This week the class learned about what animals can be pets, how to take care of pets, and what is the process to get a pet. We also discussed what Valentine’s Day is and how we show each other our love with notes, cards, and candy to celebrate the holiday.
A Peek Into Next Week: Presidents
Kndergarten:
Over this week, the kindergartners have been learning about three demensional shapes by using our Geometric Solids work. These shapes are: sphere, ovoid, ellipsoid, triangualar based pyramid, rectangualar prism, triangular based prism, cylinder, cube, square based pyramid, and triangualar based prism. They played games where they had to be blindfolded and then had to gueses which shape Ms. Breanna gave them.
A Peek Into Next Week: Fractions
Work Time:
These two students are working together on the addtition strip board. This work helps to reinforce the concept of addition and to help with memorization of addition facts.
This child is practicing her name in cursive on the chalkboard. Cursive has many benefits such as helping with letter reversals.
These two kindergartners are playing a game with the geometric solids. They have to guess which shape they are holding with only using their sense of touch.
This preschooler is tracing and cutting out the leaf puzzle. She is strengthening her fine motor skills while learning about the parts of a leaf.
Valentine’s Party:
Thank you to all the parents who brought in supplies and helped at the party. We all had a great time!
This week we looked at the Geometric Solids/ three dimensional shape… cube, pryamids. prisms, cylinders, oviod, ellipsiod, cone!
Handwriting: We practiced writing in cursive writing sentences (sometimes silly sentences).
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 24 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation, Cebuano).
Next Week: Weekly Theme: Fractions
Synonym Of The Week: Appropriate: suitable, fitting, apropos, correct, proper
Line Time: Presidents Of The United States Of America (Wasn’t that a 90’s band? Gunna eat a lot of peaches!) We first learned about George Washington and how he was our first president and was the General of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln came from a poor family, freed the slaves and was president during the Civil War. We were introduced to Franklin D. Roosevelt and how he was president during World War II and how John F. Kennedy fought for equal rights. We then learned that Donald Trump was current president. The children were taught that the president’s wives are called the first lady and that the president lives in the white house in Washington DC, and flies on a jet called Air Force 1. We discussed what responsibilities the President has. The children came up with keeping us safe, keeping the world safe, and running the country.
February Birthdays: The Montessori classroom is comprised of 3 year old to 6 year old students. Here are our newest 4 old student.
Which do you prefer? Salad dressing (Miracle Whip) or Mayonnaise? I am in the Miracle Whip camp. In fact, my parents told me when I was growing up Miracle Whip was mayonnaise.
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 22 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish).
Peek In The Classroom:
The colored bead stair is a quintessential Montessori math material because it has so many different mathematical benefits. The youngest child in primary all the way through upper elementary learns one-to-one correspondence, connecting quantity to symbol, square roots and cubes, basic operations, and complex algebraic equations.
A lot is going on here… A student is working with the color tablet work, a student is observing him work on the color tablets. and a child is rolling the her rug. All part of a Montessori classroom scene.
Two kindergarten students working on their World Fair project (coloring their maps of the country they chose).
This child found the relationship between these two materials. The relationship of smallest to biggest for these two works. This is called an extension. Extensions are activities that are introduced after the initial presentation with a material, in order to encourage the child to re-visit the material and solidify the skills and/or concepts it’s designed to provide.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Ancient Egypt
Letter Of The Week- U u
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bet
Next Language is Serbo-Croation
Upcoming Events: President’s Day: NO SCHOOL Monday February 17th
Akron Art Museum Field Trip: Thursday March 12th: Details to follow and permission slips to follow. Free Event/ Free Parking.
Friends, Frolic, and Fun:
You should’ve seen the other guy.
Two guys working nicely together. One having fun the other looks scared!
In science class, Mr. John taught us about polymers. He poked holes in a bag with pencils, and the water did not leak out! Thank you for such a fun experiment!
“Children are great imitators, so give them something great to imitate.”
Welcome to February! This week, I was reminded of the importance of humility, and that the students are always watching. Each Monday, we give new math lessons. This Monday was especially challenging with many of us being up late to watch the Super Bowl. For some reason, I had planned to present a lot of challenging math that day, as well. By the end of the week, I had two third graders get a long division equation correct, while I was wrong, and was unable (at first) to figure out the problem in an abstract square root equation that a sixth and third grader were stuck on. In both cases, it would have been easier for me to whip out a calculator to find the answer instead of solving it on paper like the kids had. But what would they learn from that? That I get to take the easy way out, while they have to check and recheck to find their mistakes? How would that prepare them to persevere as adults? Instead, with each group, I took the time on paper, using their work and mine, to walk through the equations to find the mistakes. In the case of the square root, it took us over thirty minutes, but we pushed through, we talked through it, we consulted others, and we finally got it – together. Think about all of the life lessons they each learned in those extra few minutes that we didn’t really have to take. Give children something great to imitate.
Lower Elementary
These third year students are completing their human body research . This month they focused on the digestive system. We did an experiment to discover the properties of chyme and talked about the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, the large intestine, and the pancreas.These second year students are working on their World’s Fair research! Each student has a country that they are learning about. We have researched their government, the geographic features, the languages, the customs, and much more!
Upper Elementary
Our fourth year students are studying multiples and factors. We have tables for students to record all the multiples of numbers 1 to 100, then another table to write down all of the factors of 1 to 100. When they complete the table of factors, we will talk more about prime numbers and how they can help us throughout our math work!Our fourth year students are also studying viruses! Each student chose a virus, then chose to research a disease caused by the virus. In their research, they need to find the history of the virus, the symptoms, and the ways scientists are controlling it. After their research, they need to build a 3D model of their virus for their presentations. Here, to prepare, we made a model of Adenovirus, which is an icosahedral shaped virus with double-stranded DNA! Our model is one million times larger than an actual adenovirus, which is only as large at 90 nanometers.
Our student-only Valentine’s Parties are Friday, February 14! Your child can bring in Valentine’s for their friends if they wish! We have 10 students attending the first and second year party and 13 attending the third through sixth party. Please send in all items you have signed-up to donate by Wednesday, February 12, at drop off! Below you will find the links for each party, in case you need a reminder of what you signed up for.
Line Time: The class went green for the week learning about recycling, conserving energy, and pollution. I explained that pollution was anything that made our environment dirty. We learned there is littering. Littering can be people throwing trash on the side of the road or dropping a candy wrapper in the woods. We now know that we need to put trash in an appropriate container. We learned that air pollution is created by factories’ smokestacks and cars exhaust, but cars are just one of the factors that produce air pollution, there are also other reasons. Water Pollution is caused by factories dumping chemicals in the water or people throwing trash in the water instead of putting it in a trash can. The 3 R’s were introduced and now we all know to reduce, reuse and recycle! We thought of ways to conserve energy. We came up with turning off lights in rooms we are not in or turning off the TV if we are not watching it. We thought of turning off the water while we are brushing our teeth or turning down the heat and wearing a sweater instead. During the kindergarten lesson a student realized the room was just as light with the lights off as it was if the lights were on. Now we do our kindergarten lesson without lights.
What’s The Diff: What is the difference difference between a bison and a buffalo?
Contrary to the song “Home on the Range,” buffalo do not roam in the American West. Instead, they are indigenous to South Asia (water buffalo) and Africa (Cape buffalo), while bison are found in North America and parts of Europe. … Bison are the hipsters of the two animals, sporting thick beards. Buffalo are beardless.
www.britannica.com
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 21 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish).
A visit from the Dental Hygienist:
Peek In The Classroom:
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.
The Knobbed Cylinders are a Montessori Sensorial material, designed to assist children in making distinctions in their immediate environment. This material primarily engages the senses of touch and sight. The material is comprised of 10 different cylinders with ‘knobs’ used to hold each object using the pincer grip.
These girls are working on the skeletal puzzle (Elvis the Pelvis) and the internal organ work. They combined the two works and identified where the internal organs are located in reference to the skeletal system.
This student is working on her consonant blended sounds of CH, SH, TH… Matching the words that begin with those sounds to the appropriate consonant blend.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Presidents of the USA
Letter Of The Week- T t
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bed
Next Language is Polish
Upcoming Events: Valentines Party: Friday, February 14, 2020
NO SCHOOL: Monday, February 17, 2020
Akron Art Museum Field Trip: Thursday March 12, 2020 (morning) … Save the date, it is a FREE field trip! Details to follow.
Weekly Theme: This week we discovered many geometric shapes such as there are 3 basic triangles (scalene, isosceles, equilateral). we discovered the trapezoid, chevron, rhombus, and a square is a special rectangle., polygons, and that all four sided shapes are called quadrilaterals.
Handwriting: We practiced writing in cursive writing sentences (sometimes silly sentences).
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 23 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation).
Next Week: Weekly Theme: Geometry, Geometric Solids
Synonym Of The Week: Fat: overweight, big, bulky, heavy, plump
Oh what a fun week we had this week! Our weekly them was the 5 senses!!They had a blast doing different activities such as taste testing different spicy, sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and sweet foods. We also used all of our five senses when we made popcorn!! Some of our other activities that we had fun with was using our sense smell by guessing what food was under a cup,using our sense of touch to match different types of fabrics, and a fun take away game for our sense of sight. Ms. Amanda created fun crafts that went along with each of the senses.
We had fun guessing what each smell was under each cup! While blindfolded, I took one item away from the group and they had to guess which one I took away! Each box was filled with different objects. They had to use their sense of touch to figure out what was inside! Our friends created 5 senses puppets. For sense of sight they made binoculars!
REMINDERS :
We are still in need of a few items for our Valentines day party. So please hop on our sign up!
Weekly Theme: We were introduced to division with manipulatives (golden beads/static, borrowing).
Surly kindergarten students. After I told them they did NOT have homework. hehe
Handwriting: We practiced writing in cursive writing sentences (sometimes silly sentences).
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 21 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish).
Next Week: Weekly Theme: Geometry, Constructive Boxes and Geometric Cabinet
Synonym Of The Week: Skinny: thin, lean, emaciated, scrawny, slender
