Special Enrichment Areas

Health and Wellness

Yoga - Children's Meeting House offers a creative and child-focused Hatha Yoga program to our all-day pre-primary and elementary children. Our program is adventurous, playful and celebratory with creative activities to match children's joyful spirits. Art, song, role playing, and journaling all have a consistent place in CMH yoga classes. Quiet and reflective moments are also integrated through meditation, breathing techniques, and creative visualization. Parents are also invited to attend their children's yoga classes.

Physical Education - At Children's Meeting House (CMH) we recognize that physical activity in an important part of a child's overall development. Through participation in weekly classes we strive to develop positive lifetime attitudes towards physical activity and exercise. Our curriculum is focused on elements of communication, cooperation, conflict resolution, safety and respect for self and others. Students engage in an assortment of dynamic activities helping foster the development of motor skills while simultaneously offering opportunities for challenge, enjoyment, self expression and social interaction. Classes are typically held outside on our beautiful school campus encompassing 7 acres. In the event of inclement weather, we utilize our large multi-purpose room. As always, parents are invited to visit.

Library

The Children's Meeting House library is an exciting and dynamic place. We are dedicated to assisting students in their enjoyment of reading and pursuit of lifelong learning. All students visit the library during the week. The Pre-Primary enjoys a story each week and checks out a book of their choice. The Junior and Senior classes are participants in the Accelerated Reader (AR) program. Research has shown the AR program improves students' reading skills, making reading practice fun and exciting for every student. This program gives continuous feedback to personalize instruction so every student achieves maximum success.

Each year the library has a Book Fair that offers specially prices books and educational products, including new releases, award-winning titles, children's classics, interactive software, books for parents, and current bestsellers from more than 150 publishers.

Parents are always welcome, please stop by!

Music

Music Together - Music Together is an internationally recognized early childhood music program for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, kindergarteners, and the adults who love them. First offered to the public in 1987, it pioneered the concept of a research-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood music curriculum that strongly emphasizes and facilitates adult involvement. Music Together classes are based on the recognition that all children are musical. All children can learn to sing in tune, keep a beat, and participate with confidence in the music of our culture, provided that their early environment supports such learning.

Singing Circle - Singing Circle has been a unique part of CMH for the past 33 years. Each week the Preprimary and Junior children look forward to singing circle with our veteran teacher and guitar player, John Phenix. This is a time when the children gather together in a circle and sing songs. The songs are a mix of children's songs, traditional folk songs and songs made up to teach children concepts, such as, counting numbers, days of the week, months of the year, the continents and the planets. Singing Circle has become a time for learning, as well as, a time for fun.

S.E.E.D.s (Students in Ecological & Environmental Discoveries)

"All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today." -Indian Proverb

By exploring beyond the walls of our school into our woods, fields, meadows, pond and creek, we nourish the children’s innate curiosity about the natural world. Research shows that connecting children with nature has far reaching effects, from improving academic performance to enhancing psychological and physical well-being. It develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, decision making and stimulates creativity.

Our out-of-doors "hands-on" curriculum focuses on activities that are indigenous to our area. Examples of activities would include; learning how living organisms are affected by their environment, conservation, natural dying, maple sugaring, investigation of trees, plants, insects, birds, mammals, animal tracks. fossils, astronomy and much more.

We need to plant the early seeds of understanding the interrelationship between nature and humanity, which will lead children to a sense of responsibility and stewardship in caring for our earth.

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." -Albert Einstein

Spanish

The Spanish program at CMH is very extensive. In addition to learning the Spanish language all groups learn about some of the key Mexican celebrations including Independence Day (September 16) and the Posadas. These lessons include a description of the celebration as well as hands on activities and have the purpose of reinforcing their language skills (by using them in context) as well as increasing children' awareness of Mexican culture and traditions.

Other activities included in the program are cooking, making Piņatas and other cultural crafts.

Children in the Pre-Primary level attend Spanish class one day a week. They learn basic vocabulary for colors, numerals, animals, family members, parts of the body and foods. They also learn songs and organized games in Spanish...they love it! For the classes we use a lot of different learning materials like pictures, small animals, fruits, puppets, a parachute and more.

Children at the Junior level attend Spanish twice a week. The skills they practice are similar to those described for Pre-Primary, but at a more advanced level. They begin learning basic descriptions of everyday objects and people and forming full sentences with correct grammar and structure.

Children at the Senior level continue to practice and build on previously acquired skills. They begin to describe the weather, follow simple directions, as well as, learning greetings and verbs. In order to cement the use of vocabulary and to further develop grammatical skills, children describe photographs and people in Spanish both verbally and in writing. They also complete descriptions of recoded Spanish conversations.

Pottery

Again this year, we were excited to offer pottery lessons to all-day pre-primary and all elementary students. Students have made pinch pots, sculptures, slab and coil pots. Older children have learned about masks from around the world in class and then have had the opportunity to create one of their own. Students were able to paint some of their pieces and have them glazed with food safe glazes.

This year our ceramics program was offered for 6 weeks, but we envision the program expanding in the next two years. The addition of a pottery studio complete with a new kiln and pottery wheels, and summer clay workshops for both children and adults will make our art program unique.