Lessons: Conjunctions- a word used to connect clauses or sentences. It acts like a bridge. We focused on and, but, or.
Cultural Subjects: We can now count to ten in 28 different 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, Malay, Hindi, Farsi, Turkish).
Next Week:
Line Time: Prepositions
Sight Words of the Week: None planned due to International Festival practice
Synonym of the Week: None planned due to International Festival practice
Spring is here! We are excited for all the new opportunities Spring brings even if that includes a ton of rain!
Throughout the week, I get to glance in on all of the Enrichments that take place at Absorbent Minds and see the smiling faces of our dancers, the concentration on the our students perfecting a design in Art and the beautiful sounds coming from class with Ms. Lisa.
Below are a few snap shots of what our Enrichements have consisted of over the past several weeks! As you enter the building at drop-off or pick-up, we hope you can take a moment to admire your child’s talent on the bulletin boards that line our entrance hallway!
ART
These students are working diligently on their tessallation projects.
Each child chose their own pattern then carefully recreated it resulting in beautiful ongoing pictures.
Finally, they were able to choose whether or not they wanted to add color to their desigs. Some used water color paints. Others chose to add dimension by drawing patterns withing their shapes. We observed for several weeks how each student took their time to create their perfect tessallation.
Here are a few finished products!
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Having fun with designing their names in chalk!
MUSIC
I had the joy of listening to this student play me her International Festival piano piece. She already has it committed to memory!
Practicing with Ms. Lisa
DANCE
Swimming through their moves to “Baby Shark”!
Last day of dance with Ms. Elisabeth. The dancers love to strike a pose : )
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb
I feel like I am always writing about “one of my favorite things about Montessori,” but there is so much I love about it. Here’s another thing I love: collaboration. I am so glad to teach a philosophy that encourages students to find others to bounce ideas off of or to feel confident enough to ask about things they don’t know because they see others (even teachers!) are still learning and asking questions. Through collaboration and teaching peers, students strengthen their own skills and learn how to communicate effectively to be heard and be successful. Learning these skills at such a young age will lead to great success in interpersonal relationships as adults and great success in their chosen fields.
These fifth and second year students are working on finding the area of a circle. They took a circle that was broken into ten equal parts and attempted to turn it into a rectangle since they know the formula for finding the area of a rectangle. Once the rectangle was formed we found how many radii fit across the rectangle. It happened to be a little over three, like pi! We determined to use the formula for the area of a rectangle (base x height), we would have to multiply the radius squared times pi! They worked right away on their follow-up work to find the area of five circles!This group was responsible for researching the religion of Great Zimbabwe. Through their research, they found that the Great Zimbabwe people worshipped a god named Mwari. To worship this god, they would visit a temple they built from stone, without mortar. This group is working to build a model of that temple!These students are working to recreate a model of the water cycle. The fourth grade students learned about the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the carbon cycle. This third grader was interested in what they were doing and asked to learn about it. He joined in to complete this follow-up work together. It was great to hear them bounce items off of each other!This first year student is guiding her peers through finding the parts of speech in the sentence she wrote. She is giving each student a word from the sentence and helping them talk through which part of speech it is. Once they agree on an answer, she places the correct symbol for that part of speech above the word in the sentence! This helps aid students in their own writing and sentence formation.
“A Peek at Next Week”
Next week our first year students will continue working on their Great Zimbabwe research, will discuss the function of the leaf vein, and will conduct leaf experiments. Our second year students will practice using commas in an address, will find the sum of the interior angles of a triangle, and will begin creating an imaginary island. Our third year students will review the interjection, will continue studying Pythagorean Theorem, and will finish studying the human body. Our fourth year students will continue studying Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens, will complete their fungi study guide, and will complete labs about solubility and acids. Our fifth year students will study phrases, will continue researching ancient civilizations, will look at the animal tree of life, and will study coastal plains.
REMINDERS:
We need a few more parent volunteers for our final typing lessons (on Fridays). Sign up here.
NO SCHOOL – Monday, April 22 – Easter Monday
Wednesday, May 1 – International Festival Practice
Friday, May 3 – Early Dismissal – Noon – No after-care
Yay! We are officially starting the international festival practice and festivities! Last week we had fun focusing on Denmark,Austria,France,and The Netherlands.We had fun reading amazing books, learning how to say hello, goodbye, please, and thank you in the different languages.We also have been practining our songs and lines!!This week we had fun exploring Sweden, Belgium,Ukraine, Hungary, and Russia!! WE had fun learning about each countries flag,the different traditions they celebrate, and the different foods that they eat! It has been such a fun couple of weeks!
Our friend is working on the Geometric Solids. The Geometric Solids are a key part of the sensorial curriculum area, allowing the children to understand 3D shapes by making them tangible objects.When working on the Red Rods the child will develop visual and muscular perception of length.our friend is working on one of our pattern works. Patterns help us make predictions based on our obsverations; this is an impotant skill in math. Understanding patterns help prepare children for learning complex number concepts and mathematical operations.One of our KIndergarten students is working on her journal. Journal writing with young children serve five major purposes: 1) it teaches children that their thoughts, feelings, and words can be transferred from their minds onto paper for others to see and read.2) children learn to value writing, and to respect the writing of others. 3) Journal writing gives children REAL and RELEVANT opportunities to learn conventions of print. 4) children need to experiment with letters, letter sounds, and inventive spelling in a nin-threatening way. 5) Writing gives children time to practice the fine motor control that will help them become better writiers!When working on Blue Rhyming the child is learning the necessary vowel sounds and consonant blends. our little cutie is working on our Land, Water, and Air cards. This is such a fun and hands on Geography lesson that helps the child understand the concept of Land, water, and air.
REMINDERS:
Tomorrow is book share!
Next Friday is our field trip! If you have not turned in your form, then please do ASAP!!!
Line Time: This week we got a big jump on learning our song for the International Festival and learning our lines for the show.
Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 25 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation, Cebuano, and Malay).
Trivia Question: In high school my football jersey was number 86. Why did I chose this number? This is a tough one!
Hint: My biggest life influences were music, television, and movies.
For those of you who are interested I played wide receiver/flanker and defensive backs position for the Amherst Fighting Comets.
Guest Reader:
Pastor Kirk reads “We Don’t Eat Our Classmates” A story about how others feel.
Peek In Our Classroom:
The Vowel Tree is a tactile, engaging way to teach and practice decoding words. This manipulative can be used with beginning readers to more advanced readers. Originally developed as a Montessori material, the vowel tree reinforces skills for all learners; tactile learners, auditory learners, and visual learners. To use the Vowel Tree: Have the child take two consonants from small pieces of paper . Place one consonant in front of the letter “a” and one after. Have the child say the word that is formed, combining the first two letters into one blended sound. Then have them slide the letters down to the next vowel and say the word. Continue all the way down the tree. For the purposes of this work, they can say a word even if it’s a “nonsense” word, just for the practice of saying the vowel sounds.
This is a sorting material found in the Sensorial are. There are nine compartments and nine colors (each color has a different shades). Each color gets its own compartment.
The Montessori Pink Series is a set of language cards that represent a CVC/ word and have a matching index card. The Pink Rhyming material uses three letter/short vowel sounds.
This child is working on the United States Puzzle Map. What she has done is trace the individual state/piece and is coloring and identifying the state.
Next Week: Line Time- International Festival Preparation
Letter Of The Week- None scheduled due to International Festival Practice
Rhyming Word Of The Week- None scheduled due to International Festival Practice
Next Language will be- None scheduled due to International Festival Practice
Snack will be brought to you by Dorothy
Upcoming Events:
(((((((((( Easter Monday NO SCHOOL Monday 4/22/2019 ))))))))))
International Festival Practice, Wednesday, May 1st | Cuyahoga Falls High School, 6pm-7pm
International Festival, Friday, May 3rd | Cuyahoga Falls High School, 5:30pm | Early Dismissal 12 Noon
—Moms and Muffins, Friday May 10th, 7am to 7:45am—
Fun, Frolic, and Friends:
It was time to clean and she was angry she had to stop her work.
Are they real or fake specs?
A great pose by these two and a sneaky photo bomb by one.
Lessons: Adverbs- We learned that an adverb describes verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
The Kindergarten Students showing their favorite symbol by way of kissy lips and a monocle.
Cultural Subjects: We can now count to ten in 28 different 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, Malay, Hindi, Farsi, Turkish).
Next Week:
Line Time: Conjunctions
Sight Words of the Week: None planned due to International Festival practice
Synonym of the Week: None planned due to International Festival practice
Vowels and consonants: The students learned to recognize and distinguish vowels from consonants, which is an important step in the development of reading and writing skills. We talked about how all words contain at least one vowel. The students were quickly able to recognize the vowels, which is great because they will have a strong foundation for learning rules and spelling patterns for short and long vowels, final vowels, unaccented vowels, silent vowels and irregular spellings.
Cursive Handwriting: The students practiced writing the lowercase cursive words: last, frisk, grab, kid, hat and quest.
Recycle, Reduce and Reuse: The past week the students learned how they can help the environment. They learned about different ways to practice the three R’s of waste management: reduce, reuse and recycle.
Work Time:
Composing Quantities: This child is practicing the sequence of numbers in the decimal system units, tens, hundreds, and thousands and recognizing what different quantities look like.Movable Alphabet: This child is saying the words of different objects and phonetically spelling them: squid, sting ray and sordfish (swordfish).Addition: These children are using the golden beads to discover that when you put two small numbers together you get a larger number and that this process is called addition.Syllables: These children are learning that syllables are simple the sounds or beats they hear when they say a word. They are practicing sorting different words with three and four syllables.
Guest Readers:
Reminders:
April 22 | Easter Monday | No School
April 26 | Bring Your Parent to Work Time
May 1 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm | International Festival Rehearsal | Cuyahoga Falls High School
May 3 | Early Dismissal 12:00pm | No Afterschool care available
May 3 @ 5:30 pm – 9:00 pm | International Festival Show| Cuyahoga Falls High School
A peek into next week: North America and South America
The kindergartners listened to the poem Where Would You Be. It was about where you would want to be during a storm. They discussed how they felt about storms and where they would rather be. We also discussed how the speaker describes the storm and why he/she used those specific descriptors.
Throughout the story the group got to write down their thoughts about the poem, drew what the storm looked like, and even wrote their own poem about specific weather.
Here are the kindergartners writing their own poem.
A Peek Into the Next Two Weeks
-More information will be sent out for what we will be doing the rest of the school year.
This week our “Peek” was written by a few of our students! These students read our previous blogs, took pictures around the room, and filled in a blog template. The students did some editing together, and with a teacher, so what you will read below is their final product. There are still some misspelled words in their final product, but in a Montessori classroom we focus on the process, instead of the end result. Dr. Montessori believed when we put all of the emphasis on the final product, we devalue everything leading up to that point. This can discourage repetition which will make mastery of a skill difficult. The purpose of the students writing the blog is to provide you with a glimpse into the room through their eyes, to provide them with practice of real world skills, and to give them a deeper understanding of the materials in the room. We hope you enjoy their work!
“A Peek at Our Week” by the Ellie and Reese
This week the first graders learned about adding and subtracting on a number line. The second years learned about larg bead fram multiplicashun. The third years learned about Pythagorean Theorem. Upper Elementary learned about how to bisect the base.
The two first graders are learning adout Asia animals. Their learning about a Golden Cat and the Komodo Dragon.They were working together to complete a Lattice Multiplication ekwation.These two first graders are tracing and coloring the Europe mape.The secont grader was using the story starter to write her own story.
“A Peek at Our Field Trip and Next Week” by Ms. Ashley
We loved our visit to the McKinley Museum! While there, we visited “Discovery World,” the planetarium, and the McKinley Monument. In “Discovery World,” we were introduced to Alice the Allosaurus, saw the fossils of a triceratops, mosasaur, and some animals from the Pleistocene Ice Age! We were also able to see animals from North America like another corn snake named Kernel, catfish, bees, and a tarantula! Once we visited with the live animals, we went to the science area. Students were able to try different experiments, which you will see below. We enjoyed the planetarium and learned a lot about the construction of the Memorial after climbing all the stairs!
Reading about how the McKinley Memorial was built.Making an elongated penny was harder than she thought!Beating a robot in Tic-Tac-Toe!Two newscasters are trying to prepare and inform the public on how to be safe during a tornado while the third is getting out of there!These students loved seeing the triceratops fossils!Here is a mastodon tusk that was found under what is now Belden Village!
Next week, we will continue working on our models and songs for the International Festival. Please refer to the previous email for what your child needs to wear and what food you can bring. Our first year students will find the commutative pairs in our Decanomial, will review parts of speech and discuss the conjunction, will begin studying energy transformations, and will be introduced to the echinoderms! Our second year students will solve length word problems, will review conjunctions, will find the height and orthocenter of a triangle, and will experiment with oily feathers to learn about oil spills. Our third year students will multiply fractions by a whole number, will review how to use quotation marks, and will classify phyla of plants. Our fourth year students will add integers, will discuss the old world Homo sapiens, will learn about gerunds, and will classify fungi. Our fifth year students will multiply on the decimal checkerboard, find the area of a circle, and will study glaciers.
REMINDERS:
NO SCHOOL – Monday, April 22 – Easter Monday
Wednesday, May 1 – International Festival Practice
Friday, May 3 – International Festival
We still need parent volunteers to monitor our typing lessons. Sign up here.
Mark your calendars – Optional Parent-Teacher Conferences will be held the week of May 13-17, before and after school. A link to sign up will be sent through Remind and the blog soon.
