Head of School Message
A message from Miss Naomi
Dear La Crescent Montessori & STEM School Families,
Can you believe we have already completed our first month of the school year? Walking through our halls each day, I am thrilled to report that we are off to an incredible, vibrant start.
If you were to peek through the window of any of our classrooms on a given morning, you would see remarkable things taking place. You might spot a child deeply absorbed in a three-hour work cycle, a pair of students collaborating to solve a complex math puzzle using hands-on materials, or a student independently preparing a snack and cleaning up afterward. To the untrained eye, it simply looks like happy children at play or quiet work. But true magic lives in the intentionality behind those moments.
So, what makes a Montessori education—specifically here at LMSS—so transformative?
When children learn in a Montessori setting, they are not passive consumers of information sitting in rigid rows; they are active architects of their own learning. Our students build critical executive function skills, emotional resilience, and deep conceptual understanding. They discover how to ask meaningful questions, test hypotheses, learn from mistakes, and connect their learning to the wider world.
Fulfilling our mission takes more than just what happens between our classroom walls—it requires a connected, active community.
That is why community gatherings, like our upcoming Fall Festival, are so crucial. When you attend these events, you are doing far more than enjoying autumn activities with your family. You are modeling community engagement for your children, strengthening the vital partnership between home and school, and building relationships with the educators and families who share in raising these thoughtful future leaders. Every conversation had and every shared moment at our community events directly supports the culture and mission of our school.
Thank you for trusting us with your children and for partnering with us on this extraordinary journey. We hope you join us at the Fall Festival to celebrate the wonderfully supportive village we are building together.
Sincerely,
Naomi Kraus
Montessori Moment
Give It Time: Why Montessori Teachers Don’t Rush the Beginning of the Year
- Building Community Comes First: Before academic acceleration can happen, teachers must build a classroom community where children learn how to choose work, navigate the environment, wait their turn, and respect others’ concentration.
- The Classroom Environment is the First Curriculum: Early weeks focus on routines—how to carry a tray, roll a rug, ask for help, address spills, and move respectfully through the room.
- Observation Shapes the Lessons: Guides do not march through a fixed curriculum timeline. Instead, they observe each child’s readiness, energy, concentration, and emotional well-being to introduce purposeful individual or small-group presentations.
- Practical Life is “Real” Work: Activities like pouring water, sweeping, polishing, or arranging flowers strengthen coordination, focus, order, and independence. They give children a sense of competence and belonging while adapting to the social environment.
- Understanding “Normalization”: This process occurs as children become deeply engaged in purposeful work, becoming calmer, self-directed, orderly, and socially connected. Normalization develops at different rates for each child and classroom.
- Progress Isn’t Always Linear: It is normal for returning students to seek familiar or simpler work, or for children to come home unusually tired or tearful during September transitions. Revisiting familiar tasks provides security as children adjust.
- Laying the Foundation Accelerates Academics: Time spent mastering concentration, order, and community at the start of the year pays off later, allowing academic learning to accelerate once foundations are solid.
September Classroom Highlights
Children’s House (PreK-Kindergarten)
Our new friends have all received lessons on apple slicing, banana slicing, and coffee grinding, meaning our food work shelves are fully open. Students can choose to do one food work a day and have a snack.
On Friday, September 18th, we attended the theatre performance of Fraggle Rock at Viterbo University.
Throughout the school year, you’ll notice a consistent weekly pattern: math on Mondays, language on Tuesdays, culture on Wednesdays, sensorial on Thursdays, and science on Fridays. Kindergarten students also receive a daily UFLI lesson as part of their language curriculum. Students may revisit the same foundational lesson year after year, but the follow-up activities change to match their learning.
Montessori Material: The Hundred Board! The Hundred Board is a fantastic activity in the Math area of a Montessori classroom. The board is divided into 100 squares, with 10 rows of 10 squares each. The child is encouraged to place the correct tiles onto the board, starting from 1 to 100. This activity requires an immense amount of patience and concentration. This activity reinforces both memory and rote counting.
Elementary 1 (Grades 1-3)
E1 got to go on a field trip to Beaver Creek State Park in Caledonia! It was wet, but we got to enjoy nature!
We had the Second Great Lesson, The Timeline of Life — it introduces children to the story of how life began on Earth and how it has evolved over time. We will begin to study different animals on this timeline and make our version.
We also had our first parent book club meeting on the book Hunt, Gather, Parent. We had a chili dinner and a great discussion! Join us for another meeting on October 12 at 5:30!
Elementary 2 (Grades 4-6)
We had a class meeting and set our schedule. We worked together to make sure we didn’t leave anything out and assured that we were all comfortable with how our days will move.
We ate donuts and filled out job applications! We read all the descriptions of the jobs for our classroom and chose ones that we think we’d be great at.
E2 got to attend the theater to see Fraggle Rock with Children’s House! We did a short study on Jim Henson before we went to the show. We learned all about his different puppets and projects that he brought to life. We absolutely LOVED Fraggle Rock! It was such a fun show. I may be biased, but I feel like the LMSS students were the most respectful and well-behaved group there! You should all be so proud.
We had the first great lesson: the Coming of the Universe and the Earth. From nothing came into being the elemental universe. From that came our sun and its children, the planets. Afterwards, all of the grades had different follow up assignments. The fourth graders are doing some research on planets and are writing a book. The fifth graders are doing research projects on a topic of their choice from the Great Lesson and will present their findings along with a visual. The sixth graders are writing a children’s book and illustrating it about the Big Bang. They will later be sharing it with the Children’s House Classroom.
Guest Speaker: Nicole Anderson came to the classroom and did a sound bath for us. She also talked us through a short meditation and showed us different tools she uses when doing energy work with her clients. Everyone walked away feeling relaxed and renewed. It was such a fun experience.
Adolescent Program (Grades 7-12)
A lot has been happening in the AP program so far this year! A major highlight of the school year so far was camp! Students spent 4 days and 3 nights at Lake Shatek State Park in Currie, MN. The goal of camp is for students to experience independence, interdependence, and challenge.
Student participation in the organizational and administrative work is a regular part of the curriculum through committee work. Students sign up to run the classroom finances, plan field trips, make choices about the school library, and create the school yearbook. They trained for this work throughout the elementary classrooms as they prepared snacks, organized clubs, and took initiative in classroom jobs. Ask your teens which committees they signed up for and what type of work they are doing!
7th and 8th graders also participate in a course called Occupations which is an opportunity for economic freedom through production and exchange. This class is a key feature of adolescent programs, but it can look so many ways. Some schools have a coffee shop run by students or choose to have the teenagers run before and after school care while they learn about child development. Here, students have a choice between two classes. One class is about entrepreneurship. Those students will start their own businesses while the other class takes care of snacks and community meals while they learn about hospitality and food preparation.
“Productive work and a wage that gives economic independence, or rather constitutes a first real attempt to achieve economic independence, could be made with advantage a general principle of social education for adolescents and young people.” (Maria Montessori, From Childhood to Adolescence, CLIO p. 66)
Upcoming LMSS Events
October 6, Tuesday: Children’s House walking to Fire Station
October 9, Friday: AP School Forest Trip
October 11, Sunday: LMSS Fall Festival
October 12, Monday: Parent Book Club: “Hunt, Gather Parent”
October 14 Wednesday: Picture Day!
October 15-16, Thursday-Friday: No School
October 26, Monday: No School
October 30, Friday: AP School Forest Trip