A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of May 7

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“The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.” – Maria Montessori

The end of the year is one of my favorite times. No, not because I am leaving behind my 5 am alarm for a few weeks, but because we are able to reflect upon the huge progress our students have made since August. All of our students have become more successful in so many areas – interpersonal communication, public speaking, planning, organizing, managing time, and with all of our wonderful areas of the classroom. It is inspiring to see the hard work and determination our students put forth every day. They are becoming more independent and knowledgeable every minute and it is really a privilege to be a part of it.

At the end of each year, we finish our Writer’s Workshop lessons with an autobiography. Last week we interviewed friends and wrote about them as practice for writing about ourselves. These students are filling out their autobiography questionnaires which they will then turn into a written autobiography about themselves. We will also be making a self-portrait diorama so keep sending in those shoe and tissue boxes!
Our fourth year students learned about transitive and intransitive verbs this week. As follow-up work, they had to choose a paragraph to copy down and label the verbs. This student chose to write about Alice Bell, an African-American chemist that helped pave the way for a cure for Hansen’s disease, while services as Inspire online support groups help people deal with this diseases. What a great opportunity to complete a Grammar assignment while learning about an important woman!
Dr. Montessori believed the best way for students to truly understand something was to experience it in real life – that is why you will always see real objects and photographs in a Montessori classroom instead of cartoon images. One way we make this possible for students is to bring in real things from nature for them to touch and experience. This week any interested students were able to come dissect an owl pellet. These pellets contain the bones, teeth, and feathers of the animals the owls ate. Students were so excited to use the information provided to determine what mammals their owl ate! They found skulls, pelvic bones, femurs, jaws, and vertebrae!
For Grandparents’ Day, our students played recorder and piano for all to hear. They also shared their knowledge of the gods and goddesses with props! This first year student is sharing his information about Mars, the god of war!
These students are our only two students so far to make it to the “Black Belt” Recorder songs. They played “Ode to Joy” together on recorder. Our third grade student also transposed “Ode to Joy” from her piano book in C to G so they could play a duet with her on piano and our fourth grade student on recorder. What amazing work!
Here our students are playing “Merrily We Roll Along” all together!

A Peek at Next Week

Our first year students will work on fractional equivalence, learn the different phyla of the animal kingdom, and discover new information about Antarctica! Second year students will begin dividing with two-digit divisors with the Racks and Tubes, will begin studying circles, and will discuss flower placement and arrangement. Third year students will divide fractions by a whole number, research different plants, build a Roman arch, and discuss economic geography. Fourth year students will continue discussing protists and begin discussing fungi. Next week all of our students will be writing letters to the incoming students to their grade! They will offer advice, share insight, and explain their favorite parts of the past year! Look for these to be delivered in June!

REMINDERS:

  • Final “Bring Your Parents to ‘Work Time'” sign up: Work Time
  • Final conferences of the year sign up: Parent-Teacher Conferences
  • Please let me know what you are planning to do for our Talent Show on Field Day. Details were emailed out a few weeks ago!

Peek In Our Week | Academic Enrichment Cuyahoga Falls, Week of 4/30/2018

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Line Time:

Preposition was the focus of this week.  We learned that the preposition is a “where” word not a werewolf.  Some common prepositions are by, at, in, down, up, over, under, after, and before.

Kindergarten Students doing their best werewolf.

Next week:

Line Time:  Interjections

Synonym of the Week: SNEAKY

Sight words of the Week: which what

Academic Enrichment | week of April 30th | Tallmadge

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Pronoun: The kindergarten students learned that a  pronoun is a word that takes the place of a particular person or thing. For example the word ‘Kenadie’ is a noun, and the words ‘her’ and ‘she’ are pronouns that replace that noun.

Above the students are having fun writing sentences using each others names. For example ‘Myles jumped on a log’ then crossing the noun out and replacing it with a pronoun.

A peak into next week: Adjectives

A Peek at Our Week | Ms. Courtney’s Classroom | Week of April 30th

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Dinosaurs: We learned that dinosaurs roamed Earth for about 165 million years and that there were hundreds of species. Then about 65 million years ago a huge meteorite or comet hit the Earth, making dinosaurs become extinct. Some dinosaurs we studied were diplodocus, tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, brachiosaurus and triceratops.

Work Time

Tracing Name: This child is practicing tracing and writing her name on lined paper. She is developing multiple skills involving her eyes, arms, hands, memory, posture and body control.
Animal Stacking: This child is developing his sense of order, coordination, concentration and independence while problem solving to stack and balance the animals on top of one another.
Tangrams: This student is completing a picture of a car using different shapes. He is moving and rotating the shapes in different directions to fit them together.
Enjoying a snack together!
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.
Multiplication Bead Board: This child is practicing multiplication by placing the number being multiplied on the board as many times as the multiplier indicates. This work leads to the memorization of the multiplication tables.

Loving on the baby chick!

 

Guest Reader

Reminders

Tallmadge Grandparents Day | May 9th

Moms N Muffins | May 11th | 7 am to 8 am

LAST Bring Your Parent to Work Time | May 21st

Memorial Day | NO SCHOOL | May 28th

Last Day of School | May 31st

Kindergarten Graduation | June 1st | 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm

A peak into next week: Transportation

Peek In Our Week | Mr. John’s Class | Week of April 30, 2018

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Line Time:

Food Chains was the subject for the week.  We learned or was reminded that animals eat other animals.  The animal that is doing the eating is called the predator and the animal getting eaten is called the prey.  Food Chains can be one, two, three, four part food chains.  For example….  You have corn getting eaten by a mouse.  The mouse gets eaten by a snake.  The snake gets eaten by a hawk.

 

Cultural Subjects:

We can now count to ten in 27 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, and Turkish).

Peek In Our Classroom:

This student is working on rhyming words. Words that actually rhyme because they have the same ending sounds. An example is the “at” word family: bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, etc. Using this approach to reading, children learn the phonic sounds of each letter and then begin reading words within word families. Children that have been exposed to rhyming can hear the similarities in words which aids them in early reading and spelling skills!

 

These two are working on the 100 board. Notice how they placing/the order the tiles on the board. Backwards!

 

He is working on the Teen Board. Did you notice what pattern he came up with?

 

These students were very interested and are trying to figure out the pattern the above boy created.

 

These three boys are trying to figure out how I got this big piece of ice inside my water bottle.

 

Next Week:

Line Time: Animal Babies

Letter of the Week: E e

Rhyming Word of the Week: bic

 

Upcoming Events:

Moms and Muffins Friday, May 11th  7:00am to 7:45am in the School Gym

Grandparents Day: Wednesday, May 16th

A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of April 30

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“When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength.” – Maria Montessori

This week we have really enjoyed the weather together. It was nice to record something other than “gloomy,” “cold,” and “snowy” each day at Morning Meeting. We have begun many projects this week. First year students have been working on Simple Machine projects. Our third and fourth year students have been working on a Geometry project called “Build My Block.” These students are building a neighborhood out of cardstock and will be taking the area, perimeter, and volume of their completed neighborhood this month! Our second, third, and fourth years have also started working on their “Imaginary Islands.” This project has students take their knowledge of geographic features and use it to create an island from their imagination. All students will write a history of their island and the third and fourth years will find the area of their island. We also are finishing up Writer’s Workshop with biographies and autobiographies! Check out our autobiography displays towards the end of the month!

Ms. Courtney let us borrow her classroom’s chicks for Community Meeting on Monday. Our students have been learning so much from Ms. Courtney about how to feed and handle chicks. What a wonderful opportunity we have been given to learn firsthand about being kind and gentle to nature! Thank you Ms. Courtney!
These third and fourth year boys discussed different base systems this week. They learned about different base systems that have been used throughout history and what systems are still used today by different groups of people and professions. In this photo they have counted in base 5 (quinary)! Learning different base systems gives children a deep appreciation for other cultures and for math. It also could be very helpful for their future careers!
A third grade student was inspired by her own shirt this week! Her shirt had the different layers of the ocean. She decided to make a poster, but also to involve each person in our class. She asked everyone what sea creature they would choose to be and then found where in the ocean that creature lives! Check out her work in our hallway!
Our Lower Elementary students worked together over the month of April to research Australia. Students chose their own partners and got started! They researched each state in Australia, the currency, the flags, the history, and the animals. Here our students are sharing their animal research. Sharing research or work in front of the class is always a great learning experience for presenters and the audience! We often share constructive feedback to our peers to improve our public speaking skills.
Our “Internal Systems of Birds” lesson had an appropriate visitor – “Penguin,” a chick from Ms. Courtney’s room. During our lesson about birds, we were able to see some of the external features we discussed and gained a deeper understanding of birds! Plus, we can always use an excuse to have animals in the classroom.

A Peek into Next Week

Next week, first year students will have another lesson with the Decanomial, will review Grammar symbols, and will discuss the parts of the flower. Second year students will begin their study of exponents, review Grammar symbols, continuing learning about quadrilaterals, and will discuss water pressure. Third year students will learn about the commutative and distributive laws of multiplication, discuss how to write broken quotes in paragraphs, will solve area word problems that include fractions, and will find the main characteristics of echinoderms. Fourth year students will continue work with integers and transitive and intransitive verbs, write their Early Humans research paper, and will study protists. All students will study Antarctica, including a virtual field trip to a science station!

REMINDERS:

  • Thursday, May 10 – Grandparents’ Day – Please have grandparents arrive by 12:45!
  • Friday, May 11 – Moms and Muffins – 7:00
  • We have ALL spots open for our FINAL “Bring Your Parent to ‘Work Time’.” Sign up here.
  • If you are interested in a final conference for the year, please sign up here.

Take A Peek At Our Week/ Ms.Kate/May 3, 2018

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This week our class learned all about Life cycles! We read some fantastic books on, chicken, flowers, frogs, ladybugs, and butterflies. They also watched videos, made crafts, and did activities that went along with our theme. Check out below some of the cool books we read.

One of our kindergarten friends is working on compound words. When working on this he is combining two or more words that function as a single unit of meaning.
Our friends are creating their own chicks out of paper plates, and paint!  
When working on the small bead frame it shows the relationship between categories of the decimal system. It also clarifies position and place value. This helps them with addition and subtraction.  
The teen board associates the numbers eleven through nineteen with the symbols 11 to 19.  
The pink tower develops visual discrimination of three linear dimensions; length, height, and width. The brown stair develops visual discrimination of width. 

Take A Peek Into Next Week:

Next week is all about grandparents in lieu of our grandparents day that is coming up.

Reminders:

May 11th is mom’s for muffins. Start time is 7am.

We are taking a walking field trip to the fire station May 14th. Check out your kiddos folders for the permission slip.

Teacher appreciation week is May 6th through the 11th.

Grandparents day for our class is May 15th.

Don’t forget to bring in a white shirt for your kiddo!!!

A Peek into Elementary Enrichments | April 2017

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April was an incredible month in our Elementary Enrichment Classes. This month, students explored Roman numerals in everyday life, Aboriginal art, and practiced their recorders while playing along with recorded music. Let’s take a look inside the enrichment classrooms for this month.

 

In Art, students are moving along the timeline of art styles and techniques. This month they explored different cultures and the art they create. Students began with creating designs of animals and symbols on fabric, much like the traditional embroidered designs in Panama. Then students explored the Aboriginal “dream stories” of Australia where they painted animals and symbols using only brightly colored dots. After that, students explored African art by making pinch pots from clay and painting them in a traditional manner. At the end of the month, students shifted back into an artist focus by investigating Georges Seurat and Pointillism. Students were excited to go from large and basic forms of art to art that is literally composed of dots made from the tip of a paint brush.

 

In Latin, students have been using what they have learned about Roman numerals earlier in the year and applying it to everyday situations. This included writing their age in Roman numerals, their street address in Roman numerals, and numbers 1 to 100 in Roman numerals. In the picture, students were telling time in Roman numerals, as well as doing basic math in Roman numerals. Alongside this, students are preparing for a Grandparents Day performance, complete with well known characters and student made props. The students loved using the ancient and often overlooked Roman numerals in everyday life, and have carried over this ability into writing the date on their work plans in Roman numerals.

 

In Music, students have been zealously practicing their recorders in anticipation for Music on Thursdays. By this time, every student has a plethora of belts dangling from their recorder in honor of the songs they have mastered. In the picture, two students practice playing their recorders during a work period in effort to master the song they are both working on. Practicing the same song together helps students get the timings right, as well as an opportunity for peer feedback. In class, students have also been practicing playing their recorders along with pre-recorded music. This also has the same effect on their timing and rhythm.

 

April came jam-packed full of school events and weather changes. In between all of this, students explored different cultures and art techniques, learned new skills that date back to 300 C.E., and learned to play an instrument in sync with each other and with pre-recorded music.  We can’t wait to explore what is in store for the next month’s journey in Art, Latin, and Music.

Peek In Our Week | Academic Enrichment, Cuyahoga Falls | Week Of 4/23/2018

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Lesson:

This week we discovered the conjunction.  The conjunction serves as a bridge between two sentences.  The conjunction also makes your writing flow better.

Kindergarten Students working on their Grammar Packets.

Next Week:

Lesson- Prepositions

Sight Words Of The Week- look, many

Synonym Of The Week- Nice

Peek In Our Week | Mr. John Class | Week Of April 23rd, 2018

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Line Time:

This week we learned about Life Cycles.  We went over the life cycle of mammals which is a very boring life cycle as our birds, reptile and fish.  We did discover that the life cycle of a toad/frog is a bit more unique (jelly eggs, tadpoles, froglet, frog).  Although, the life cycle of the butterfly is very interesting (eggs, caterpillar, chrysalis / cocoon, butterfly/moth).

 

Cultural Subjects:

Your children can count to ten in 25 different languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, French, German, 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, and Farsi).

 

Peek In Our Week:

This girl is working on the 10 Board/composing number from 11 to 99. This reinforces symbol, quantity and pattern. Notice the patter she came up with on her own?

 

She is working on the 9 Tray. The 9 Tray reinforces symbols, quantity, and patterns.

 

He is working with the Blue Rectangle Box. This work you can make many shapes. He discovered he can make a ginormous hexagon.

 

This student is working on the hundred board. The Hundred Board reinforces numbers/symbols and patterns.

Next Week:

Line Time- Food Chains

Letter Of The Week- A a

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bib

Adding Language of Turkish

 

Upcoming Events:

Moms and Muffins – May 11th, Friday 7am to 7:45am School Gym

Grandparents Day- May 16th, Wednesday

Zoo Field Trip May 25th, Friday