Line Time: Ground Rules: Week Two… Everything is fine! We continued learning about the ground rules in our classroom. We learned the expected behaviors for work time and were introduced to new work trays in the Practical Life area so that we can strengthen our fine motor skills. We learned how to get a teacher’s attention by putting a hand on the teachers shoulder instead of yelling across the room. We have been practicing when a teacher calls a student’s name they reply “Yes, Mr. John?” instead of “what?” or “ya?”
We also have been practicing placing shoes and slippers nicely on the their mat.
I expect this every time they change shoes/slippers.
A Message From Mr. John:
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 5 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French)
Know Your Languages:
August Birthdays: A Montessori Classroom consists of 3 to 6 year old students. Here are our newest 4 and 5 year old students.
Fun Fact:
Drivers, in their life time, will spend on average of 6 months waiting at red lights. That’s a lot of time to catch up on your FaceBook page.
Peek In The Classroom:
He is working on the Vowel Tree which is a pre-reading material found in the Language area. As you can see the child uses a card with consonants on each end with a cut out in the middle. The student slides the card exposing a vowel to make a real word or a nonsensical word. This develops the ability to string letters together to form words.She is rolling PlayDo which mirrors rolling dough with a rolling pin. This activity is found in Practical Life and strengthens fine motors skills and concentration. Here we see a child reading.This child is working on the First Introduction Of Decimals found in the Math area. The aim is to introduce the child to the concept of the decimal system and to make the child familiar with the names and quantity of each category.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Healthy Habits
Letter Of The Week- C c
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bap
Next Language is Greek
Upcoming Events: Labor Day- ****No School Monday September 5, 2022. ***** There is always one family that shows up. Who will it be this year? LOL
Sign up for Remind and Transparent Classroom.
Academic Enrichment aka Kindergarten:
Weekly Theme: Cardinal Directions (N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW)
The Kinders pointing in their favorite direction.
Next Week: Weekly Theme: N. America/surrounding bodies water
Synonym Of The Week: SLOW, unhurried, gradual, sluggish, stagnant, lethargic
Sight Words Of The Week: see her
Frolic, Friends, and Fun:
Notice the height difference in a Montessori classroom?The Glasses Clubya shoulda seen the other guyA new spin on casual day (see his bath robe?)
Line Time: Ground Rules: What a wonderful start to our school year! This week we learned about the ground rules in our classroom. We learned the expected behaviors for work time and were introduced to new work trays in the Practical Life area so that we can strengthen our fine motor skills. We learned how to roll and unroll a mat. The four main rules are 1) No running in the classroom. 2) Listening Ears. 3) Keep our body to our self. 4) Treat people and the room with respect. We are learning how to shake hands, look each other in the eye while shaking hands, and reply with pleasantries when I say good morning (students respond “Good morning Mr. John). What a great start to a great school year!
A Message From Mr. John:
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 4 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish)
Know Your languages:
Fun Fact: Did you know you can NOT imagine a new/undiscovered color!
Peek In The Classroom:
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time-
Letter Of The Week- C c
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bap
Next Language is German
Upcoming Events: Labor Day- ****No School Monday September 4, 2023. ***** There is always one family that shows up. Who will it be this year? LOL
!!!! Sign up for Remind and Transparent Classroom. !!!
Academic Enrichment aka Kindergarten:
Weekly Theme:
Next Week:
Synonym Of The Week: BORING, drab, dull lifeless, mundane, monotonous
We had a wonderful start to our school year this week! The Cherry Blossom class was so excited to be back with old friends and meet new ones! We talked about routines and expected behavors this week during line time. We reviewed how we work in the classroom, where all of our favorite works are located, and our important ASL classroom signs. We settled quickly back into our schedule and are looking forward to our classroom chores beginning again next week!
Preschool Lesson was all about the beach this week! Our younger Blossoms learned about seashells, sand dollars, and sea stars this week. They poured sea shells, sorted shells by size, and ladeled sea glass.
Kindergarten Lesson with Mr. John began this week for our older Blossoms! They talked all about the different continents and interesting facts about each one. We were very proud to see that they remembered so much from our Africa study last year!
We would also like to give a big Cherry Blossom welcome to our two new friends that are joining our classroom community this school year!
Peek Into Next Week!
Focus Topic: Sunflowers and Butterflies
Preschool Lesson: The Beach
Kindergarten Lesson: Handwriting, Reader’s Workshop, and Writer’s Workshop begins!
Welcome back Aspen families! We hope you all had an amazing and relaxing summer vacation! The new school year is here, and the Aspen children are settling into classroom routine and have already begun exploring the classroom! This week we began our school year with the Procedural Movement Lessons (The How To’s Of A Montessori Classroom); therefore, we learned how to walk the line, how to move through the classroom, how to use indoor voices, how to carry and roll rugs, how to choose activities from the shelves, and how to take turns talking during line time. Returning children were amazing role models and helped our new classmates with all of the above and more! It was a great first week of school!
Next week we will continue with Procedural Movement Lessons and will begin learning all about seasons. We will learn why we have seasons, discuss the concept of day and night, and will learn the names and characteristics of each season.
Kindergarten students will also begin Reading and Writing workshop next week with Ms. Kelley and Ms. Tonya on Tuesday ‘s and Thursday’s. During these workshops we will focus on phonics, language rules (phonograms, blends, and more), comprehension, sentence structure, making inferences, sequencing, and the mechanics of handwriting. Each week I will include an update on concepts covered during the Reading and Writing workshop here on our classroom’s blog! The kindergarteners will also be attending a kindergarten lesson (Kindergarten Workshop) on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday with Mr. John. During kindergarten lesson, our kindergarteners will explore a variety of concepts in detail and are often given follow-up (homework) to be completed at home. Please check your child’s folder and return all homework to school the following day.
See you next week!!
Learning how to transfer water with an eyedropper.
using a pushpin to punch around the outline of continents.
A Peek At Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!
And that’s a wrap on the 2021-2022 school year in the Cherry Blossom Class! We took some time to celebrate a wonderful year with our friends this week. We had a picnic outside on a beautiful sunny day. We enjoyed watching Luca and eating snacks. We read books, drew pictures, played games, and showed our toys from home. We had one last science experiment with Mr. John. We had a BLAST at Bash & Splash Day!
Ms. Sam and I have had such a wonderful year with your children. They brought us so many smiles and laughs every single day. We are proud of their hard work and all of the amazing things they have learned. They are kind, caring, funny, unique individuals. They worked together so well and truly built a classroom community that makes my heart full. We love them all with our whole hearts! We hope your family has an amazing summer. To those that we sadly said goodbye to, we will miss you! And to those that will return, see you later alligators! Love, Ms. Tonya
Line Time: Solar System- Put on your space suit and get ready to explore our solar system. We started with discussing the planets nearer the sun then worked our way to the furthest reaches of our solar system. Mercury is our first planet and is the closest to the sun. Venus is the second planet. Even though it is further away from the sun than Mercury it is the hottest planet in our solar system. The third planet is near and dear to our hearts. It is the planet earth. It is the only planet in our solar system that has life. The next planet is Mars and is known as the red planet. The next planet is the biggest planet in our solar system and has a big red storm that has been raging for centuries. That planet is Jupiter. Saturn is the next planet and has really cool ring around it that are pieces of rock and ice. Uranus is next and it spins up and down instead of side to side like all the other planets. Neptune is the last planet in our solar system. I did not forget about Pluto. Oh! Poor Pluto. Pluto was once a planet but now has been demoted to a dwarf planet. As a side note learned that most planets were named after Roman Gods and Goddesses. We watched a few video clips about the Solar System and danced to the Sun Song by They Might Be Giants! How cool are these guys??
Did You Know? (More They Might Be Giants): They Might Be Giants has a really cool children’s CD about science and a parent gave it to me decades ago. Also, a few of their songs were featured in Tiny Toons (see below). I saw these guys circa 1990 during the Flood Tour. They were a fun alternative band! To prove my memory is not shot. Here are a few vids of the cartoons. OH! Remember Malcolm In the Middle? The theme song “You’re Not The Boss of Me” ? YEP… You got it. LOL
Istanbul (Not Constantinople)…
Particle Man…
Not The Boss Of Me …
My hair hasn’t been this long since I was in the 7th grade building my Zep collection:
Led Zeppelin circa 1977
A Message From Mr. John (My hair and more importantly Angela) :
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 27 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, Irish, Kiswahili, Irish, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation, Cebuano, Malay, Farsi, Turkish)
Impromptu Snake Viewing:
Enrichments (Music):
The famous Cat and Mouse game!
Fire Station Field Trip:
A fire fighter in full dress giving high fives to the children. His purpose was to get the children comfortable with him and not be afraid.
What a squirt gun!!!!
The well behaved group. The station told us we were the most well behaved group to pass through the station. Be proud of your children.
All About Bees: We had a parent that is a Beekeeper come in and taught us some really cool things about bees. He had his assistants help as well!
Peek In The Classroom: Students are tracing a life size outline and then they draw themselves.
She is so proud of her weaving project.
The kindergarten students are setting up for lunch/laying down placemats. Do you see a pattern she is creating?
They are scrubbing tables. The tables have never been cleaner.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Safety
Letter Of The Week- That is in the rearview mirror.
Rhyming Word Of The Week- Not anymore!
Academic Enrichment: Handwriting: We practiced writing sentences in cursive.
Next Week’s Lesson: Weekly Theme: Review. Kindergarten Graduation Rehersal
Synonym Of The Week: Done with that popsicle stand
Sight Words Of The Week: Been there done that
Can you identify all the parts of speech? Your kindergarten students can!!!!!
The Loose Tooth Club
Upcoming Events: Memorial Day: Monday, May 30, 2022 ***** NO SCHOOL *****
Last Day Of School/Field Day: Thursday June 2, 2022
Friends, Frolic, and Fun:
Sash heaven. These classroom made creations have been popping up the past week. The students are learning how to sew!!!!!!
I WILL win this competition at all costs!
Juist a friendly game of Chicken with the swings. I’m not sure what actually happened. I just thought to myself “Natural Consequences”
I have no idea…. lifting his pant legs and spinning. Even the boy in the background is fascinated.
A Peek At Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!
This week we learned about Pollinators! This was the perfect way to wrap up our May lessons as flowers are important to pollinators and pollinators are important to flowers! We learned about different types of pollinators: bees, butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds. We learned that pollinators drink nectar from the flowers and while they do that, pollen sticks to their bodies. We then learned that the pollinator takes that pollen to another flower and drops it off, allowing that flower to make new seeds! We ended our week with a special presentation from a beekeeper and tasted honey straight from the hive!
Operation Releasing Butterflies!
We let our Painted Lady Butterflies go on Monday and Tuesday this week. We were sad to see them go but were able to watch one of them fly right to a flower and drink nectar! How lucky are we?!?
Enrichment Spotlight!
We had our last Music, Art, and Science lessons for this school year. We enjoyed playing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt one more time with Ms. Lisa. We finished most of our art projects with Ms. Varela, and brought our art portfolios home. And Mr. John showed us an experiment with FIRE!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
A very Happy Birthday to our newest 4 year old!
Peek Into Next Week!
Focus Topic: FUN WEEK!
Important Dates:
It’s the last week of school! We can’t believe it!
Monday, May 30: Memorial Day – No School!
Tuesday, May 31: Outdoor reading and drawing, picnic lunch, indoor games!
Wednesday, June 1: Maker space, Show & Tell (for children that attend Mon/Wed/Fri ONLY), and watching a movie! ** No Aftercare **
Thursday, June 2: LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! Board games, Show & Tell, and BASH & SPLASH DAY! ** No Aftercare **
A Peek At Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!
This week we learned about Flowers! We built upon our knowledge of seeds from last week, and talked about how a flower grows, the different parts of a flower, and why pollinators love flowers so much… which will take us into next week! 🙂
Our new favorite work is our Flower Arranging work from Practical Life. Who knew there was so much you could do with flowers? We also started another science experiment! What do you think the colored water will do to the white flowers? Do you have a hypothesis?
Operation Butterflies!
On Day 18 of our butterfly observations, we were lucky enough to watch the Painted Lady butterflies emerge from their chrysalises! We watched as they climbed out, rested, and dried their wings. We loved every single moment of this experience in our classroom! We’ll release them on Monday and Tuesday next week!
Enrichment Spotlight!
We had our very last Library visit with Ms. Cat for this school year. We read books and sang songs about space! We can’t wait to have more fun with Ms. Cat next school year!
A Special Visit from Venom!
One of our students brought in their bearded dragon, Venom, to introduce to our class! We reviewed what we had learned about reptiles and enjoyed learning more about bearded dragons! We learned what they eat (roaches and crickets!), about the spikes on their bodies, and about how they shed their skin. Thank you so much for visiting us Venom! We loved it!
Peek Into Next Week!
Focus Topic: Butterflies, Bees, Seeds, and Flowers
Important Dates:
It’s so hard to believe that we’re almost at the end of our school year. What an amazing year it has been in the Cherry Blossom room! A Field Day email has been sent out to you with the exciting events of the day! Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you’ll sign up to volunteer!
Line Time: Animals Groups- This week we talked about what groups of animals are called. Here is a list of what we learned…
Pack of dogs
Muster of peacocks
Pride of lions
Gaggle of geese
Murder of crows
School of fish
Pod of dolphins
Heard of cows, horses, and elephants
CONGRESS of Baboons
Mischief of rats (I am tearing)
Not a Flock Of Seagulls (I ran) but a colony of seagulls
And we have a sorority of female Bettas in the room!
I could not get a good shot of my sorority and mine isn’t this impressive.
What do you call a group of children? A stomach ulcer. JK, hehe I love your children!!!
Did You Know? (Tires… Who? What? Read and it will make sense): If you could win a million dollars just by answering the question “Who is the world’s largest manufacturer of tires?” what would your guess be? Michelin? Goodyear? Bridgestone? Those are all good tries, but they’re all wrong. Surprised?
Well you’ll be even more surprised to know which company does make the most tires every year. It’s LEGO. That’s right. Since 2011, LEGO has held the Guinness World Record for being the world’s largest tire manufacturer. “The largest annual volume toy tire manufacturer ever,” and though it includes the specification of “toy,” the numbers surpass regular tire manufacturers. This is really a bit of a misnomer.
Ooooooooo Grave Digger
A Message From Mr. John (Six steps of separation/Jerry Seinfeld edition):
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 27 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, Irish, Kiswahili, Irish, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation, Cebuano, Malay, Farsi, Turkish).
Do you see how mean my coworkers are? They said no donuts unless I wear the sash. YOY!
Enrichments (Science/Soup Souflette):
These boys are touching a piece of soup/Ivory after it has been microwaved for a little over a minute. It went in as a solid piece of soap and came out fluffy.
Peek In The Classroom:
Angela creating a buzz when presenting new materials to the students.
He is working on the Movable Alphabet found in the Language area. The key purpose of the Moveable Alphabet is to prepare children for writing, reading, and spelling. The child’s use of the material progresses from single words, to phrases, and eventually to stories. In this way, the Moveable Alphabet teaches children how to symbolize their own thoughts, and begin to write creatively.
This boy is making sure the correct number of Field Trip Forms were given to us. Ms. Sandy was without error handing them out.
In this early math activity, the child uses coloured bead bars that represent the quantities: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten. Each bar’s length contains as many beads as its corresponding number. The child uses these bead bars to make combinations that equal 10.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Solar System
Letter Of The Week- Uu
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bec
Academic Enrichment: Line Time: We added the interjection to our plethora parts of speech. YIKES!
Handwriting: We practiced writing sentences in cursive.
Next Week’s Lesson: Weekly Theme: Capitalization/Punctuation (end of a sentence)
Synonym Of The Week: SNEAKY, underhanded, dishonest, tricky, secretive, sly
Sight Words Of The Week: there their
You Know the saying “it’s like hearing cats”. This is how it feels like getting them to stand still for a picture.
Upcoming Events:
A few days off and other stuff.
DAYS OFF: No School: Monday, May 30th (Memorial Day)
OTHER STUFF: Fire Station Fieldtrip: Friday, May 27th 9:30am Field Day/Last Day Of School: Thursday, June 2nd
Friends, Frolic, and Fun:
Its all about the bow!
This competition is becoming intense but I do feel defeat approaching. Notice the photo bomb?
Line Time: Baby Animals- This week we looked at names of baby animals. I started out by saying that most people call human children “kids” and in reality a kid is a baby goat. with that said here are some other baby animal names.
Did You Know? (They’re The Cheesiest): Canada eats more macaroni and cheese than any other nation in the world. When it comes to the consumption of boxed mac and cheese, or Kraft Dinner as it’s better known, Canadians eat a whopping 55 per cent more of it a year than Americans do. Out of the 7 million boxes sold weekly around the world, Canadians purchase 1.7 million of them. The average Canadian was estimated to consume around 27.5 lbs of cheese in 2020, an increase of over 15 percent since 2010, when annual per capita consumption stood at 23.6 lbs.
A Message From Mr. John (My fave time of the school day and not the end of it, hehe)
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 27 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, Irish, Kiswahili, Irish, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation, Cebuano, Malay, Farsi, Turkish)
Enrichments (Library):
Ms. Cat read “I am a Tiger” and “Touch the Brightest Star” in Library Class.
Peek In The Classroom:
She is completing multiplication equations using Color Bead Bars.
This boy spelled his cat’s name.
This boy is cleaning his table after lunch.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Animal groups
Letter Of The Week-I i
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bud
Academic Enrichment: Handwriting: We practiced writing sentences in cursive.
Next Week’s Lesson: Weekly Theme: Interjection. YOY!
Synonym Of The Week: BRIGHT, shiny, glowing, dazzling, lighted, vivid
Sight Words Of The Week: which what
Kindergarten Strong!
Upcoming Events: A few days off and other stuff.
DAYS OFF: -No School: Monday, May 30th (Memorial Day)
OTHER STUFF: Mr. John’s Birthday: I can not wait!!!! Ya right. Make me feel better with cream filled donuts with maple frosting and yes I know maple flavor is an old man’s flavor.
Field Day/Last Day Of School: Thursday, June 2nd
Friends, Frolic, and Fun:
You should’ve seen the other guy.
The dreaded Raspberry Fingers
A boy pretending to sleep and a girl trying to wake him.
