Take A Peek At Our Week/Ms.Kate/November 16, 2017

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This week our friends earned the freedom to go choose a work on their own! I am really happy to see more respect going on in our room. Our friends have Been practicing and using their manners, discussing different ways to can respect each other, and the words we can use that are polite.

One of our kindergarteners is working on our addition finger charts. This work helps the child memorize their math facts, number recognition, numerical order, and also fine motor skills.
Our friends really enjoy tracing their numbers. When tracing they are practicing their fine motor skills, holding a pencil correctly, gain hand eye coordination, and visual discrimination.
Learning how to cut is such an important skill to have. One of our questions in our progress reports asks if they are able to cut with scissors. Did you know that cutting allows a child to build up the tiny muscles in the palm of their hands. It also enhances their hand eye coordination, and encourages them to use their bilateral coordination which is using both sides of the body at the same time while each hand is performing it’s own task.

Take A Peek Into Next Week

We are getting ready for our classroom thanksgiving celebration. On Tuesday our class will be preparing our feast THEMSELVES! It will be a very special day:)

Academic Enrichment| Cuyahoga Falls| Weeks of November 6 to November 13, 2017

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Academic Enrichment: Weeks of November 6 to November 13, 2017

Telling Time:
We ended the official Kindergarten Lessons on telling time.  We learned how to tell time to the minute.  I taught them a cool trick.  Instead of counting all 37 marks (for 37 after) just count by fives end at 35 and count from there.  Some still felt comfortable counting all the minute marks.  That’s OK, they’ll get it.

 

 

Coins:
After the month long lessons on telling time we broke into everyone’s favorite thing: MONEY.  We learned about the different and variety of each coin (penny 1 cent, nickel 5 cents, dime 10 cents, quarter 25 cents, 50 cent piece and the  dollar coins).  After we identified the coin we did start to learn how to count the change.


Cultural Subjects:
The kindergarten students can now count to ten in 13 different languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, and Hungarian). 

A Peek Into The Next Few Weeks:
Currency(Paper money)
Parts of plants, insects, and arachnids

Synonyms of the Week:
small

Sight Words of the Week:
been down

 

Peek At Our Week| Mr. John| Week Of November 13, 2017

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Line Time Lessons:
 We traveled back in time and discovered some fascinating things about certain dinosaurs.  We learned that dinosaurs no longer exist and that they are extinct.  We know dinosaurs exist because scientist found their bones or fossils.  From these fossil we saw that some teeth were long and sharp to tear flesh from it’s prey which belonged to meat eaters or carnivores (T Rex).  Some teeth were flat for grinding plants, leaves, and branches and belonged to plant eaters or herbivores (Brachiosauras).

Cultural Subjects:
We can now count to ten in 13 different languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, and Hebrew).

Peeking Into My Classroom:

 

We had an alumnus come in on her day off from school. She is in the 6th grade and came in to read to our class and help with lessons. I asked why she came back to her old school and she told me she had such a great experience she wanted to come back and give back to the school. Her words not mine.
Metal Insets are a popular material found in the Language area. This work has many purposes. The main purpose is to prepare the child for handwriting and improve the fine motor skills. Also, it introduces the child to Geometry and the names of a variety of shapes.
The chalk board is found in the Language area. The main purpose, obviously, is the introduction to handwriting. I like my students using chalk because most like the feel and can erase if a mistake is made. After my classroom students may not have an opportunity to use chalk. This student is getting a lesson from our University of Akron field student.
The students are drawn to this material that are photographs of familiar objects and the become aware of the relationships between things. We discuss the associations and point out other examples in the everyday world. This increases the child’s experience and vocabulary.
The 100 board simply a board with 100 squares (10 x 10 squares), that come with 100 number tiles that fit nicely. The Hundred Board is useful for number recognition, number sequencing, counting, patterning, possibly skip counting (depending on your method) most of all it’s perfect for just reinforcing the understanding of numbers from one to one-hundred. Notice this child is not only placing the numbers in order but she is randomly finding where the tiles go. She has identified the pattern of this work.

 

Peek To Next Week:

Line Time Lesson:
 Thanksgiving and Pilgrims

Letter Of The Week:
 M m

Rhyming Word Of The Week:
bop

Upcoming Events:
11/21/17 (Tuesday): Harvest Party/Stone Soup

11/22/2017 (Wednesday): NO SCHOOL. Happy Thanksgiving

11/22-11/26/17: Thanksgiving Break

11/25/2017  Noon:  The Game!

 

 

A Peek at Our Week | Ms. Courtney’s Classroom | Week of November 6th

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This past week we talked about the five food groups: fruits, vegetables, dairy, proteins, and grains.  We learned about MyPlate which is a healthy guide that shows how much to eat from each food group every day.  As a group the children created a food group pyramid and listed a variety of foods in each group. We also talked about how being active plays a big part of being healthy. They learned that kids should get at least one hour of exercise daily and eat healthy foods, and of the people with skin problems they can find deep scar removal home remedies online.

Work Time

Metal Insets: This child is tracing the metal insets developing her eye hand coordination and fine motor movements. She is also learning how to control a pencil (pincer grip, pressure and steadiness).
Golden Beads: These children are doing static addition (a sum without exchanging) problems using the golden beads. They are discovering that addition simply means to take two small numbers and to put them together to get a larger number.
Spindle Box: This child is matching the correct quantity of spindles to each numeral symbol. She is also being introduced to the concept of zero and what its symbol looks like, while also seeing the natural sequence of the numerals.
Sandpaper Numbers: This child is learning the symbols for the numbers through the sense of touch and sight. He is also retrieving objects of the named numeral learning what each number physically looks like.
Puzzle Words: These student are completing the words by moving and rotating different letters to fit in the correct order.
Human Skeleton: This child is forming a skeleton and labeling its different parts such as: skull, clavicle, sternum, ribs, humerus, radius and ulna, spine, pelvis, femur, tibia and fibula, feet and hands.

Guest Readers

Reminders

November 15, 2017 | Bring Your Parent to Work-Time

November 17, 2017 | Parent/Teacher Conferences | NO SCHOOL for students

November 21, 2017 | Harvest Party

A look into next week: Indians/Pilgrims

  • The children will learn about the items Pilgrims used long ago.
  • The children will learn that life was difficult for the Pilgrims in America and that everyone including the children had to work hard.
  • The children will learn where the Pilgrims left from and where they were headed to in America.
  • The children will be reading and learning about the very first Thanksgiving.

A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of November 6

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Many of you might be seeing “Checkerboard” written on your child’s work plan and wondering to yourselves, “What is a checkerboard and how is it teaching my child math?” This week, I wanted to share with you one of the most popular materials in any Montessori Elementary Classroom – The Multiplication Checkerboard. This material is used in different stages to multiply whole numbers throughout Lower Elementary and then with decimals in Upper Elementary. Montessori Math can be confusing to many of us because it is not taught the way we have experienced learning mathematic and geometric concepts. In most of our schooling, we were taught the quickest and shortest way to come up with the correct answer, often leading us to be confused about where a number came from and feeling like we’d never use that information again. Imagine if we had all been given the time and opportunity to discover formulas and concepts on our own, instead of solely copying down what we were told!

Dr. Montessori wanted her materials to help children develop a “Mathematical Mind.” This meant the goal of math in Montessori schools is not to come up with the correct answer the quickest, but to learn how to think critically and logically. The focus on math in the classroom is on the process of what they are learning, instead of the product. Brain research from “Math Works” by Michael Duffy, shows that Montessori Math materials engage all four lobes of the cerebrum simultaneously, connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain, and actively engage the prefrontal cortex.

The first lesson with the Multiplication Checkerboard is reading numerals. Each square on the Checkerboard represents a value that students learn in their initial lesson. Students place bead bars in each box to read numbers into the hundred millions. The Checkerboard is set up to use up to a nine-digit multiplicand so practicing reading large numbers is important to set students up for future success.
After students are comfortable with reading large numbers, they are introduced to multiplication with the Checkerboard. Students begin with a unit multiplier. In each box that corresponds to a numeral in the multiplicand, students place the amount of bead bars the multiplier requires. For example, if the student has the equation 345,126,712 x 4, they will place four bars of 2 in the units’ place, four bars of 1 in the tens’ place, four bars of 7 in the hundreds’ place, etc. After laying out their bead bars, students will begin simplifying by adding up the bars in each square and exchanging them until there is only one bead bar in each square – their final product.
After a teacher observes a student confidently and independently completing a multiplication equation with a unit multiplier, they are introduced to two, three, and four-digit multipliers. This stage of the Checkerboard takes the longest. During this stage, students are also introduced to recording partial products of their equation. This means they will complete the unit multiplier row, simplify, and record what they have. They will continue that process with the tens’ multiplier, the hundreds’ multiplier, and then the thousands’ multiplier. This part of the Checkerboard is leading them to abstractly multiply on paper. When the student is done multiplying on the Checkerboard, they add their partial products on their paper, then add the beads on the board to check their work.
The final stage of the Checkerboard is abstractly multiplying. This is when a student is able to multiply solely on paper, without materials. While it would be faster to just show the child this method first, practice with the concrete materials gives them a deeper understanding of what they are doing and what those numerals represent. Often the students at this stage will check the work of students still using the materials, as you see in the photo.

The Multiplication Checkerboard is one of the many materials in our classroom that gives your child the opportunity to learn and grow at their own pace, while being challenged. The concrete materials used in Montessori classrooms give students a deeper understanding and a sense of confidence when they come up with their own formulas or solutions to problems.

A Peek into Next Week

Next week Lower Elementary students will talk about factoring, the fundamental needs of early humans, and bisecting angles. Upper Elementary students will look at the characteristics of cells, commas and apostrophes, and the five kingdoms. All students will work on Text-to-World Connections in Reader’s Workshop and will participate in new States of Matter lessons.

REMINDERS: 11/16 OCC Packing. Information was sent home on a flyer and in email!

11/17 Parent-Teacher Conferences – This is a NO SCHOOL day for students. If you haven’t yet, you can sign up here.

11/21 Harvest Party – Parents are invited to come join us for tea and desserts. Come hear what students have learned about the Mayflower. Please arrive at 1:00 pm. More information to follow by email.

Take A Peek Into Our Week/ Ms. Kate/November 9, 2017

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This week our class focused so very hard on respect and what that word truly means. We also worked on grace and courtesy lessons. We spent a lot of time working on a lot of our ground rules for our classroom as well.

 

One of our students is working on the lowercase initial stroke pages we have in our classroom. These strokes help the child at the begining steps for cursive writing. When you think of lowercase letters you notice that all of them start and end the same way. This work helps to prepare them in this way.

 

Another one of our friends is also working on her form drawings. She is tracing the different forms on lined paper. This work also helps prepare them for cursive.

 

When working on the 100 board the children are learning linear counting, and number recognition. Our friend here is also writing out 1 to 100. This helps with fine motor skills, number formation, and also with linear counting.
One of our kindergartener’s is working on static addition with the golden beads. The purpose is for the child to understand that the process of addition is simply the combining of equal or unequal quantities to form one large quantity.

Take A Peek Into Next Week:

Next week we will be focusing on manners, sharing, how to talk to friends, ground rules, and grace and courtesy.

A Peek at Handwriting| Ms. Kristen | Week of November 6th

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The past two weeks in Handwriting, we have been working on answering a question of the day and writing our answer in cursive. Some of our questions have been, ” What will you be for Halloween?” and ” What did you have for lunch today?” and ” What is your middle name?”. The children are also working on spelling their answer phonetically.

Something to practice with your child at home is writing their first name in cursive! I’m so proud of how our Kindergarten student’s handwriting has come along so far this year!

Peek At Our Week| Mr. John’s Classroom| Week Of November 06, 2017

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Line Time Lesson:
This week we creeped and crawled and learned about insects, arachnids, and invertebrates.  We first looked at insects.  The characteristics of an insect are they have three body parts, head, thorax, abdomen.  The also have six legs and two antennae.  We sang the song “Head, Thorax, Abdomen” to the tune of Head , Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.  Some examples of insects were ants and crickets which can be found, enclosed not free, in the classroom.  Also, the mantis, bees, butterflies, and dragonflies.  Arachnids are eight legged creatures that have a head and a thorax.  Some creatures that are arachnids are spiders (tarantula named Charlotte) that is in the classroom, scorpions, and the tick.  Both creepy crawlers are invertebrates which means they do not have a backbone or a spine or a bony skeleton but actually have an exoskeleton.  An exoskeleton is is the external skeleton that supports and protects an animal’s body. Other invertebrates are earthworms, jellyfish, and crawfish.

Cultural Subjects:
We can now count to ten in 13 different languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, and Swedish).

Bees… bzzzzzz:

Pastor Kirk has several bee hives and talked about bees and brought in his equipment. The children tried on a protective mask, touched (an empty) hive with wax, and saw real live bees (in an enclosed hive).

 

 

A Peek In The Classroom:

We’re a happy family. The babies are growing, mom is doing well, and the aunties are accepting the litter. Anyone want pet rats????
The old colored water with with flower experiment. As you can see we chose dark purple (which did nothing to the flower), green (which turned the flower yellow), and blue (which turned the flower blue).
My kindergarten students tracked the color changes in their personal binders. We came up with possible reasons why the purple did nothing. We thought maybe too much coloring couldn’t get up the stem. The yellow maybe had more yellow in the coloring.
Line Time… The aim is to increase body control and concentration. The child sits criss cross, hands to themselves, and are quiet. This is an exaggerated picture of catching a bubble (no talking), safe hands (hands to ourselves), and sitting on the line calmly. My morning line time can last up to thirty minutes and your child sit nicely for the duration of this line time.  At line time I present information about days of the week, months of the year, the date, the weather, we count to ten in different languages, my weekly theme, and announcements. Also, as a bonus they get to hear my morning banter.
The child needs to practice, perfect, and consolidate the body’s movements. For this reason, Dr. Montessori began using the “Walking on the Line” as a Practical Life exercise. This exercise helps the child control his body, develop balance and perfect equilibrium, as well as to strengthen the mind’s control of its body’s movements. No pushing, no cutting, and no running across to the other side of the line. We play a classical piece of music, Pachelbel’s Canon in D Minor, which is exactly five minutes (4:57). After I ring the bell and the children stop, look, and listen, they proceed to clean, and walk the line. After the music ends the children sit nicely on the line.

 

A Peek Into Next Week: 

Line Time Lesson:
Dinosaurs and the unique things of select dinos.

Letter Of The Week:
L l

Rhyming Word Of The Week:
bot

Upcoming Events:
11/16/17 (Thursday): Progress Reports emailed

11/17/17 (Friday): Parent Teacher Conferences (NO SCHOOL FOR CHILDREN)
Follow the link to sign up.   http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-2017

11/21/17 (Tuesday): Harvest Party

11/22-11/26/17: Thanksgiving Break

11/25/2017  Noon:  The Game!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Enrichment | week of November 6th | Tallmadge

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The kindergarten students have been working hard on learning both static and dynamic addition using the golden beads. They have even started working on more abstract materials like the stamp game and dot board to solve problems.

Equivalence: The students are learning that the word equivalence means to be equal or equivalent in value . They are discovering that 10 units are equivalent to 1 ten, 10 tens are equivalent to 1 hundred and that 10 hundreds are equivalent to 1 thousand.
Dynamic Addition: This child is doing dynamic addition using the golden beads. Dynamic addition simply means addition where we need to carry over an amount. The process is similar to static addition  except if the child has a group of ten he/she will need to exchange. Exchanging takes place when the child is combining the beads.
Dynamic Addition: This child is doing dynamic addition using the golden beads. Dynamic addition simply means addition where we need to carry over an amount. The process is similar to static addition  except if the child has a group of ten he/she will need to exchange. Exchanging takes place when the child is combining the beads.
Dynamic Addition: This child is doing dynamic addition using the golden beads. Dynamic addition simply means addition where we need to carry over an amount. The process is similar to static addition  except if the child has a group of ten he/she will need to exchange. Exchanging takes place when the child is combining the beads.

A Look Into Next Week: Continue Dynamic Addition (exchanging)

  • Introduction of exchanging 1s, 10s, 100s and 1000s
  • Using single units, 10 bars, 100 squares and 1000 cubes

A Peek into Science | Week of 10/23 and 10/30 | Tallmadge Campus

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Color changing flower:  We took white roses and placed them in water with food coloring. The next day the children discovered that the flowers had taken on the color of the food coloring they were placed in: yellow, blue and red. The reason the petals of the roses changed colors was because the food colored water had traveled up the stem and into the petals.

  

Tabletop hovercraft: We hot glued a bottle cap to an old CD and then blew up a balloon and attached it to the bottle cap. When we slowly opened the bottle cap air flowed out of the balloon creating a cushion of moving air between the CD and the table. This reduced the friction allowing the CD to hover freely over the table.