What's something every school has in common?

Notes on the window for parents

The passing of germs and alerts to prevent pandemics of school-wide proportions. It's the annual chicken-pox alert at school! Ok, so it's probably not quite an annual thing, but I'm sure it's close to that. We've already had reports of lice earlier this year, now chicken pox, as well as the normal coughs and colds that travel around in this season.

We had 8 children out sick today. 8. I think that might be a new record. It felt so quiet in the classroom with that many gone, and I felt almost in the way. One of the reason Montessori classrooms limit the adults in the environment is because we want to step back and let the children work without interference, even if they're not doing something exactly right. Normally in our classroom there are enough real problems (like thread tangling, or lost scissors) that keep us three adults busy enough to not interfere too much and give the children a chance to figure things out on their own.

But today with so many children gone (and I will admit they were some of the ones who require more attention!) it was a different story. I found that I had to force myself to back to the counter and just observe for a bit, recording what lessons each child was practicing. Now I do want to say that normally I really like just taking time to sit on a stool and just observe. However today we had some students from the local university came to observe and as we had four of them in at a time all the stools were taken and I felt slightly awkward just standing at the counter to observe. It's kind of amazing how the smallest things can throw you off. I have to remember that, it's a part of the reason we really try to keep the environment organized and clean for the children. If everything has a place and is in order, one knows what to expect and can focus on other things.

Maybe tomorrow it will be a more normal kind of day and I focus on really observing. There are some children who need new work to do and I'd really like to observe them a bit and see what they're really interested in. It always makes a presentation go better when they're actually engaged and interested!