Tiger Butter Pancakes

Tiger Butter!

This week brought a very fun and ongoing studio partnership with our amazing in-house storyteller (and Head of School!), Bekke.

Bekke shared the tale of some rather vain tigers whose antics eventually turn them into tiger butter and, naturally, what are you gonna make with tiger butter? Tiger butter pancakes. So what else could we do but spend the day making pancakes?

The children asked that I share our very simple studio recipe.  We made two different varieties but this is by far the easier of the two: oats, eggs, a ripe banana, baking powder, a splash of vinegar, a sprinkle of salt, and a teaspoon of cinnamon. Blend it all up, pour it onto the griddle, and tope with tiger butter (room temp. butter mixed with honey) voilà: Tiger Butter Pancakes!

Enjoy the story, the cooking, and the children making the whole thing their own.

Natural Scientists

This week, we invited the children to join us for a little Belly Time (lying together on a rug, magnifying glasses in hand) to examine one mysterious green object in the middle.

We didn’t tell them what it was. We just looked.

What do you notice?

“It’s bumpy and it’s smooth.”

“When you knock on it, it makes a clicking noise.”

“The top looks different than the bottom.”

“It’s calm. It’s not moving.”

What do you wonder?

“I wonder if it grows from a plant.”

“I wonder if it’s a cucumber.”

“I wonder what it looks like inside.”

"I wonder what it would taste like.”

“I wonder if it’s a fruit or a vegetable.”

And finally: What does it remind you of?

“A garden.”

“Summer.”

“A zucchini.”

“I know, I know… let's make Zucchini soup.”

“I think we could make soup with it.”

So the zucchini made its way into the studio.

We looked, chopped, cooked and tasted. The soup itself received mixed reviews. But we did enjoy plenty of conversation along the way.

This Year's Messy Question: 2026-2027

 "Whether you think you can or think you can’t—you’re right.”

-Henry Ford

As you watch your child walk into school, some for the first time, your memory drifts back to the days when they relied on the warmth of your embrace for mobility. Then they began to roll and scoot and pull themselves up on any nearby furniture.

Do you remember the enthusiasm you met them with? Kneeling nearby, arms outstretched, grinning from ear to ear, saying, Come to me.

Were you discouraged by the inevitable tumble as they approached their first steps? Of course not. We expect them to fall. We don’t even view those tumbles as mistakes. That is just how learning happens.

Somehow, we lose sight of this over the years. We forget that mistakes are an essential part of learning. As we age, many of us begin to veer away from trying new things or taking on challenges. Why?

Many of us have internalized the belief that mistakes make us less somehow. Many of us have also had ample experiences where our mistakes were penalized rather than seen as part of learning. By the time we leave high school, we may have already equated mistakes with failure.

But nothing could be farther from the truth. And it turns out that knowing mistakes are necessary makes a world of difference.

When we believe intelligence and skills are malleable rather than fixed, we respond differently to mistakes. In fact, the belief that we can learn from a mistake actually predicts how much we improve after making one. How much we learn.

What if, then, we could help children stay curious about mistakes rather than afraid of them? In other words, what can mistake-making teach us about staying in a relationship with possibility?

Those questions will be guiding our work in the Studio this year.

Join us as we embrace the steps and tumbles that cultivate intrinsic motivation, resilience, grit, curiosity, and a mindset of possibility.

I look forward to another wonderful year as we explore this question together.

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

-Thomas Edison

“I Can Do It Myself” and “Can You Help Me?”

“I can do it myself.”

I hear those four words often in the classroom.

Right alongside:

“Angelina, can you help me?”

Both are true.

Children are incredibly capable. They are also deeply relational. As an educator, I appreciate the paradoxes at the heart of human development: independence and collaboration, autonomy and interdependence, “I can do it myself” and “I need help” aren’t opposites. They occupy a shared space.

One of the most important things we can offer children is sufficient space to struggle.

Not to the point of a frustration that overwhelms them, but the kind of effort that stretches them just beyond what they can easily do. This is the zone of proximal development ... the sweet spot where learning happens. A child may not be able to do something completely alone yet, but with encouragement, observation, and the occasional bit of support, they discover that they can.

When children work through challenges, they begin to experience themselves as capable. They build persistence. They learn how to think.

This is why in Montessori environments we place such an emphasis on self-sufficiency. Children practice pouring their own water, caring for themselves, cleaning up their work, and caring for their environment. These everyday acts build autonomy and confidence.

Reggio-inspired classrooms add another dimension: collaboration. Children learn alongside one another, sharing ideas, building together, and constructing meaning as a group. When children work collectively, they create small cultures of learning... shared spaces, shared artifacts, shared discoveries.

Here at CGMS we value both.

Montessori and Reggio may look different on the surface, but they point toward the same truth:

I can do it.

And we can do it together.

Both independence and collaboration are essential foundations for the adults children will become. Humans are meant to be capable individuals who also know how to work, think, and care within community.

Recently, I’ve noticed more children asking for help or direction sooner than they might have in the past. Sometimes this simply means they’re looking for reassurance. Sometimes it’s because adults in their lives have gotten very good at helping quickly.

But children benefit when we pause before stepping in,

When possible, we can sit nearby, watch, and offer encouragement rather than solutions. A simple “You’re working hard on that” or “I see you figuring it out” can be enough. Often, if we give them a little time, they will discover that they can do more than they thought.

Healthy struggle is part of learning.

It’s how children build the inner voice that says, I can try. I can figure this out. (aka instrinsic learning).

And when they really need help, they learn something equally important: it’s okay to ask.(yep, encouraging them to ask will support their learning career more than you know).

In the end, both of those sentences matter.

“I can do it myself.”

…and…

“Can you help me?”

Both are how human beings grow.

Many years ago I heard Sugata Mitra speak. If you'd like to dig a bit deeper click here for his TedTalk with over 3.5 miliion views.