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Winter Reading List: Service and Stewardship

Winter Reading List: Service and Stewardship

We have pulled together a beautiful collection of books to talk about service and stewardship with children. Take a look at her recommendations below! You can find these books in our library if you would like to borrow them to read with your child.

Books about Service in our Communities

Thank you, Omu!
Everyone in the neighborhood dreams of a taste of Omu’s (pronounced AH-moo) delicious stew! One by one, they follow their noses toward the scrumptious scent. And one by one, Omu offers a portion of her meal. Soon the pot is empty. Has she been so generous that she has nothing left for herself?
Extra Yarn
By Mac Barnett (Author), Jon Klassen (Illustrator)
A young girl and her box of magical yarn transform a community in this stunning picture book. With spare, gently humorous illustrations and a palette that moves from black-and-white to a range of color, this modern fairy tale has the feel of a new classic.

 

Maybe Something Beautiful: How Art Transformed a Neighborhood
by F. Isabel Campoy (Author), Theresa Howell (Author), Rafael López (Illustrator)

What good can a splash of color do in a community of gray? As Mira and her neighbors discover, more than you might ever imagine! Based on the true story of the Urban Art Trail in San Diego, California, Maybe Something Beautiful reveals how art can inspire transformation—and how even the smallest artists can accomplish something big. Pick up a paintbrush and join the celebration!

The Thank you Letter
By Jane Cabrera (Author)
After a wonderful party, birthday girl Grace sits down to thank her friends and family for all their kind gifts. But she doesn’t stop there! As she writes, Grace realizes there are so many things to be grateful for. So she thanks her teacher for helping her learn to write. She thanks her dog for his cheerful wagging tail. She even thanks the sky for being perfectly, beautifully blue. When Grace returns home after delivering her notes, she finds a wealth of affection–cards, letters, and notes from her neighbors and friends. A beautifully illustrated gatefold page shows how deeply her letters have touched the hearts of everyone around them.
Lend a Hand
By John Frank (Author), London Ladd (Illustrator)
Making a difference in the world can be as simple as planting a tree, giving up your seat on a bus to a disabled person, or training a puppy to become a guide dog. These are just a few of the simple acts of kindness featured in this collection of fourteen original poems. Each poem emphasizes the compassion and the joy of giving. Representing diverse voices—different ages and backgrounds—the collection shows the bridging of boundaries between people who are often perceived as being different from one another. The first step in bridging those boundaries is to extend a hand. Lend a Hand demonstrates that empathy and social awareness can start at an early age.
Maddi’s Fridge
By Lois Brandt (Author), Vin Vogel (Author)
With humor and warmth, this children’s picture book raises awareness about poverty and hunger. Best friends Sofia and Maddi live in the same neighborhood, go to the same school, and play in the same park, but while Sofia’s fridge at home is full of nutritious food, the fridge at Maddi’s house is empty. Sofia learns that Maddi’s family doesn’t have enough money to fill their fridge and promises Maddi she’ll keep this discovery a secret. But because Sofia wants to help her friend, she’s faced with a difficult decision: to keep her promise or tell her parents about Maddi’s empty fridge. Filled with colorful artwork, this storybook addresses issues of poverty with honesty and sensitivity while instilling important lessons in friendship, empathy, trust, and helping others. A call to action section, with six effective ways for children to help fight hunger and information on antihunger groups, is also included.

Books about Service for our Environment

Bird House
By Blanca Gómez (Author)
On a snowy day, a grandmother and grandchild find an injured bird. They take it home and care for it until it can fly around the living room. It is fantastic—just like everything at Abuela’s house! But a fantastic moment is also bittersweet, for the little bird’s recovery means that it’s time to let it fly free. 
Jayden’s Impossible Garden
By Mélina Mangal (Author), Ken Daley (Illustrator)
Amidst all the buildings, people, and traffic in his neighborhood, Jayden sees nature everywhere: the squirrels scrounging, the cardinals calling, and the dandelions growing. But Mama doesn’t believe there’s nature in the city. So Jayden sets out to help Mama see what he sees. With the help of his friend Mr. Curtis, Jayden plants the seeds of a community garden and brings together his neighbors—and Mama—to show them the magic of nature in the middle of the city.
 
Timeless and vibrant, this story highlights the beauty of intergenerational relationships and the power of imagination and perseverance in bringing the vision of a community garden to life. Jayden’s love of nature will inspire readers to see their environment and surroundings as bursting with opportunities for growth and connection. At the back of the book, readers will find activities to make items found in the book, such as the milk jug bird feeder.
We are Water Protectors
By Carole Lindstrom (Author), Michaela Goade (Illustrator)

Water is the first medicine.
It affects and connects us all . . .

When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth
And poison her people’s water, one young water protector
Takes a stand to defend Earth’s most sacred resource.

Kate, Who Tamed the Wind
By Liz Garton Scanlon(Author),Lee White(Illustrator)
A wild wind blows on the tippy-top of a steep hill, turning everything upside down for the man who lives there. Luckily, Kate comes up with a plan to tame the wind. With an old wheelbarrow full of young trees, she journeys up the steep hill to add a little green to the man’s life, and to protect the house from the howling wind. From award-winning author Liz Garton Scanlon and whimsical illustrator Lee White comes a delightfully simple, lyrical story about the important role trees play in our lives, and caring for the world in which we live.
What a Waste: Trash, Recycling, and Protecting our Planet
By Jess French (Author)

This educational book will teach young budding ecologists about how our actions affect planet Earth and the big impact we can make by the little things we do. Did you know that there is a floating mass of trash larger than the USA drifting around the Pacific Ocean?

It is not all bad news though. While this is a knowledge book that explains where we are going wrong, What a Waste also shows what we are getting right! Discover plans to save our seas. How countries are implementing green projects worldwide, and how to turn waste into something useful. The tiniest everyday changes can make all the difference to ensure our beautiful planet stays lush and teeming with life. It is a lively kid’s educational book with fabulous illustrations and fun facts about the world broken into easy-to-digest bite-sized bits.

Old Enough to Save the Planet
By Loll Kirby (Author), Adelina Lirius (Illustrator)
The world is facing a climate crisis like we’ve never seen before. And kids around the world are stepping up to raise awareness and try to save the planet. As people saw in the youth climate strike in September 2019, kids will not stay silent about this subject—they’re going to make a change. Meet 12 young activists from around the world who are speaking out and taking action against climate change. Learn about the work they do and the challenges they face, and discover how the future of our planet starts with each and every one of us.
The Kid’s Guide to Service Projects
By Barbara A. Lewis (Author)
This book describes the different opportunities for children to get involved in community service across a wide range of areas and interests, featuring over 500 ideas for service projects for young people. This is a great place to start with your child!
Sharing your Culture and Traditions

Sharing your Culture and Traditions

At Greenspring Montessori School, we welcome and celebrate people of diverse backgrounds, histories, perspectives, identities, cultures, religions, and races. Our learning environment is strengthened and enriched through a community that reflects the nuances and beauty of an intricate and complex world.

Welcoming Statement

Our children, families, staff, and community come from a rich variety of backgrounds. We love to invite everyone in our community into the classrooms to speak about holidays and traditions that are important to you. In the 2022-23 school year, our families and staff graciously volunteered their time to present about holidays including Rosh Hashanah, Hanal Pixan, Diwali, Veterans Day, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, Black History Month, Passover, Vaisakhi, Shavuot, and Memorial Day. In addition, several classrooms hosted visitors to share about their cultures. Our children love these opportunities to see windows into the cultures of others as well as great pride in sharing and seeing their own cultures and traditions in the classrooms.

Take a look at photographs from our classroom celebrations and presentations from last school year. We are looking forward to continuing and expanding upon these traditions for the 2023-24 school year.

How to get involved

We invite you to please let us know about your child’s own cultural background and the holidays they celebrate. To do so, please log in to the Parent Portal, click on your child’s name, and look for the fields related to culture and holidays. Please also reach out to us at learn@greenspringmontessori.org if you would be interested in giving a presentation to our children on your traditions and celebrations.

Update the Parent Portal
A History of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Work at Greenspring

A History of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Work at Greenspring

Our work in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) has been ongoing over the past five years. We started this work when a group of families came to us highlighting the need for our community, and since then have spent a good deal of time educating our staff and developing lessons for students in several key areas of DEIB education.

We began by offering a year of staff professional development in 2019-20 to better understand this work and dig into our goals together. We were guided in this work by the book Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves from the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Our school follows the Four Goals of Anti-Bias Education from this book which can be found here.

Once we had that foundation, we brought this work into our classrooms in the 2020-21 school year, focusing first on Goal #1 of Anti-bias Education: nurturing each child’s construction of knowledgeable, confident, individual personal and social identities. These lessons are designed to support each child and adult in appreciating their culture, skin color, religious background, family structure, and the other identity markers that make them unique. We also worked on lessons around Goal #2: promoting each child’s comfortable, empathetic interaction with people from diverse backgrounds – helping children learn to honor and celebrate those who have different identity markers than their own.

In the 2021-22 school year, we continued our work in Goals #1 and #2, focusing on celebrations and traditions from around the world with books, lessons, and community volunteers to help us share the beauty and richness of many traditions. This work continues and we are grateful to have family members visit and share their celebrations with us all.

In the 2022-23 school year, we began developing lessons around family structures and offering our staff opportunities to learn about the diverse family structures within our Greenspring community. We continue this work with our children through books and classroom materials that reflect their unique identities and family structures.

Our staff professional development and the lessons themselves were created by our DEIB Committee, a volunteer group of deeply committed, hard-working staff members invested in making sure that our community and children have the opportunity to discover and explore a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures.

Starting 2023 with New Titles in Our Library!

Starting 2023 with New Titles in Our Library!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Birthday Book Club! Because of your generous donations, the school library has purchased many exciting new picture books to add to our collection. These books are a wonderful addition to our library and we are so grateful for your generosity and your commitment to our mission. Thank you for your support!

Every Little Kindness, Marta Bartolj

When one act of kindness sparks another, anything is possible! As a girl searches for her lost dog, a simple act of generosity ripples into a wave of good deeds. In the course of a single day, each considerate action weaves lives together and transforms a neighborhood for the better.

Heart String, Brooke Boynton-Hughes

Through backyards and neighborhoods, over mountains, and across oceans, this colorful heart string ties us all together. Out of sight yet undeniable, it joins our hearts so that we are never truly alone. Follow the thread of this reassuring story to see how, even in a world as vast as ours, there is always a bond that connects us to the ones we love—and to the world we share.

Papa, Daddy, & Riley, Seamus Kirst

Riley is Papa’s princess and Daddy’s dragon. She loves her two fathers! When Riley’s classmate asks her which dad is her real one, Riley is confused. She doesn’t want to have to pick one or the other. Families are made of love in this heartwarming story that shows there are lots of ways to be part of one.

Over and Under the Waves, Kate Messner

Over the waves, the sea lions bark and seagulls wheel and call. The bay is smooth and bright in the sun. But under the waves, there’s a whole hidden forest, full of whales and wolf eels, sardines and sea bass, leopard sharks and luminous jellies, as well as the waving kelp that shelters them all. Discover the magical depths of the kelp forest, and all the fascinating creatures living just a paddle’s length away—over and under the waves.

A Sweet New Year for Ren, Michelle Sterling

Little Ren looks forward to the preparation for and festivities of Lunar New Year, but she is always too little to help make the delicious pineapple cakes that are her favorite. She watches family members rolling out the dough and loves the mouth-watering smell. Watching and waiting, when will Ren be old enough?

A Tree is a Home, Pamela Hickman

A large old oak tree stands near an empty house. Like the house, the tree provides shelter and a place to raise a family. From its branches to its roots, six animals share the tree as a home. Readers follow along as the tree and the animals – a raccoon, opossum, acorn weevil, gray squirrel, blue jay and chipmunk – change and adapt through all four seasons, from one autumn to the next. Meanwhile, a human family moves into the empty house nearby, and we see their story unfold, and grow, at the same time as their animal neighbors.

The Kindest Red: A Story of Hijab and Friendship, Ibtihaj Muhammad

It’s picture day and Faizah can’t wait to wear her special red dress with matching hair ribbons, passed down from her mother and sister. Faizah’s teacher starts the day by asking her students to envision the kind of world they want, inspiring Faizah and her friends to spend the day helping one another in ways large and small. But when it’s time for sibling pictures, Faizah realizes that she and her older sister, Asiya, don’t match like her classmates do with their siblings. With help from her classmates inspired by Asiya’s hijab, Faizah finds that acts of kindness can come back to you in unexpected ways.

Lunar New Year Presentations

Lunar New Year Presentations

Several of our volunteers from the Johns Hopkins International Teaching and Global Leadership program presented their Lunar New Year traditions to our Children’s House and Elementary students.

Lunar New Year celebrates the first days of spring on the lunar calendar. Instead of tracking the Earth’s orbit around the sun, which is slightly over 365 days, the lunar calendar tracks the cycles of the moon. The holiday begins with the first new moon of the lunar calendar and ends on the first full moon of the lunar calendar, 15 days later.

Lunar New Year is celebrated around the world, though it goes by different names. China’s Lunar New Year is known as the Spring Festival or Chūnjié in Mandarin, while Koreans call it Seollal, and the Vietnamese refer to it as Tết. 

Each year in the Lunar calendar is represented by one of 12 zodiac animals included in the cycle of 12 stations or “signs” along the apparent path of the sun through the cosmos. 2023 is the year of the Rabbit!

Regional customs and traditions vary widely but share the same theme: seeing out the old year and welcoming in the luck and prosperity of a new year. Some people give their houses a thorough cleaning before the spring festival, which symbolizes sweeping away the bad luck of the preceding year and making their homes ready to receive good luck. Red is the main color for the festival, symbolizing prosperity and energy, so many people put up red lanterns and other decorations. Another Lunar New Year tradition is giving red envelopes, which have money in them, to children and seniors. Those who receive a red envelope are wished another safe and peaceful year. The Lunar New Year is often celebrated with parades that include lion and dragon dances, firecrackers, and fireworks.

Thank you, Brittany, Coco, Sharon, and Chelsea for sharing your traditions with us! We are grateful to all of the families and staff members who have shared your cultural traditions with our children this year!