During the past two weeks in Handwriting, we have continued learning the Lower Case Initial Strokes. We focused on the letters r, p, u, w, and s. All of these letters begin with the same initial “swing” stroke of the pencil. I am very proud of our Kindergarten students and how hard they have worked the past couple weeks!
A Peek into Art Class | December 2017
With Ms. Renee
Week of December 4th
This week, to kick off the month of December and our holiday program right around the corner, we decorated trees in the forest! Each student cut out three triangles for trees, added garland, decorations and then glued the trees to their background of chalk pastel rubbings. To finish off the holiday trees, we added silver and gold paint last to add some sparkle!
Week of December 11th
To begin class this week we each made a jingle bell bracelet using pipe cleaners, beads and a jingle bell. The students worked hard stringing the beads onto the pipe cleaners and were excited about their finished work! Using our jingle bracelets, the students helped read The Little Reindeer by Nicola Killen. During various parts of the story, the students helped shake their bells so Ollie could find her reindeer friend.
Next we created a reindeer of our own, set against a snowy black sky (just like Ollie’s reindeer in the story!). The students worked hard to cut, glue and added painted snowflakes to their art work. Each reindeer turned out so cute and different!
A Peek Into Music | December 2017
December was filled with lots of practice in our classrooms for our 2017 Christmas Show! In Miss Lisa’s music class we practiced performing our songs and she taught us many popular Christmas carols and songs!
Here is a friend examining a large jingle bell. Miss Lisa brought a variety of different bells for us to practice with. The two main songs we played the bells with were Jingle Bells and Jingle Bell Rock.
One of our favorite games with Miss Lisa is freeze dance! It doesn’t matter what song is playing, we love to dance! The most important skill in this game is listening. We have to listen very closely for when the music stops so we know when to freeze our bodies.
Here is a picture of a friend waiting patiently to play her tambourine. We all know that instruments can’t play on their own, so we have to wait patiently until Miss Lisa tells us it is time to play.
A new instrument we enjoyed exploring with was the maracas! Maracas are used in many Latin and South American songs. We shook these maracas while singing along to Feliz Navidad.
We had a fantastic month with all of our festive singing! Don’t forget to order your copy of our 2017 Christmas Show DVD so you can hear us singing some of our favorites!
A Peek into Cuyahoga Falls Science Class | December 2017
As always, Science class with Mr. John is fun! This month we are showcasing our favorite experiment: Teflon Tape Secret Messages! view the guidelines at help desk solutions.
Teflon Tape Secret Message – Polymers
Mr. John wrote a secret message (Go Buckeyes!) on a piece of Teflon tape. When the tape was stretched top to bottom, we were not able to read the message. Once he pulled/stretched the tape end to end, tada! The message was readable! He explained to us that Teflon was a type of polymer and when the tape was stretched top to bottom, the polymers were still bound together, or “hugging”, just not as tightly as when the tape was stretched end to end. Our students loved this!
A Peek into Elementary Enrichments | December 2017
December was an exciting month for everyone here in the Elementary Classroom. December is my favorite month because of winter, I always love to take a good cup of coffee while reading the best Midas Letter Stock News. This excitement carried over into all the enrichment classes as students prepared for the Christmas show and the holiday season. To get an in-depth look into the students’ enrichment experiences, I asked to interview several students, and they were more than eager to share their thoughts on the many elements of Music, Latin and Art. Let’s take a look at what they had to say.
December may have been a shorter month, but it was certainly made up for in content and energy. All the students worked exceptionally hard in their enrichment classes to create unique works and present what they had learned to others. Every student is looking forward to a wonderful holiday and we hope they return empowered with new ideas, creativity, and momentum in 2018 for the upcoming seminars on online trading in their Computer and Technology subject which can be viewed on http://www.borse.pro/trading-online?amp. Until then, see you next year! Modern States offers comprehensive courses endorsed by the college board to help you increase your mastery of the material covered on each exam, completely free. If you’re taking just one or two CLEP prep exams, consider purchasing individual exam guides.
Peek At Our Week ** Mr. John ** Week of December 18, 2017
Happy Birthday:
Peek In Our Week:
I just wanted to say your children did a great job at the Christmas Show!!!! Those two songs they sung were very difficult pieces to sing. The church I attend has an extremely accomplished music program and the Men’s, Women’s, Children’s (age 8 to voice changing for boys) sing these songs on Christmas Eve to a packed house. Very seasoned choristers that practice five hours a week. I wanted to do something different and the set up for this year’s show gave me that opportunity. I felt these Carols were very beautiful songs and the students would be more than qualified to pull it off. The soloists that did Past 3 O’ Clock did a very fine job. My daughter, niece, and nephew were all soloists for this song at age 12, my youngest son did it at age 9. I was so impressed the two 6 year old students did so well. I do want to thank all of the staff involved from teachers practicing with the children to the office staff securing the location to mapping out EVERYTHING that needed to be done. Of course, I wanted to thank the parents for everything you did including taking your children to the restroom before the show. The Absorbent Minds Montessori School Family is truly a special one.
Peek Into The Next Work Week:
Winter Break ENDS: Wednesday 1/3/2018 :))
Line Time: Reintroducing Ground Rules
Letter Of The Week: N n
Rhyming Word Of The Week: bob
Start bringing in the family trees.
**Students will need snowpants, winter coat, gloves or mittens, hats, and boots to be able to go out for recess.**
A Peak into Reading Group
The last story we read is called Me First. It was about two siblings that always wanted to win and be first. By the end of the story they end up helping each other and stop arguing. The kindergartners continued to practice reading along with the purple highlighted sentences. We had a discussion with interpretive questions about the story. Such as, “Why did the kids stop arguing amd start cooperating by the end of the story.” These discussions help the students to delve deeper into the meaning of the story and analyze the characters actions. Many people like reading books but rarely anyone likes doing book reports. Here is a site that helps out kids in elemntary schools in the Balkans – LEKTIRE, book reports are concise but very helpful.
Academic Enrichment | week of December 11th | Tallmadge
The kindergarten students have been working hard on learning dynamic multiplication using the golden beads, stamp game, bead frame, multiplication bead board and dot board to solve problems.
Multiplication Bead Board: These students have been working very hard to complete all of the multiples of 1’s through 10’s by multiplying by 1 through 10. For example 1×1 through 1×10, 2×1 through 2×10, 3×1 through 3×10 etc.
A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of December 11
What a busy week we have had! The students are very excited to share their bucket drumming, bell ringing, and surprise performance tonight at our Christmas Show. While students are not on the stage for a long time, they spend a long time organizing, practicing, and making changes in preparation for the show. Students write and memorize lines for song and performance introductions and are role models while practicing with Ms. Courtney’s class. This year we even have a couple Elementary students helping Ms. Courtney’s class with one of their song performances. While we were preparing for the show, we had quite a few exciting lessons. First years were excited to learn how to find the multiples of numbers using the bead bars, have their first lesson on sentence diagramming with Sentence Analysis, and found different types of lines throughout our classroom. Second year students began subtracting fractions with like denominators and looked at the differences between dehiscent and indehiscent fruits. Third year students continued their human body research with heart and lung experiments and began their divisibility study with the discovery of numbers divisible by 2. Fourth year students found the prime factors of numbers, learned growth and reproductive information about cells, and charted their discoveries about the differences and similarities of the five kingdoms.
A Peek into Next Week
This week we only have three days of school! Monday all students will have their midyear Spelling Assessment so there will be no homework. First year students will conduct root experiments and continue their planet research. Second year students will try a seed experiment that involves not speaking for an entire 30 minutes! Third year students will calculate distances between objects on a map and look at the positions of flower ovaries. Fourth year students will continue their study of cells.
REMINDERS:
- Wednesday, December 20 – Pajama Day: Students may wear pajamas and bring a pillow and blanket/sleeping bag to enjoy “The Polar Express.” Students may also bring a board game to play and an item for Show-and-Tell. We will be sharing our Christmas Compliments with each other, making bouncy balls, enjoying some hot cocoa, and making ice cream with Ms. Courtney’s class. Elementary students WILL need a lunch this day.
- There is no school Thursday, December 21, through Tuesday, Jan 2. School resumes Wednesday, January 3. Happy Holidays!
Academic Enrichment – Cuyahoga Falls – Weeks of December 4 and December 11
Kindergarten Lessons: Weeks of December 4th and December 11th
The first week of December found ourselves looking at five different kind of animals, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and Fish, and what make these animals, well, those animals. See below…
Mammals: Vertebrates, warm blooded, born alive, skin has hair or fur, and babies drink mother’s milk
Reptiles: Vertebrates, cold blooded, born from hard shell eggs, skin is dry and scaly
Amphibians: Vertebrates, cold blooded, born from jelly eggs, sk8n 8s soft and moist. Amphibian meanswer from two worlds.
Birds: Vertebrates, warm blooded, born from hard shell eggs, feathers
Fish: Vertebrates, cold blooded, born alive or jelly eggs, skin is slimy and scaly
The Week of December 11th we discovered the ruler and started measuring things. We learned how to line the ruler to whatever we were measuring and learned how to measure in inches (in, “) and centimeters (CM).
Peek Into Next Week:
We will be starting our lesson in math!!!!!! My favorite subject.