A glimpse into a Montessori Classroom

Every week Sean's teacher sends home a newsletter of what they've been doing in class that week.
It's really amazing. I've shared my amazement before and liken it to a Christmas letter every week. I always feel like I've been there when I read these newsletters.
So here's a little taste of what's been happening in Sean's class:
Africa:
To officially start our Africa unit we danced to South African music. I was so happy when I saw a large group of students grab hands and dance in a circle together. They did this without my prompting. This pleased me to see the high level of cooperation. Caleb also wanted to model to us some Ehtiopia dance moves and many I remembered from my travels. We mirrored what he taught us with big smiles of joy spread on our faces.
We started by looking at a piece of fabric I bought while vacationing in Accra, Ghana. As we passed it around we took time to smell, touch and examine it. 
Later in the week we combined our counselor topics of needs and wants with our African study. After reading part of a book and talking about the deserts in Africa we brainstormed which kind of needs and wants they would have.
We got some great penpal letters in the mail from Nigeria and separated in the class to silently read them and cherish the words we read. Afterward we talked about what type of needs they might have. Jayla suggested an envelope because they sent their letters in our envelope that Rowan had decorated.

She always includes something on each subject, and provided a lot of information on what she has presented for math.
Most of the children have not had Montessori before, so she is teaching small group lessons about the geometric solids. She also introduced fractions.
They worked on poetry, sentence structure, wrote letters to their penpals and did a lot of work with water through a science program and played in the snow.