supposed to return from spring break, Monday, March 30th. None of what we send you will be expected or required in any way. Our goal is to help you as much or as little as you need us. Because we encourage children to stay off screens for entertainment and do not endorse “educational programs/games” during these very important years of development, what we come up with is not going to look like many other schools who use on-line technology for learning.* As a Montessori school with children and parents who share a unique, developmentally-appropriate approach to learning, we will provide ideas for each age level each week (via these emails to you) for many things children can do to keep learning in their own homes. We are finding a way to make our Directors available to support you by phone for each week of this remote learning. We will communicate as much as needed to help everyone!
Our office will be closed now until March 30th, but if something urgent arises, please call us at 847-295-8338. Our wonderful Office Manager, Trish Reidy, will be checking voicemail so that you can reach us.
If you did not receive our blog from Wednesday, March 18th, please go to the Forest Bluff School blog page to re-subscribe so that you will get each article as it arrives. As always, our aim is to inform, support, and inspire you.
*Technology is very abstract for children of any age. But there is one positive way we suggest using it:
During this time of “social distancing,” Face Timing with extended family or close friends or sending “letters” via email, can give your children an important sense of connection if this period extends past a few weeks. If you do this, we encourage you to choose a set time and place each day where you are together as a family with the screen, supervising and guiding your children. This is an example of positive technology use during an unusual time!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff Directors
Forest Bluff Email Number II
Getting Started: Realize that Boredom is the Breeding Ground for Creativity!
As we do what is called for in this period of time, including more possible school cancellations or extended home stays, take confidence in Maria Montessori’s observation that children are learning all the time from their interaction with the environments around them. Your homes, communities, natural settings, and family lives are all rich with information for children to soak up. Slowing down and taking the time to notice this is a silver lining here.
This may sound strange to some, but our first word of advice is not to worry about your children getting bored! Free time, when children are not told what to do and not entertained is the breeding ground for creativity; the more free time there is, the more children’s brains and hands begin to create, build, think through, solve and resolve. The less you think for them, the more they will start to think and do for themselves, at home.
Your family may find this to be initially unpleasant, uncomfortable, even unhappy. Just stick with it!You’ll be amazed at what happens when you remove directions and entertainment and allow your children to work through any boredom. It’ll be the birth of something new. Allow this time to be something your family can actually grow through.
As you see other schools sending home e-learning classes and homework assignments, please realize that your children are in a Montessori school, which means that for many hours every day, they are accustomed to directing themselves to interact with their environment and to find or create purposeful work to do. They learn from doing this work, whether at school or at home.
Parents need not worry that you should become schoolteachers for your children right now! You do not need to order Montessori materials (do not even think of doing that, please!) There are just three initial things to do this week:
A-Prepare your home environment for your children to do practical life/help with housework and meals, read/look at books, artwork and free self-directed play.
B-Set up a consistent daily routine for the whole family so that the days have some general structure.
C-Allow your children the space and time for reflection, creativity and concentration for a set period of time each day. We recommend at least 3 hours of uninterrupted time in the mornings. Begin this when you feel ready. It will apply for longer-term home stays, if this becomes necessary.
We will elaborate on these three guidelines with specific suggestions for each age group, in emails that we will send to you weekly! But first, just take a breath, realize that technically, you have days of “spring break” until March 29th, and give yourself and your children a chance to adjust to changes. Remember, most children are the ones who have great ideas for what they could be doing at home. If it helps them, brainstorm a list of ideas they can refer to. Your children are more likely to do things they think up for themselves, so while you have many things to think about and do for your families right now, let them make their own lists of ideas. The Directors and I will keep sending along more ideas if we have to extend our time out of school. In the meantime, take a moment to adjust your mindset if you need to, and be assured that your amazing Montessori children can handle this!
Coming up: Look for our next blog post on Wednesday, March 18th titled, Montessori School at Home.
Forest Bluff Email Number I:
Dear Forest Bluff Community,
This is the first of our emails to you as we navigate through this unusual period of time. As a collective group, the Directors and I will be sending you ideas for supporting your children at home, beginning this afternoon, Monday, March 16th! The Directors have been compiling suggestions of activities and things to explore and enjoy for your children’s learning. Be sure to also look at the school blog posts: there are already over 50 articles of ideas on parenting with a Montessori approach. This is a great time to re-read some of the ones that interest you most. If you have not already subscribed to the school’s blog, you can easily do so at: forestbluffschool.org/blog
Please forward these Forest Bluff School emails to anyone you think may benefit, and make sure we have your updated email addresses. We are checking the office voice mail throughout every weekday. Calling the office (847-295-8338) is always the best way to reach us. All Directors and staff are in touch with the office. Call with any question you have for any teacher, the Head of School, or our staff, and we are collecting those questions daily to respond through these publicrelations emails to all parents, or by calling you back personally on the phone. Decisions about when school will reopen or predictions of what may come next will depend on many factors and we will give you updates weekly; this is a period of many unknowns to weather together.
During this time of being separated from each other physically, we have strong needs to share with each other; as you use social media, the telephone, texting and emailing, understand that our goal at Forest Bluff School is to stay focused on the children’s well-being and needs for learning, so other information will be best sought and shared in other avenues. Any news you receive about the school are only valid if it comes directly from our office, website or this email address. We aim to keep Forest Bluff an inspirational and positive source for you!
From the past week, every one of our Directors has impressed me with their calm, clear thinking to create back-up plans and their eagerness to support Forest Bluff school families and children. Forest Bluff parents have been understanding, supportive, and willing to do their part for the well being of others. We are so grateful for this special community!
We are thinking about your families and children every day. We will continue to send you information, ideas and inspirations. The first of such emails will be sent to you as email Number II this afternoon!
Warmest regards,
Paula Lillard Preschlack
For the Forest Bluff School Directors