Leaves: This week the students learned that a leaf is one of the most important parts of a plant. They discovered that leaves produce food for the plant through a process called photosynthesis, and that leaves of different plants vary widely in size, shape and color. Also, the children learned the life cycle of a leaf and why leaves change color in the fall. They discovered the different parts of a leaf like: veins, blade, midrib, petiole and stipule.
Work Time:
Sandpaper Letters: This child is tracing and identifying the sounds of the letters ‘m’ and ‘s’ and connecting the sound with the initial sounds of different objects like skate and motorcycle.Cards and Counters: This child is demonstrating her knowledge that each number is made up of separate quantities. She is also able to visually see the sequence of numbers and how many separate units go together to form each number.Tracing / Labeling Leaf Puzzle: This child is tracing, coloring and labeling the leaf puzzle by doing this she is learning how to grip and hold a pencil correctly. It also helps refine her hand control to steady the pencil and she is learning the characteristics of a leaf (veins, blade, midrib, petiole and stipule).Opposite Cards: This child is identifying and matching pictures of opposites together.Introduction Tray: This child is learning the names of each category: units, tens, hundreds, and thousands and learning to identify the quantity and symbol.
Tie Dye Milk Experiment: First we filled a pan up with milk. Then, we put drops of food coloring on it. The children observed how the food coloring stayed in place, because food coloring is less dense than the milk. Then, we put a drop of dish soap on it. Once we put a drop of dish soap on it the surface tension was reduced. As the dish soap spread it attracted the food coloring, this is because dish soap is a “degreaser” and the molecules in it were attacking the fat in the milk. This is what caused motion and created the swirling of the colors.
Changing of the Leaves: We took leaves from two different tree’s and placed them in rubbing alcohol then created energy using hot water. We placed the leaves in the hot water to separate the colors. At first we saw green because the chlorophyll in the leaves gives them their green color, and it is so dominant that it hides the other colors in the leaves. However, in the fall the chlorophyll in the leaves breaks down allowing the other colors to finally shine through and show their beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges.
“The greatest gifts we can give our children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.” – Maria Montessori
I like to refer to the three to six year old age range as the “Meadow Years,” where everything is light, fun, maybe a little breezy at times, but overall a calm, pleasant walk in a meadow. I like to lovingly refer to the elementary age range as the “Monster Truck Years,” where everything is a mess, no one can hear anyone else, and you aren’t entirely sure if what’s happening is supposed to be happening or if something has gone terribly wrong.
Joking aside, this is a very different time in your child’s life. They are craving independence and to push boundaries. They want to learn more about the world outside of their family, neighborhood, or school. They want to try new things to see what is acceptable, or what they can get away with. One of my favorite ways to quench this thirst for new experiences and knowledge is through walking trips. This week some of our students joined us for our annual trip to the Tallmadge Circle to reinforce previous lessons on using a compass and designing a map key. Students had the experience of walking a little further than they probably do around their neighborhood, had to pay attention when crossing roads, and had to follow multi-step directions at each exit of the circle. Student only field trips, going-out experiences, and having pen pals are other times we encourage students to be independent in their exploration of the outside world!
Our Upper Elementary students received their first letters from their Upper Elementary pen pals at a Montessori school in Thailand! The students found out the names of their pen pals, what sports they play, what food they eat, and who their friends are! Some of our students that have started writing back are sharing their favorite food and sports, but also asking questions about the climate, holidays, and currency of Thailand! We are so excited to learn more about Asia from our friends!This week our Lower Elementary students had a lesson on the Timeline of Life. The Timeline of Life explains how life on Earth started in the water and gradually developed and changed until life looked like what we have today. Students learn about mass extinctions of animals throughout history and about ice ages. Our students always love trying to pronounce names of extinct animals and enjoy making a book showing what they have learned about each era afterward!These students are working with the Addition Snake Game. This material is made of different colored beads, golden beads, and black and white beads. The students build a colorful “snake” of beads, count until they make 10 and do exchanging of bead bars with the black and white beads when necessary. This work helps children recognize which number combinations form 10 to help with addition facts.This student is recording his work with the Movable Alphabet and the Fish Bowl. With the Fish Bowl, he drew a word, turned it over, and spelled the word from memory. When he was finished spelling a word, he would flip the card back over to check his spelling. This work helps children recognize spelling patterns, sound out words, and helps their short term memory!On our way to Tallmadge Circle!Our students here are sketching what they see on West Ave. from the circle. They drew the details of signs, trees, buildings, and other structures.All of our students here are sketching South Ave. while on the grass by the parking lot of the circle. They all enjoyed drawing Jubilee Donuts from this location. When students are finished coloring their sketches, they will arrange them around a circle on a poster board to represent Tallmadge Circle. Look for these to be on display in the next few weeks!
A Peek at Next Week
Next week, the first year students will work on memorizing addition facts, will practicing reading with “Magic E,” will do the Dance of the Molecules, and will continue studying North America! Second year students will begin multiplying on the Large Bead Frame (they are so excited!), will research how animals satisfy their needs, and will study a country of North America or a state. Our third year students will multiply by a four digit multiplier on the Checkerboard, will continue studying equivalence between the Constructive Triangles, will study porifera, and will research a place in North America. Fourth year students will discuss factors, will continue studying Euclid’s Theorem, will study another time analogy, and will discuss matter. Fifth year students will review the BCE/CE Timeline, will discover math patterns in the Sieve of Peter, will continue studying equivalence of a decagon and pentagon, and will begin an in-depth study of the animal kingdom.
REMINDERS:
STEM begins today, October 5! Your child will sign themselves out at 3:00 so you will not have to worry about that at pick up. All parents who have a child participating are required to sign up to come to a class and to provide snack. You can sign up here.
Upper Elementary ONLY Bowling Event is tonight, October 5! We will see you at 6:30 at Sto-Kent (3870 Fishcreek Rd. Stow, Oh 44224 ).
Tuesday, October 9 – Cleveland Zoo Field Trip – This is a student-only field trip. We will take a bus to the zoo around 9 and will return at 2. Please make sure your child wears comfortable shoes and is dressed for the weather. Please pack their lunch in a disposable bag with disposable containers.
Tuesday, October 16 and Wednesday, October 17 – “Bring Your Parents to ‘Work Time’.” You must be signed up to attend to ensure that we do not disturb the other children while they are working. The Monday before these days, you will receive information on how to observe and our expectations from visitors. Please be sure to read all of the information before coming! Sign up here.
Friday morning, October 26 – “Caps for Sale” performance for Cuyahoga Falls Primary classes. Details will be emailed out closer to the event. “Caps for Sale” performance for parents – TBA
Friday afternoon, October 26 – Elementary Halloween Party – Elementary parties are student only. These events are planned and executed by the students, but we may need your help with supplies. Ask your child next week what committee they have joined!
This blog is two weeks all wrapped into one!! Last week was all about transportation. The kids had a blast with this theme..I mean who doesn’t love talking about cars, airplanes, and boats right?! All week we focused on what the word transportation really means. We also went over the different ways people get to places either on land, water, or air. We had fun singing different songs on transportation and making crafts as well!!!
This week was all about nutrition! I was really proud of your kiddos because they got really into all of our lessons. We went over My Plate and what should be on their plate everyday. We also talked about how important it is to make your plate as colorful as possible. We also had fun learning about healthy foods vs. Non healthy foods. We sang songs about Nutrition, created a bar graph, and had fun crafts too!!!
When working on our cursive movable alphabet it helps the child with the analysis and exploration of the language which is known to him/her and to reproduce words with graphic symbols. This work also helps prepare them for writing and reading.The trinomial cube helps prepare the child for mathematics. The cube of the trinomial is an introduction for algebra and prepares them for the proof of the formula ( a+b+c)3 at an elementary level.When working on our long bead chains the child learns other means of counting than by one by one. This work requires great concentration skills.Picture to picture matching is such an important pre- reading skill. It’s helps children develop vocabulary skills as well as visual discrimination in a completely abstract way.The geometric solids challenge and shape a child’s stereognostic sense, which is their ability to perceive and understand both the form and nature of objects through touch.
REMINDERS:
Book share is this Friday!!
Next week we will be sending out sign ups for our Halloween party!!
Line Time: This week we learned about reptiles and what makes a reptile a reptile. Reptile are vertebrates, cold blooded (body temperature changes to the temperature around them), they are born from hard shelled eggs and their skin is dry and with scales. Some examples of reptiles are snakes, turtles, and lizards.
Was Godzilla a reptile?
Birthdays:
Catching up on the birthdays in the classroom. Here are my newest 3,4,5 year Olds. The amount of fingers indicates how hold they are.
Cultural Subjects: Your Children can now count to ten in 8 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, and Arabic with the Lebanese dialect).
Peek In Our Classroom:
The Trinomial Cube are blocks are color coded and are different sizes to represent the algebraic Binomial and Trinomial formulas. The purpose is not to teach math but to challenge the child to find patterns and spatial relationships.
These students are working with the Sequencing Cards. Sequencing is one of many skills that contributes to students’ ability to comprehend what they read. Sequencing refers to the identification of the components of a story… the beginning, middle, and end… and also to the ability to retell the events within a given text in the order in which they occurred.
These two students are working on the ever popular Pink Tower. The Pink Tower, iconic to the Montessori classroom, embodies the direct and indirect purpose of most Montessori materials. Stacking the cubes calls for visual discrimination, coordination, patterns, the concept of ten and precision.
The Number Rods is a Math Material and it’s aim is to experience the qualities and quantities of each number and to learn their respective names. Also, to show that each number is represented by a single object, as a whole, separate from others and finally to help memorize the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Amphibians
Letter Of The Week- H h
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bit
Next Language will Be Italian
Next Week Snack Will Be Brought To You By Madeline
Upcoming Events: —- Halloween Party- October 26, 2018 in the AFTERNOON! Costumes, games and candy! —- The school supplies pizza for lunch —-
— Bring in your Box Tops and help the class get PIZZA!!!!!! —
— Bring Your Parents To School Day- Be totally impressed by what your children are doing in the classroom! — Follow The Link…
Lesson: Biggest to smallest where we live- We discovered we live in the vast galaxy of the Milky Way (not the candy bar), then we are still in space and live in a group of planets called The Solar System. Then the planet we live is the planet Earth. Once we touched down we found we live in the Northwestern Hemisphere and live on the continent of North America. Once we found land we live in the country of The United States Of America and live in the great state of Ohio (Go Buckeyes). We all live in Summit County but live in different cities and have different addresses and phone numbers. What a journey it was!
O H .. I O Notice Script Ohio and the yard stick serving the roll of the i
Handwriting: We practiced cursive the upper case and lower case E, F, G, H, I.
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 10 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, and Italian).
We started off the school year studying artist Wayne Thiebaud. He is a modern American artist most known for his beautiful paintings of cakes, doughnuts, and ice cream cones. I had the students paint ice cream scoops in Primary Colors and they learned how to blend white to each ice cream scoop so to make them look three dimensional and realistic as Wayne Thiebaud did in his paintings. Next they painted popsicles while learning about Secondary Colors. We used a technique called crayon resist to create a pattern on the popsicle and then used watercolors to paint over the crayon. They have had such fun painting and getting messy as artists are required to!
Welcome back to another fantastic year of science with Mr. John! Mr. John does science every Thursday for our classes at the Cuyahoga Falls site. He prepares fun and interactive science experiments that students enjoy so much. After each class your student will come home with an outline of the experiment, your child’s hypothesis and an explanation of what us happening during the experiment.
Here a student is pouring baking soda into a balloon. Each student had the opportunity to fill their own balloon during this experiment!Here the student is emptying the baking soda in her balloon into a 2liter bottle that is full of white vinegar. The end of the balloon is securely around the opening of the bottle.Here a student is helping Mr. John as her balloon begins to expand after the baking soda is combined with the vinegar in the bottle. Why is the balloon filling up and expanding?
The science, behind this balloon baking soda experiment, is the chemical reaction between the base {baking soda} and the acid {vinegar}. When the two ingredients mix together the balloon baking soda experiment gets it’s lift! The balloon is filling with the gas produced from the two ingredients is carbon dioxide or CO2.Carbon dioxide is Mr. John’s favorite gas.
Week 2:
Here two students are putting eggs into cups of water. One cup has plain water and the other is salt water.Here the two eggs are in fresh water. They are at the bottom of the cup.Here the two eggs are in salt water. They are floating at the top.
If you put an egg in a cup of tap water, it will sink to the bottom. Why is this?
Because the density of the egg is higher than the density of tap water, so it sinks. Density is the mass of a material per unit volume. For example, the density of freshwater under standard conditions is approximately one gram per cubic centimeter.
But, if you add enough salt to the water, the egg will actually float back up to the surface! Adding salt to the water increases the density of the solution because the salt increases the mass without changing the volume very much.
When enough salt is added to the water, the saltwater solution’s density becomes higher than the egg’s, so the egg will then float! The ability of something, like the egg, to float in water or some other liquid is known as buoyancy.
Week 3
In week three, all Mr.John needed was water, a plate and SKITTLES! Only 3 materials needed for this experiment.Mr. John had arranged the skittles by color on the plate. Then he poured water on them. At first, nothing happened. Then all our friends began to point because the water started to change!The color on the skittles began to mix into the surrounding water. Noticenthough, that none of the colored water appears to be mixing. Why is that?Mr. John explained that each skittlen is covered with the coloring and a itty bit of wax. The wax creates the barriers between the colors. Once the wax starts to mix with the water, the colors will eventually all blend together. Here is Mr. John and friends pretending to be the wax, keeping the other colors away.So bummed that we didn’t get to eat the skittles!
Week 4
In week 4, Mr. John used oil, water, food coloring, an empty plastic bottle and a funnel. Have you noticed that he tends to use everyday household materials for a majority of his experiments?
Mr. John began with making blue water in the bottle using the food dye. Then he filled the rest of the bottle with the oil.
Then Mr. John had each student shake the bottle to mix all the oil and water. At first it seemed to work.
Mr. John set the bottle down and everyone had their eyes glued to the bottle. The oil and water were separating!
Why does the water not mix with the oil?
Oil is less dense than water. Given the variance in densities the two liquids cannot mix.
Oil and water also do not mix because water molecules are more attracted to each other than to oil molecules.
Shake shake Shake! Shake your bottle!
I hope you enjoyed this month of activities. Don’t forget to check your student’s folder on Thursdays for the instructions for each experiment!
Line Time: This past week we learned about Mammals. Mammals are vertebrates (have a spine or backbone), warm blooded (their body temperature does not change), have hair or fur, live bearers, and eat/drink mother’s milk when young. Some mammals live in the water such as dolphins and whales. The only mammal that can fly is the bat! Cats, dogs, elephants, and rats are mammals. Oh, and people are mammals as well. “Are we not men? We are MAMMALS………. “
If you want to play Six Degrees Of Separation for DEVO Mark Mothersbaugh’s (front man for DEVO) brother does the confirmation classes for my church. Also, I do childcare at the church and I have cared for his niece’s children. I know useless but interesting information.
Cultural Subjects: Your Children can now count to ten in 8 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, and Japanese).
Peek In Our Classroom:
This student is working on the 2nd introduction to decimals. This work develops and gets the child more familiar with the concept of 10. She and I exchanged 10 units for 1 ten, 10 tens for 1 hundred, exchanged 10 hundreds for 1 thousand. It is a fun game enjoyed by the students.
This students was a busy girl this day. She also is learning how to read starting with “Hooked On Phonics”
This boy is working on the material called Cards And Counters. Once again the math material makes the connection between symbols/numbers and quantity.
This boy is working with one of my science bins. This bin is what is under your skin or bones. Students explore jaws, teeth, and a huge cow femur. At times they will get a magnifying glass to see the different textures of the different bones.
Ms. Ashley giving a presentation on the knobbed cylinders.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Reptiles
Letter of The Week- G g
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bid
Next Language- Arabic With The Lebanese Dialect
Next Week Snack Provider- Logan H.
Upcoming Events: Halloween Party– October 26th (details to follow) Just putting a bug in your ear.
Bring Your Parents To School Day- Follow The Link…
Welcome to the music blogpost! So far this school year your kiddos have been taught by Ms. Lisa, the musical instructor who teaches music at both campuses for AMMS.
The children have been taught many musical concepts over the past several weeks such as how to sing piano (soft), forte (loud), staccato (jumpy) and legato (smooth). They learned about how to “echo” Ms. Lisa and her puppet that she brings each week. Your children have played rhythm sticks, tambourines and castanets. They learned how to follow a direction and play their instruments together. We learned what an instrumental is and played one on our castanets. They also recently learned a Spanish song and dance called La Raspa. The children have learned how to wait for the right moment to pick up their instruments to play them along with the music. They have had a lot of fun so far in music this year!
