Themes of the Week (in addition to Montessori Work time)
8/26‐ 09/04 Rules of the Classroom/Respect
We respect each other
We try our best/we learn from our mistakes
We are a team/we celebrate each other’s success
Tour of the classroom and introductions of materials
Using the words “please, thank you, excuse me, I’m sorry.” Write a class poem to emphasize the use of polite words.
Create a kindness quilt to help students think about and how to show acts of kindness.
9/07: Friendship
Work on social skills/ how to develop friendship
What are good qualities in a friend?
How do friends build community?
Create together a class web of friendship word
Second line time: Going over calendar, weather, and Spanish words and numbers. Friendship lessons and crafts!
9/14: All About Me!
Our similarities and differences
I’m special because…
Our Birthdays
Identifying our emotions
Starting on Monday Ms. Kate will be sending home a paper bag with each of your children. Please have your child decorate their bag and fill it with three of their favorite things. Please bring back on Friday.
Second Line Time: Going over calendar, weather, Spanish weather and words. Having fun doing all about me activities and games!
9/21: Family
What is a family
Graphing our families/ family celebrations
Create a family tree together (Due Friday 9/21/15)
Second line time: Going over calendar, weather, Spanish numbers and words. Having fun reading books on Families, creating a family portrait, and sining songs about families.
Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.
9/07: Aa
9/14: Bb
9/21: Cc
9/28: Dd
Rhyming words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
9/07: Cat
9/14: Pig
9/21: Ball
9/28: Bug
Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
While reading a book have your child point to all of the A’s she/he can find. Have them do this with the sight word “the.” Play I‐Spy using things that only start with the letter A.
Make a collage with pictures and objects that start with the letter B.
Place words around the house and see if your child can find the word “to.” When your child has gathered all of his/her “to” cards count together how many cards they have found.
Make a kindness jar. Each day pick an act of kindness out of the jar and act on it:)
You and your child write a special letter to a friend.
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Look for our sight words when reading a story, point out words you use that begin with the letter of the week. Cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
While driving your car, have your child tell you all the items they see that starts with the letter of the week.
Take a long walk in your park or neighborhood and point out the seasonal changes to your child. Discuss what you did as a child during each season and share some old and new memories with your son or daughter. Make special plans for each season.
To reinforce our space theme, do some star gazing each night. Have your child pick their favorite, brightest one and share in making a special wish together!
Our Academic Enrichment time is daily from 12:00-1:00pm. This time is specifically designed for our Kindergarten students to join together as a group to work and progress through the advanced materials and lessons in the Montessori primary curriculum. Throughout the school day in their classroom they are still working individually with their classroom teacher on these and other materials at their level.
05/04: Introduction to prepositions
Rules of the prepositions
Worksheets, diagramming sentences
05/11: Introduction to interjections
Rules of the interjections
Worksheets, diagramming sentences
05/18: Introduction to punctuation (end of a sentence)
Rules of the punctuation (end of a sentence)
Period, question mark, exclamation mark
Worksheets, practicing with interjections
05/25: Introduction to capitalization
Rules of capitalization
Worksheets, practicing our capitalization
06/01: Review of the year
Telling time, landforms
Coins, paper money
Mathematical operations
Geography
Sight Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
05/04: word, when 05/11: which, what 05/18: there, their 05/25: way, my
Synonyms of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Look for our words of the week when reading a story, cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
Practice using the different synonyms of the week in a sentence together.
Mr. John will be sending homework home to reinforce these lessons. Please turn homework into the orange box outside of Mr. John’s classroom. Please email him if you have any questions: jkotradi@thesmarterkids.com.
Themes of the Week (In addition to Montessori Work Time)
5/04: Plant and Butterfly Life Cycle
• Exploring a plant and butterfly’s life cycle
• Variety of activities that show a plants growth
• Parts of a plant
• Parts of a butterfly Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with plant and butterflies.
5/11: Sea Life
• Warm water vs. cold water and types of fish in each environment
• Sea creatures, different types of Fish
• Coral Reef
• Sink and float science experiments Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with sea life
5/18: Outer Space
• The planets in our Solar System
• Facts about each planet
• What is Gravity? Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with outer space
5/25: Outer Space
• Constellations, the Sun
• History of the space shuttle, Kennedy Space Center
• Astronauts, Neil Armstrong Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with outer space
6/01: All About Insects
• What makes an insect?
• How are insects different than spiders?
• All about bees and ladybugs! Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with insects
Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.
5/04- 6/01: Review
Sight Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
5/04: there
5/11: your
5/18: what
5/25: now
6/1: each
Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
• While reading a book have your child point to all of the letter of the week she/he can find. Have them do this with the sight words as well. Play I‐Spy using things that only start with the letter of the week/ sight words.
• Make fish sugar cookies together! Read Rainbow Fish and create an underwater scene in your child’s bedroom (use blue saran wrap to cover the windows and create fish out of paper).
• Visit the new aquarium in Cleveland. Create a story about all of the Fish and Mammals you saw!
• Make a telescope out of paper towel rolls, tape, markers and crayons. Talk about the constellations you see!
Themes of the Week (in addition to Montessori Work time)
5/4: All About Insects
• Learning the Characteristics of Insects.
• Life Cycle of the Butterfly.
• How Insects are helpful/harmful.
• Where do certain insects live?
• Where do insects get their food?
5/11: Dinosaurs
• Studying Dinosaurs that lived on land, earth, and in the air.
• Learning about the difference between carnivores and herbivores.
• Discuss how Dinosaurs left fossils, which give us “clues” about them.
• Discuss different types of dinosaurs such as T-Rex, Stegosaurus, and Triceratops.
• Discuss how dinosaurs all hatched from eggs.
5/18: All About Reptiles and Amphibians
• The difference between reptiles and amphibians.
• Learning about the Frog Life Cycle
• Learning about snakes, lizards, and alligators.
• Learning about turtles and frogs.
• Making a ven diagram of the differences between reptiles and amphibians.
5/25: All About Mammals
Learning the physical characteristics of mammals.
Learning about bears, monkeys, and lions.
What do certain mammals eat?
Where do certain mammals live?
6/1: All About Summer Fun/Safety
• Learning all about camping.
• Making ice cream.
• Learning about “stranger danger”.
• Learning when to call 9-1-1.
Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.
5/4: Yy
5/11: Ss
5/18: Ii
5/25: Pp
Sight Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
4/6: Yet
4/13: Set
4/20: Lip
4/27: Pit Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
• Discuss with your child their favorite types of dinosaur they are learning about.
• Take a trip to the zoo with your child. Discuss the different types of animals you see.
• Play “ I Spy” with your child using the letter sounds of the letter of the week.
• Discuss summer safety with your child (stranger danger, swimming safety, etc)
Themes of the week (In addition to Montessori Work Time) 5/4: Solar System
• The children will learn the positions of the Planets and their relative sizes and distances.
• The children will discover why and how Earth is distinctive.
• The children will learn the role of the Sun.
• The children will learn the terms rotation, revolution, and orbit.
• The children will be able to name the planets in the Solar System and the order they are in.
5/11: Dinosaurs
• The children will be able to identify dinosaurs by name.
• The children will recognize the different physical attributes of dinosaurs.
• The children will demonstrate understanding of herbivores and carnivores.
• The children will compare and contrast dinosaurs to modern animals.
• The children will demonstrate understanding of fossils.
• The children will identify that museums are places in communities where artifacts can be viewed.
5/18: Transportation
• The children will become familiar with what transportation is: to carry things from one place to another.
• The children will learn the different methods of travel.
• The children will learn the safety rules for all methods of transportation.
5/25: Sports
• The children will work on gross motor skills by marching, skipping, galloping etc.
• The children will gain the skills needed to engage in imaginative and creative play indoors and outdoors, involving others.
• The children will develop team work with peers.
6/1: Welcome Summer
• The children will learn some outside summer games and activities.
• The children will experiment with water.
• The children will learn about summer safety.
Letters of the week
5/4: Aa
511: Ee
5/18: Ii
5/25: Oo
6/1: Uu
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
• Visit a local museum.
• Take a walk and see how many different forms of transportation you can spot.
• Go to a baseball game.
• Look at the sky with a telescope at night.
Our Academic Enrichment time is daily from 12:00-1:00pm. This time is specifically designed for our Kindergarten students to join together as a group to work and progress through the advanced materials and lessons in the Montessori primary curriculum. Throughout the school day in their classroom they are still working individually with their classroom teacher on these and other materials at their level.
5/4: Introduction to conjunctions
• Rules of the conjunctions
• Worksheets, diagramming sentences
5/11: Introduction to interjections
• Rules of the interjections
• Worksheets, practicing with interjections
5/18: Introduction to punctuation (end of a Sentence)
• Rules of the punctuation
• Worksheets, diagramming sentences
5/25: Introduction to capitalization
• Rules of capitalization
• Worksheets, practicing our capitalization
6/1: Review of the year
• Telling time, landforms
• Coins, paper money
• Mathematical operations
• Geography
Letter / Sight Words
5/4: Aa / at
5/11: Ee / ET word family book look, I, see, a, big, that, is, in, my, he, down
5/18: Ii / big
5/25: Oo / up
6/1: Uu / UG word family book look, I, see, a, big, that, is, in, my, he, down
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
• Look for our words of the week when reading a story, cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
• Practice using the different synonyms of the week in a sentence together.
• Practice identifying different parts of speech when reading together.
Yes! The weather is finally warming! We got to go outside finally – not that we don’t love the use of the gym. The last of the snow in piles of the edge of the parking lot were the key focus as we have been stuck inside due to the extreme weather. Ice hockey was the second interest even though the ice puck kept falling apart. One of my favorite things is watching the students use their imaginations to create games and “official” rules during recess.
One popular lesson received recently was the experiment observing fluidity and viscosity of liquids. Students enjoyed the etymology of the English words and seeing the flow of different liquids. All students have been working on a style of cursive handwriting called The Initial Stoke Method where one stroke leads the student to drawing several commonly made letters of the alphabet. During the Elementary years, many forms of writing will be explored to increase the beauty of your student’s handwriting skills. This also encourages the students to write more neatly, and focus on their spelling, because they want their handwriting to be ‘just so’.
The Elementary class has been delighted to have a new student join us, increasing our class to seventeen students for the school year. We continue to meet our younger guests as the graduating Kindergarten students continue to visit us [two by two], preparing for their next step after the 3 – 6 classrooms. Next year promises to be a booming increase in size for our growing Elementary program, making our program healthy and robust. We are excited!
Many students are starting to delve into Mathematic Laws, Area, Geometric Solids and Ratios. A couple of students are working on Time. Time is both looked at as Standard Time and Military Time, initially, as these two are most commonly used in our society. Talking about societies, students took a look at different cultures and examined some of the patterns of endings, beginnings and merging of cultures over the course of human history. They found that all history of man has not been clearly found through artifacts from the past and that over time, the numbers of cultures multiplied and became more “crowded” on the timeline as it neared current times.
Students thoroughly enjoyed exploring the World of Fossils at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. They were completely enthralled to search through rocks and see if they could figure out the kind of fossil they were viewing. Each student visited all six stations and had to decide if the group of fossils at each station were from a continent or from the ocean. At the end of the class, students became true archeologists and dug into a chunk of dirt, digging out their own shark tooth fossil. Then they identified they type of shark their specific tooth may have belonged to using a chart.
Prepping for our next big event, the International Festival, the students have voted on writing and performing, both. We will become researchers, playwrights and performers in the next couple of weeks! Other exciting starts are the Science Experiments are finally being realized as science materials have been arriving at the school, thanks to our $400.00 grant written by one of our Elementary parents. Beware if you visit our classrooms, Venus Flytraps are on the loose!
Week 29 & 30
Our big focus during this next week and a half is Science Fair despite the flu virus challenging many of our staff and students. Students carried out their experiments, collecting data to analyze. Many surprises happened with our “best guesses” or hypothesis had predicted. Some students worked hard to research their surprises to see if they could figure out why their experiment did not turn out as they hoped. All students delved deeply into researching the Law that governed the outcomes of their experiments, whether their hypothesis was correct or not. Taking their knowledge of paragraph writing, each Science Fair project created their first scientific research paper, based loosely on MLA format. One of the favorite parts of the project of the students was making the presentation boards, created with love and style by our young scientists to share their findings in a more visual way. The students were given lessons on how to present their work at Science Fair night and how to dress up their tables to make them inviting and exciting. One group featured an interactive activity! Science Fair night was packed and vibrating with stimulating conversation and all had fun! As staff, we had great pleasure watching the students enjoy the fruits of their hard work and dedication to their projects.
As part of our Science Fair work, lessons revolved around research techniques, formal writing skills, editing skills, typing skills, reading comprehension, how to organize a research paper, how to follow an outline, communication and public speaking tips from the best Mastering Communication Online Training Program . Several students walked to the local library to do research about their project and discover why it worked or didn’t work the way they thought. We used the library computers and all the knowledge gained from our initial library field trip that taught us how to search and find the books we need, browse this site and discover the leading experts and business solutions.
When it came time to write their paper, all students had lessons on how to type their paper on the computer and then we worked through the editing process. First, we read the paper aloud to a friend. Then we marked the areas we felt didn’t sound quite right with a highlighter. We reviewed the highlighted areas to re-word them as necessary, then typed our changes. Again, we read the paper aloud. This time we also looked for spelling and grammar mistakes. We corrected spelling and added any misspelled words to our personal dictionaries for further practice. Grammar mistakes were corrected and we learned a few editing symbols to improve our writing in the future. This may have been a “science” project, but it was laced with history, reading, grammar and language lessons as well. The students were so proud of all their hard work and it certainly paid off! The Science Fair was fantastic!
Themes of the Week (in addition to Montessori Work time)
4/06: All About North America
Introduction to the seven continents
North America: countries, culture, climate
United States, the flag and it’s history, Christopher Columbus
South America: countries, climate, culture, landmarks, The Equator, The Andes Mountains
The Amazon/What is found in the Rainforest (animals, products we use that come from the rainforest)
Afternoon Group Lesson: All about sports and fitness
4/13: Africa and Asia
Africa: countries, culture, climate and animals! We will also learn about some African cuisine and languages
Three regions of Africa (Savannah, Desert, Rainforest)
Nile River, Sahara Desert
Asia: countries, culture, climate, languages and cuisine. We will cover historical landmarks like the Great Wall of China, and locating natural landmarks like the Himalayan Mountains on a map.
Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of activities and crafts about the different countries.
4/20: Australia, Antarctica and Oceans
Antarctica: The Arctic region, animals, landforms and plant life
Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and the Southern Ocean, ocean life
Australia: Desert, Outback, Rainforest, Great Barrier Reef, culture and climate
Australian cuisine and language
Afternoon Group Lesson: Having fun learning about the different states of the USA.
4/27: All About Europe
Different European countries and their culture
Different climates, landmarks and landforms
Gondolas, Olympics, Running of the Bulls, Windmills, Eiffel Tower etc.
Highlight a few languages spoken in these countries. We will learn the days of the week in Italian and common sayings in French (Good Day, Thank You, Good Evening, etc.)
Afternoon Group Lesson: Flags of the world.
For the month of April, we will be concentrating on preparing your child for the international festival and will resume letters and words of the week in May.
Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
While reading a book have your child point to all of the letter of the week she/he can find. Have them do this with the sight words as well. Play I‐Spy using things that only start with the letter of the week/ sight words.
As a family, come up with a food or dessert that authentic from a different country and make it together.
Pretend to go on a trip. Place chairs in the middle of the room (as your plane), bring a map! Point to a country and fly there! Talk about the animals you would see, the weather, people and anything else you would see or experience!
We will be practicing individual lines and songs in class in preparation for the Festival, please practice your line at home too!
