In our Stepping Stones and Primary classrooms, spring isn’t just a season of warmer days; it’s a season of remarkable transformation and blooming independence. Just as nature awakens, our littlest learners have entered a period of rapid discovery and deeper concentration. Guided by the Montessori philosophy of "following the child," our students have spent the last few weeks channeling the vibrant energy of the season into purposeful work, whether exploring the wonders of the natural world or mastering new collaborative challenges.

To celebrate this season of incredible growth, we’ve gathered some exciting highlights from our Single Subject teachers. From the melodies in the music room to dynamic new movements  and expanding vocabularies in world language, here is a look at what our Children’s House students are joyfully mastering this spring.

Stepping Stones

Movement 

This spring in movement class, our toddlers explored the beauty of nature and transformation through creative movement. The children especially enjoyed using colorful scarves to curl up tightly like a cocoon before stretching their wings and fluttering freely around the room like beautiful butterflies. They also danced with bright ribbons, marching and turning in circles while tapping different body parts - elbows, knees, hips, and shoulders.

One favorite activity was dancing to the song “Plant a Seed in My Garden.”  The children pretended to plant seeds, water them, and grow into colorful flowers. The children became the rain by raising their hands high into the air and gently shaking their fingers like raindrops falling. They also became the warm sun by making their bodies round as they helped care for their growing seeds. After watering their seeds and becoming the sun, the children slowly grew into tall flowers with long stems. Using their bodies, each child created the shape of what they imagined their flower would look like.

These movement experiences connected nicely to the children’s classroom study of the butterfly life cycle. As the children learned about caterpillars, chrysalises, cocoons, and butterflies, movement helped bring their curriculum to life in a meaningful and memorable way. Through creative movement, the children were able to physically experience concepts they were learning in the classroom.

We finished each movement class with what is always a class favorite: freeze dance! The children practiced creating large, thin, high, and low shapes while learning to safely move in the space around others. These activities helped strengthen body awareness, coordination, listening skills, and self-confidence, all while having fun and expressing themselves through movement.

Spanish 

This spring in Spanish, children have been enjoying lessons on the season and feeling comfortable with the weekly routine. When starting class the children walk in and gather on the rug, ready to begin our lesson. They immediately began to sing our morning song, “It is adorable.”  We counted how many students were in the class and each child raised their hand as we counted together, followed by a song, Dos Manitos y Diez Deditos (two hands and 10 fingers) and the 10 amigos song.

This spring we learned about counting frogs, flowers, bumble bees buzzing around, ducks, and colorful butterflies. All these lessons are hands-on with props and a song related to the lesson.

Stepping Stones students were also introduced to basic shapes, such as circulo (circle), triangulo (triangle), estrella (star), and cuadrado (square), with a matching sensory activity and a shape-sorted cube for recognition.

Art  

Our littlest artists have been busy preparing for the art show through a variety of exciting and hands-on creative experiences. The children explored Gelli plate printmaking, experimenting with color, texture, and pattern to create unique prints. They also enjoyed creating stencil art and discovering how different shapes and designs could be layered together.

In addition, the little artists worked on string art projects that encouraged creativity and fine motor development. For our collaborative tile installation, the children explored ways to texture clay using a variety of tools and materials, creating beautiful tactile designs. We are so proud of the creativity, curiosity, and artistic growth the Stepping Stones artists have shown as they prepared their special work for the art show!

Music 

During our Spring semester, the music room blossomed with new songs, movement, and foundational skill-building as we welcomed the changing season by singing beautiful melodies like "Inch by Inch" and "What a Beautiful Day." To channel our high spring energy, we dove into "The Beehive," a movement activity where the children used colorful silk scarves to transform into busy bees; flying high, low, fast, and slow, this exercise helped develop their gross motor skills, spatial awareness, and ability to respond to dramatic changes in tempo and dynamics. Alongside these expressive movements, we continued our journey into music literacy and vocal control, working hard to build singing skills using Curwen hand signs to help the students visualize pitch relationships.

Finally, to bridge the gap between storytelling and music, we explored beautiful song storybooks, singing our way through illustrated tales to help the children develop a deeper sense of phrasing, expression, and a lifelong love for both reading and music-making.

Primary

Physical Education

This spring in PE, students have continued to build and strengthen their gross motor skills through a variety of fun and engaging activities. Students enjoyed participating in sports such as lacrosse and tennis while practicing important movement skills like balance, coordination, and body control. Students especially loved playing with the scoops, which helped prepare them to use real lacrosse sticks, and “Keepy Uppy,” which encouraged control and focus while developing tennis skills.

Throughout the season, students continued working on hand-eye coordination, teamwork, and spatial awareness through active games and skill-building challenges. Our tag warm-up games brought lots of laughter and excitement while helping students practice listening skills, quick reactions, and safe movement around others.

Students also continued to enjoy creative play opportunities during PE. Building with the blue blocks remained a favorite activity, encouraging teamwork, problem-solving, and imaginative thinking. Scooters continue to be another a class favorite, helping students strengthen their legs and core while practicing balance, coordination, and controlled movement around the gym.

Field Day was another exciting highlight of our spring season, and even the rain could not stop the fun! Although we had to move the activities indoors, students brought amazing energy, teamwork, and enthusiasm to every station and game. From relay races to cooperative challenges, students showed great sportsmanship, encouraged one another, and made the most of a rainy day filled with school spirit.

Spanish 

This spring in Primary, students continued to reinforce greeting vocabulary and count how many students were in the class today as we all counted together. Primary students also learned new vocabulary related to spring weather. Like “Sol” (sun), “Lluvia” (rain), “Caliente” (warm), “Nublado” (cloudy), “Ventoso” (windy), and practiced pronunciation by playing a game, “Pasa, Para, Repite” (pass, stop, and repeat) with flash cards of weather vocabulary words. They also enjoyed the lesson “Las Figuras Geometricas” (shapes), in this lesson we have learned vocabulary words like “Rectangulo” (circle), “Rombo” (diamond), “Cuadrado” (square),  “Hexagano” (hexagon),  “Corazon” (heart),  “Triangulo” (triangle) and we counted how many sides do they have, using matching cards, bingo game and a worksheet tracing the word and the shape. Another fun lesson was learning about insects and the parts of a plant; students had a turn with the hands-on felt activity to identify each part of the plant and put it together. They enjoyed reinforcing the lesson with a worksheet cutting and gluing the parts of a plant and coloring the picture.

Primary 3s were very proud of participating in their first Spanish assembly for “Cinco de Mayo.”  They began the presentation by singing the “Buenos Días song, followed by mentioning the colors and reading the greetings vocabulary words in Spanish. Lastly, they danced and sang along with the maracas song.

Chinese

This spring, our time together is filled with high energy, lots of laughter, and a fun interactive routine where we mimic 10 different animals, like tracing little cat whiskers while saying "Xiao Mao Miao Miao Miao!", play our favorite color memory game, "Guess What’s Missing?", and line up for our "Chu-Chu" train chanting games. Students also made incredible strides in reading by exploring ancient pictographs and playing fast-paced versions of "Simon Says / Laoshi Shuo," where the children listen for sounds or meanings and confidently run to character cards hanging around the rooms—including numbers (一, 二, 三), person (人), big/small (大, 小), sky (天), wood (木), as well as up/down (上, 下), rain/snow (雨, 雪), and sun/moon (日, 月)! 

While every class shares these high-energy routines, each age group reached its own special milestones this year. Our youngest Primary 1 learners built a joyful foundation by pairing big movements with core animal, color, and basic body vocabulary (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands, and feet). Our Primary 2 students stepped up their confidence by bridging the gap between spoken words and written characters during our fast-paced running games. Meanwhile, our oldest Primary 3 groups successfully expanded their anatomical vocabulary to include their heads, faces, shoulders, and tummies, while demonstrating an advanced, brilliant intuition for decoding the visual logic behind ancient Chinese pictographs.

Art

Primary students continued their journey of creativity, exploration, and artistic discovery this Spring! Inspired by artist-in-residence Sue Tirrell, the children created beautiful clay tiles that will be installed outside each classroom as a lasting celebration of their artwork and community. The students also explored various printmaking techniques, including traditional Gyotaku fish printing, in which they learned to transfer textures and patterns onto paper in unique and exciting ways. After studying the work of artist Iris Scott, the children experimented with finger painting, blending colors to create expressive wet dog paintings.

To celebrate their hard work, the Primary artists enjoyed creating and exploring art in the dark during the annual art show, adding an extra layer of excitement and sensory discovery to their artistic experiences. 

Music

The Primary students' music year was an exciting journey of discovery, where students built a foundational connection to rhythm and melody through active, hands-on exploration. Our young musicians mastered the basics of solfege, using Curwen hand signs to see and feel the relationship between notes, which paved the way for joyful, confident singing. The classroom buzzed with the rich tones of Orff-based instruments, such as glockenspiels and xylophones, and the rhythmic patterns of hand percussion, allowing children to express their internal pulse.

Beyond the instruments, we emphasized whole-body integration; finger plays sharpened fine motor skills, and storytelling, while expressive movement songs transformed abstract musical concepts into a lived, physical experience.