Classes at The Montessori House school are canceled for Thursday, January 27, 2011. 

The office will be closed, all classes and tours are canceled.  We expect to return to our normal schedule and hours on Friday, January 28.

Enjoy the winter weather!

The Montessori House will be open on its normal schedule, Friday, January 21, 2011. 

Local conditions vary; parents and teachers please exercise caution planning your time and route to school today.  Parents, feel free to keep your children at home, or arrive late, if that is you best, safest course of action.

Despite the snow and ice this morning, The Montessori House will be open on the normal schedule, today, Tuesday, January 18th.

Of course, local conditions vary for every one of our Montessori House families.  Please exercise caution, and only bring your child to school if, and when, you consider it safe to do so.

The Montessori House will be closed Monday January 17, a national holiday to commemorate the birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.  Please remember to make other care arrangements for your children, and enjoy the 3-day weekend! Classes resume on our normal schedule Tuesday January 18.

For those not familiar with the Dr. King, he was an was an important civil rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s.  A leader in the movement to end racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, his most famous address was the “I Have A Dream” speech (” …I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…”).  An African-American, and a Baptist minister, he was an advocate of non-violent protest, civil rights, peace and social justice.  He became the youngest man to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated in 1968 at the age of 39.

Classes at The Montessori House school are canceled for Wednesday, January 12, 2011. 

The office will be closed, and private and group violin lessons at school are also canceled.  We expect to return to our normal schedule and hours on Thursday, January 13.

Enjoy the winter weather!

The Montessori House School is open for all sessions today, Friday, January 7.

We urge every family to evaluate whether the trip to and from school today is hazardous based on local conditions, and adjust their child’s day accordingly.  

As snow accumulates, this may apply especially to afternoon students, who may choose to stay home.  And for full-day students,  feel free to come early to pick up your child today.  Come to the door and announce yourself over the intercom.  It will then take about 5 to 10 minutes to get your child ready and bring her/him to the door to meet you. 

Be safe!

Many parents interested in exploring Kindergarten/First Grade at The Montessori House have asked for one-on-one conversations instead of a group meeting. To meet the needs of all parents, we’ve decided to offer all parents the opportunity for a one-on-one meeting with Ms. Maria, and have canceled the group sessions scheduled for this Thursday, January 6th.

For those parents who RSVP’d for the group sessions, we’ll be in touch to schedule one-on-one conversations with Ms. Maria (possibly this Thursday after school or in the early evening, for parents who’ve already set aside the time on their schedule).

Thanks, The Montessori House

Tim Seldin is President of the Montessori Foundation, publisher of Tomorrow’s Child. He has written many articles and books for parents on Montessori education.  He has some interesting things to say about the Kindergarten decision: 

Why Montessori for the Kindergarten year?

by Tim Seldin with Dr. Elizabeth Coe

 Its re-enrollment time again, and in thousands of Montessori schools all over America parents of four-almost-five-year-olds are trying to decide whether or not they should keep their sons and daughters in Montessori for kindergarten or send them off to the local schools.

The advantages of using the local schools often seem obvious, while those of staying in Montessori are often not at all clear. When you can use the local schools for free, why would anyone want to invest thousands of dollars in another year’s tuition?  Its a fair question and it deserves a careful answer. Obviously there is no one right answer for every child. Often the decision depends on where each family places its priorities and how strongly parents sense that one school or another more closely fits in with their hopes dreams for their children.

 Naturally, to some degree the answer is also often connected to the question of family income as well, although we are often amazed at how often families with very modest means who place a high enough priority on their children’s education will scrape together the tuition needed to keep them in Montessori.
So here are a few answers to some of the questions parents often ask about Montessori for the kindergarten age child.

 [Dr. Seldin goes on to address the following questions, click here for his answers.]

• In a nut shell, what would be the most important short-term disadvantage of sending my five-year-old to the local schools?
   
• What would be the most important advantages of keeping my five-year-old in Montessori?
   
• In a class with such a wide age range of children, won’t my five-year-old spend the year taking care of younger children instead of doing his or her own work?
   
• Isn’t it better for kids to go to school with the children from their neighborhood?
   
• Since most children will eventually have to go to the neighborhood schools, wouldn’t it be better for them to make the transition in kindergarten rather than in first grade?
   
• If I keep my child in Montessori for kindergarten, won’t he/she be bored in a traditional first grade program?

[Click here for full article]

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about food allergies:

Fewer Children May Be Diagnosed as Doctors Told Not to Rely Solely on Standard Skin and Blood Tests

Parents who have eliminated foods from their children’s diets based on allergy tests alone may find that some are safe to eat after all.

The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases issued the first clinical guidelines for diagnosing and treating food allergies Monday, saying that blood or skin tests aren’t sufficient when making a diagnosis.

An allergy should be suspected if someone has a reaction within minutes or hours of eating a food, according to the guidelines. Physicians should then take a detailed medical history, conduct a physical exam and confirm the allergy with a skin-prick test, in which tiny drops of the suspected allergen are pricked into the skin, usually in the forearm, to see if red wheals form. None of those steps is definitive by itself, the recommendations say, which will likely to lead to fewer diagnoses.

…

Medical history is the most important key to a diagnosis, experts say. “The major piece of the puzzle is what happened? What did they eat and when? How long was it between eating and having symptoms? What else was going on?” says A. Wesley Burks, chief of pediatric allergy and immunology at Duke University Medical Center and another author of the guidelines. In the real world, it’s often far from clear which of dozens of different foods a child eats during the day, or what unknown ingredient in a restaurant meal, may have set off a reaction. That’s why the guidelines also call for using a skin-prick test to verify that the patient does have an immune reaction to a suspected food.

In more than 50% of cases, the report notes, the presumed food allergy isn’t a real allergy. A different food could be responsible, or there could be some other cause entirely, particularly with gastrointestinal symptoms.