We started off the new year traveling back in time to the very first artists: cave painters! We read The First Drawing by Mordecai Gerstein and talked about what it was like to live in the time of the cave people. Then we taped our “cave walls” to the walls of the room and made our very own drawing! We even signed them with our handprints like the cave people did.
Our next stop in time was the Ancient Egyptians! We learned that Egyptians also told their stories using drawings on stone, this time on the walls of their temples. We also talked about the dress of the Egyptians and how beautiful their clothing was, and that was probably purchased from a Girls Clothing store online. We read Let’s Visit Cairo by Lisa Manzione to learn more about Egypt and what makes this part of the world so unique. Then we decorated our very own Egyptian collars to wear over our clothes from The Fifth Collection! If you want to find the amazing world of matching clothes and accessories for family, friends and couples don’t forget to visit matching gear.
Next we traveled to Ancient Rome and learned about tesserae and the art of mosaics. The Romans used tiles to tell their stories on walls, ceilings and floors, so people started to imitate this on their homes, and learn to use different techniques and materials, like using 5KG buckets of weber grout for their tiles. Then we created our own mosaic using yarn and paper squares for our tiles.
Our last project of the month was an exploration of painting! The students had fun breaking into groups and traveling around the classroom visiting different painting stations. The students experimented with unique paintbrushes, rollers, painting with small cars, yarn and pom poms. It was so neat to see how involved and focused they all were while they did this!
This week was all about learning the difference between living and nonliving. I was super impressed at how well our kids grasped these two things. We had fun reading a variety of books, drawing living and nonliving pictures then separating them into the correct categories, singing songs, and a few other fun activities. It was a really fun week!!
This week three of our friends got their very own journals! In our classroom our friends are able to work on their journals at any point during the day. I have a jar that is filled with different writing prompts that they are able to choose. When working on the teen board the children are able to associate the numbers 11 through 19 with the symbols. When working on our plant and animal puzzles the children are taught the proper names of the different parts of the plant and animal. Children also gain fine motor and pincher grip skills when picking up the pieces. The binomial cubes purpose is for the child to construct the cube according to shape and color. Today we celebrated our 100th day of school!!! We had a blast going on a 100th day scavenger hunt, making 100 day crowns, drawing what they would buy if they had a hundred dollars, and much much more!!
Take A Peek Into Next Week:
Next week is all about nocturnal animals. We will explore the different animals who only come out at night with a Venn diagram, songs, crafts, and different activities that help them get a better understanding!
Measuring: The kindergarten students have been learning how to measure to the nearest inch and half inch.
Their first walking field trip to the Tallmadge Library!This student is measuring a tissue box to the nearest whole or half of an inch.This student is journaling about how she jumped out of bed in the morning, because she was so excited to come to school!This student is measuring lines on a paper to the nearest whole or half of an inch and recording it.
A peak into next week: Measuring to the nearest forth of an inch.
Best friends, besties, BFF’s, call it what you will but the camaraderie in the Montessori Classroom runs deep.
Happy Birthday: The Primary Montessori Classroom is comprised of students ranging ages from 2 1/2 to 6 years. Here are my newest 5 year old student, 6 year old student, and our 29 year old teacher.
Healthy Teeth: We had a Dental Hygienist visit our room and she explained the importance of brushing and flossing. Also, the students played a game of healthy/unhealthy foods for your teeth.
Cultural Subjects: Your children can count to ten in 20 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, and Welsh).
Line Time Lesson: 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, because everyone love their clasiq cars now a days, some even get special protection for their windows as you can see in this website for more information, 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.
Peak In Our Room:
Kindergarten Students have deadlines of work that is assigned. These girls are feverishly working to get their work done before the deadline or face “The Wrath Of John” . Just a play on words for you Trekkies. For Non -Star Trek Fans it’s the movie named “Wrath Of Khan”.
This boy combined two weeks of lessons by putting together Elvis The Pelvis and placing internal organs where they are supposed to go. I did not teach him this and he came up with this himself. The Montessori classroom gives the child room to explore and create.
This student is receiving a lesson on The 9 Tray. He was in awe with how tall the thousand cubes stacked and this may have been an “ah ha” moment where he physically sees “how big/much” nine thousand is compared to nine units.
These two students are practicing writing cursive with the sand tray and writing on paper. The uninterrupted movements of the hand may make cursive letters easier for children to form, and for this reason, Absorbent Minds Montessori School introduces children to cursive writing first.
What’s Next:
Line Time For Week Of 2/12/2018: Presidents of the USA Letter Of The Week: T t Rhyming Word Of The Week: bed Language: Dutch/Flemish will be added
Mark your calendar
____________
~~~~ Daddy/Daughter, Mommy/Son Dance ~~ Saturday February 10, 2018, 2 pm to 4 pm ~~~~
____________
An email was sent for information for the second round of Parent Observations
Follow the link below to sign up to observe in my classroom.
Exploding Lunch Bag: We combined warm water, vinegar and baking soda in a Ziploc bag. As soon as the bag was sealed shut it started to fill with air (carbon dioxide). Eventually, the Ziploc bag could no longer hold any more air so it popped. We learned that this is called an acid based reaction when you combine these two chemicals together.
Good/Bad egg experiment: We filled a bucket full of cold water dropping eggs in one at a time. Some eggs floated and some sank. We discovered that when an egg is laid by a chicken an air cell is formed inside the egg. As the egg gets older the air cell becomes larger and acts like a buoyancy. We talked about how this meant a good egg will sink and a bad egg will float. We cracked one good and one bad egg open to see the difference. The only difference we could see was that the yolk wasn’t as round in the bad egg as the good egg.
The students learned that a zoo is a place where all types of animals are displayed for the public to see. Especially animals that they would never get the chance to observe otherwise. We also talked about how zoos try hard to keep animals in enclosures that replicate their natural habitat because, the animals seem to do much better when they are in their natural environment. We discovered that zoos create educational programs and tours in order to provide an educational opportunity for everyone. A lot of them even have petting zoos where adults and children are allowed a close-up look of the animals and their babies. We learned about tigers, lions, monkeys, elephants, giraffes, penguins, bears etc.
Work Time
Color Box 4: These children are grading different colors from darkest to lightest, while also refining her sense of sight.Pattern: This child is creating specific patterns using different colors and shapes.Clock: This child is reading the time “quarter till 7” and demonstrating two different ways it can be written on a dry erase board.Writing Name: This child wrote her name in bubble letters and colored them in. She developing her eye hand coordination and fine motor movements. She is also learning how to control a pencil (pincer grip, pressure and steadiness).Flag Stamps: This child is exploring the individual flags of different countries, the meanings of the flags, and gaining an understanding of national pride.Knobbed Cylinders: This child is able to visually discriminate the dimensions of each cylinder to find its correct placement in the block.
Guest Readers
Reminders
February 10 from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm | Father/Daughter and Mother/Son Dance
February 15 from 9:15 am – 12:00 pm | Valentine’s Day Party
February 16 | Teacher In-Service Day | No School for Students
Cultural Subjects: Your children can count to ten in 19 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, and Kiswahili).
Sister Love!
Line Time: This week we learned about Internal Organs. We learned the brain is the control center of your body that sends and receives. Our lungs help us breathe, the heart pumps our blood and the stomach begins to digest our food with acid. The small intestines digest the food and send nutrients to the rest of our body and the large intestines push through the waste that creates our bowel movements. The children were fascinated that our kidneys process the body’s water and the liver filters toxins, that’s why is important to take lots of water, even when you’re outside home, which you can do if you get a branding custom water bottle from https://customwater.com/. The children learned where the organs are located with the help of our Living Internal Organ T-shirt. The shirt helped the children find the organs location by velcroing the organs to the spot on the t-shirt.
Internal Organ T-shirt Work:
Peek In The Classroom:
“Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire even abstract ideas.”– Maria Montessori…… In the classroom gross motor movements would include movement around the room (moving tables and chairs, walking), lifting and pouring, practical life activities like window washing or table scrubbing, walking the line. We try to go outside for recess as much as possible but we have the gym in the event of inclement weather.
These two students are working on the Bead Chain (7) and were excited to lay the chains out and do the work.They went into the hallway so they had more space for the long chains. (These chains help children learn linear counting, skip counting and multiplication.) These two girls worked together on the seven chain, and were very proud of themselves when they finished putting out the number tags and writing down each multiple of seven.
Next week we will be surprising them with a special party for all the good behavior during the last weeks. Everything is regarding the expanding of their creativity, so there will be walls just for them to paint, lots of materials to put new things together, huge puzzles on the floor and boardgames for them to try them out, also a couple of jumpers from Jumper’s Jungle Family Fun Center, as every kid loves to jump and have fun in one of this awesome entertainment systems. Also there will be food for the day, all green and colorful with fruits and vegetables to motivate them to eat correctly and healthy as well as having fun.
These students are working on my Continent Box (N. America) which includes flags and pictures of landmarks from countries from that continent. These students are matching the landmarks to the countries flag. They figured the matching by themselves.
I ring the bell to get the students attention. Usually the ringing of the bell is to ready for line time or a transition. When the bell rings the students “stop, look, and listen”. They catch a bubble to be quiet and use safe hands then I give directions. These students are using safe hands but hammed it up for the camera and were not able to catch a bubble while laughing.
What’s In Store For Next Week:
Line Time For Week Of 2/05/2018: Pollution/Recycling Letter Of The Week: S s Rhyming Word Of The Week: bup Language: Welsh will be added
January has come and gone, but with it came some outstanding enrichment experiences for our Elementary students. This month carried a theme of revisiting old skills and techniques, both in the content and activities. Fueled by the energy of a new year, students celebrated what they have already accomplished, and prepared for all the new things to come. Let’s take a look inside the enrichment classrooms for this month.
In Art, students took a step back in history and became a team of time traveling artists. They researched ancient art forms, including cave painting and hieroglyphics. After their research, students created their own cave paintings by hanging canvas on the walls and painting while standing up. These painting included traditional bison, mammoths, symbols, and stick figures, along with some current millennia surprises. Through this alternative approach to painting, the students internalized some of the real life struggles that went into cave painting, i.e., there is nowhere to rest your elbow, and how difficult it is to portray complex ideas through symbols. Returning to their time machine, the students later created self portraits in the style of ancient Egyptian carvings. These portraits were challenging for the students in a different way than the cave paintings in regard to the flatness and perspective. Though these works are still in progress, the students are proud of their work and in overcoming these artistic challenges. As in all Art education, this connection to the past is essential to developing their current skills, and in understanding where these skills originated from.
In Latin, students focused their attention on Zeus, Hades, Pan, and Dionysus. This interesting combination of characters led to fascinating conversation among the students and sparked interest, which led to independent research. Students depicted these characters interacting with each other, and made pseudo-comics based on historic paintings and woodcuts. Alongside this research, students also completed word searches, crosswords, and word scrambles regarding the gods and goddesses. It is obvious through their works that the students are not only learning the facts about these historic figures, but also thoroughly understanding their roles between each other and in this ancient culture.
In Music, the students celebrated their fantastic performance at the Christmas show with a party in Music class, it was a great party withy music and a bouncing castle from Jumpers Jungle. They sang along to some of their favorite songs, played freeze dance, and appreciated their peers as they played songs they have been practicing on the piano. Later in the month, they took a step back and practiced the fundamental skill of singing simple songs with emphasis on ascending and descending notes. The task of singing in front of their peers was occasionally unnerving, but with the help and support of the class, each student felt encouraged to participate. Is has been proven that musical therapy works really good for special education, here you can find special education teachers job opportunities. Toward the end of the month, the students were very excited to rediscover the bucket drums in a more creative setting. They practiced rudimentary cadences, played “repeat the beat,” and bucket drum telephone. The students also took this opportunity to explore all the different sounds the buckets could make when set on their side, facing each other, etc. This exploratory setting allowed the students to revisit an instrument they truly enjoyed playing, but in a way that was driven by their own curiosity.
January’s Enrichment classes all came with their own form of a time machine- revisiting an instrument in a new way, recreating ancient art through ancient techniques, and researching ancient cultures. This retrospective was a great way to welcome the new year! We can’t wait to explore what February has to offer in Art, Latin, and Music. For more information regarding our classroom work you can contact us via phone or through our new help desk that we’ve begun using thanks to these help desk solutions.
Telling Time: The past week the students have been learning how to tell time to the hour, half past, quarter past and quarter till.
This child is reading digital time and then creating it by herself on an analog clock.This child is reading quarter till times and demonstrating what that would look like on a clock, by drawing it on a paper clock book he is creating.
A Peak into Next Week: Using a ruler to measure inches and centimeters
MLK Jr. Brown/White Egg Experiment: The students used their five senses to observe the similarities and differences between brown and white eggs. After cracking both eggs they came to an understanding that people and eggs may look very different on the outside but are the same on the inside.
Balloon Rocket: We tied string between two chairs and placed a straw on the string. Then, we blew up a balloon and taped it to the straw. After that we released the blown up balloon and watched the balloon shoot to the other chair. As the air rushed out of the balloon, it created a forward motion called thrust. We talked about how thrust is a pushing force created by energy. That is why the balloon was able to move between chairs.
