Peek at Our Week, Mr. John’s Class, October 16, 2017

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Weekly Theme:
This week we looked at the Amphibian.  We talked about how the Amphibians are vertebrates, cold blooded, their skin is soft and moist, and they are born from jelly eggs.  Some examples of Amphibians are toads, frogs, and salamanders.  We learned that the term amphibian means of two worlds.  Amphibians are born in the water but live their life on land.  The children enjoyed getting a closer look at our toads, Stiv and Darby and the Pac Man Frog, En Esch.

Cultural Subjects:

Our students can count to ten in 10 different languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian)

The Montessori classroom has ages ranging from 2 1/2 to 6 years old. Here is a picture of the tallest/oldest and shortest/youngest students in the classroom.

 

The puzzle maps are found in the Cultural Subject area. They are colorful materials representing the continents and The United States of America. The objective of this material is to introduce the child to a sensorial activity related to working with the countries/ continents of the world. This child is tracing and labeling each state which she is practicing handwriting and fine motor skills.

 

This child is working with the stringing large bead work that is found in the Practical Life area. The purpose of this work is to develope fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, patience, concentration. The main aim in the Practical Life area is O.C.C.I. (order, concentration, coordination, and independence).

 

This child is working on Picture to Picture Matching found in our Language area. This material has a variety of interesting pictures that he will match picture cards to the picture frame. The purpose of this material is to develope language by creating a dialogue between teacher and student about the pictures being used. This also develops visual discrimination and concentration.

 

This person is a field student from the University of Akron. Absorbent Minds Montessori School and The University of Akron have a relationship where field students are invited to our school to experience the Montessori classroom.

 

Sneak Peek Into Next Week:
We will be learning about Fish, the characteristics and examples of.

Letter Of The Week:
I i

Rhyming Word Of The Week:
bin

Upcoming Events:

Hallowed Party:  Friday, October, 27 2017

Parent Education:  Wednesday, October, 25 2017

A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of October 16

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We were so excited to end last week with a walking field trip to Tallmadge Circle. This week we had parents visit for “Bring Your Parents to Work Time,” continued to practice our play, and enjoyed a new science experiment about decomposers. This week, Lower Elementary students worked with the Small and Large Bead Frames, measured in grams, discussed the Mesozoic Era, and worked with the Constructive Triangles. Upper Elementary students worked with multiples, homonyms, prepositions, and angle word problems.

On our walking field trip to the Tallmadge Circle, students had to practice safe walking rules by staying together, staying on the sidewalk, and being aware of their surroundings. We also discussed the purpose of crosswalks.
While at the Circle, students sketched each direction around the circle. They had five minutes to sketch each direction. At school this week, the students are putting their sketches together around a circle, representing where we were sketching, drawn on a poster board. They will color these sketches, add a compass, and a map key to complete their map of the Tallmadge Circle. Look for a Remind message about when these will be available for display.
These students are helping each other in reading group. This reading group came up with the rule of raising your hand if you know a word someone is struggling to read, instead of just telling them. This gives the child an opportunity to sound out a word or choose to get help. One of our favorite things to see in our environment is students coming up with solutions to problems without a teacher’s help.
First and second year students are beginning to study dinosaurs. This first year student knows a lot about dinosaurs already, so she joined me to present the lesson and information to the other students. Before this lesson actually took place, we had to plan together which one of us would talk about certain things and how we thought the lesson should go. During the lesson, this student practiced her public speaking skills and gained a lot of confidence!
During one of our “Mindfulness Moments” this week we tried Deep Listening. We discussed how you know someone is really listening to you, how it feels when someone takes the time to really listen, and how we can practice that with our friends and family. After our discussion, we partnered up to share something that we’ve struggled with, something we are looking forward to, or how we were feeling. Elementary students often struggle with feeling like they are not being treated fairly or not fitting in. One way parents and other friends can help is to take the time to truly listen, even if the conversation seems insignificant, and give examples of when you’ve felt that way and how you’ve handled it.
These third and fourth year students had a blast measuring angles with a protractor. They taped angles onto (and under) our science table, then used dry erase markers to record their measurements. The Montessori classroom allows students to spend more time on work they are interested in, instead of only allowing a certain amount of time per subject. Although these students appear to only be working on Geometry, they are also learning to work together and delegate tasks. They spent two days on this project!

A Peek into Next Week

Next week Lower Elementary students will continue their dinosaur research, practice writing different lengths, learn about proper adjectives, and talk about surface tension. Upper Elementary students will change improper fractions to mixed fractions, work on commas as interrupters, practice note taking, and finish their review of prehistory.

REMINDERS:
10/23 Box Tops are due
10/25 All Halloween Party supplies should be dropped off by this date.
10/25 Parent Education Night Parent Education Night at 6:30pm (Tallmadge Campus) click on the link to register:
http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-montessori
10/27 Halloween Play and Party – Remember to drop your child off at the Cuyahoga Falls Campus by 8:15 in regular clothing. Children will change into their Halloween costumes when we return to the Tallmadge Campus. They will need the regular set of clothing for gym this day.

Take A Peek Into Our Week/ Ms.Kate/ Week of October 16

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This week our class explored everything about pumpkins. Together we labeled the parts of the pumpkin, talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin and then followed with an activity, and had a blast with our pumpkin investigation. With this activity the children had to use adjectives to describe the outside and inside of our pumpkin, measure how tall our pumpkin was with duplos, counted all the seeds, and then voted on the face we wanted for our pumpkin. It was such a fun week!

Our friend was very excited about tracing the frog puzzle for the very first time. When using our different animal puzzles the children are able to gain fine motor skills, learn the parts of  the animal, gain focus and concentration.
Syllable awareness is one component of phonological awareness. Students gain the ability to hear phonemes that comprise words and explore speech sounds as syllables.
During group time we created a chart together and brainstormed everything that pumpkins can do, what pumpkins have, and what pumpkins are. I love these types of lessons because it gives the child a chance to speak their minds, gain confidence skills, and working together as a team.
The children had so much fun with our investigation. During this activity the children were able to use their math skills by linear counting, discussing the different sizes, and also gaining knowledge of what an adjective is by using descriptive words for our pumpkin.
This week our field student gave a lesson on pumpkins. In her lesson she made a fall discovery bottle. Every child was able to participate in placing the certain objects into the bottle. She then gave a fun lesson on the different pumpkins you can find. The children had the best time!

A Peek Into Next Week:

Next week we will be having so much fun learning about bats, spiders, and getting ready for our Halloween party!

REMINDERS:

Halloween party is next Friday starting with lunch at 1130.

 

 

Academic Enrichment | week of October 2nd and 9th | Cuyahoga Falls

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The first week of October found us discovering where we live.  Not only our street address but even bigger things.   We started out with one of the biggest things, our galaxy called the Milky Way and dwindled down to our street address and ALL things in between.  Here is a breakdown of “where we live”…

Galaxy: Milky Way

Cluster Of Planets:  Our Solar System

Planet:  Earth

Hemisphere:  Northwestern

Continent:  North America

Country:  United States of America (U.S.A.)

State:  Ohio

County:  Summit

City, Address, Phone Number…

The kindergartners continued with the subject of Geography by studying land forms.  We looked at Island/Lake, Cape/Bay, Peninsula/Gulf(not the sport), Isthmus(not Christmas)/Straight, Archipelago/Chain Of Lakes.

 

The kindergarten students proudly displaying Land Form Cards.

Cultural Subjects:

The kindergarten students can count to ten in 12 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Arabic w/Lebanese Dialect, Italian, and Russian)

Sneak Peek Into The Next Few Weeks:
We are going to learn how to tell time (old school).  Clock faces, hands, and such. 

Synonym Of The Week:
hot

Sight Words Of The Week:
for, with

A Peek Into Handwriting | Academic Enrichment | Week of October 9th

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In handwriting , the children are continuing to make progress in writing in cursive! We currently have worked on I through Q, practicing writing the letters by themselves, then writing a sentence containing the letter we are working on that day. The Kindergarten students have also been asking me to write more words once they are finished! Please keep encouraging your children to practice their handwriting at home as well! I’m so proud of their progress!

Take a Peek Into our Kindergarten Reading Group | Week of October 9th

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This week was our last week on the story Big Wolf and Little Wolf. One of the activities that the children had to share was why or why not they would have left the little wolf under the tree. We then led a group discussion about their thoughts on this question. I love when we have discussions like this! I then wrote all their answers on our white board so they could write out their answers. Our last activity the children were able to discuss how they felt about the story and then write about what they would like to do differently the following week.

A peek into our Academic Enrichment for kindergartners | Week of October 2nd & 9th

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Landforms: The children learned and explored the difference between a lake, island, bay, peninsula, gulf, harbor, cape, isthmus, strait, chain of lakes, and archipelago.

Landform Boards: This child is feeling the difference between a cape and a bay. The sand paper on the board represents land and the smooth blue portion represents water.

 

Parts of Animals: The children learned the characteristics and body parts of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish by using and working with the animal puzzle the was made with a great puzzle maker and control charts in the classroom.

Bird Puzzle: This child is tracing and labeling the parts of a bird: beak, head, breast, wing, tail, legs and claws.

A Peek into Next Week: Parts of Plants!

 

A Peek into Our Week | Ms. Kate’s Class | Week of October 9th

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I truly love this time of year. The perfect smell of fall, the beautiful colors we see all around us, and all of the really fun things our class gets to talk and learn about! This week we focused on Autumn. We had a blast heading outdoors together and collecting the different kinds of leaves we saw. As a group, we discussed the different types of leaves and then sorted them into different colors and created a leaf color graph. We also learned about chlorophyll and what happens to the tree and leaves as the different seasons go by. The children were also very excited  to  explore their leaves they found with leaf rubbings. It was a fantastic week!

Here is our leaf color chart that the children made. Having the children sort and classify is helping the children organize their understanding of language, people and the objects in their environment. This process is the child’s first step into math and science!
Our two friends are working on copy writing the basket of sight words. When you copy write the children refine their fine motor skills, are able to form letters and understand the purpose from just seeing a word and now writing it on to paper. Children also feel proud and gain more confidence in themselves when they see what they can do while they are writing. It can also spark their creativity.
Having a special moment in the library with one of our field students from the University of Akron.
This week our children were able to explore the different types of leaves that they brought in. One of our lessons was leaf rubbing. This lesson provides knowledge of the different leaves, fine motor skills as they color back and forth. They also have to follow step by step directions.

 

A Peek Into Next Week

Next week is all about pumpkins! Another one of my favorites ☺ Together we will…

  • discuss the life cycle of a pumpkin
  • have fun investigating a pumpkin from the inside out
  • sink or float science experiment
  • use our five senses to explore a pumpkin

Parent Education Night Wednesday, October 25th at 6:30pm (Tallmadge Campus) click on the link to register: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-montessori

A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of October 9

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Leaves and towers and buses! Oh my! The Holden Arboretum trip was a blast! Many of our students enjoyed their very first bus ride, while older students had fun teaching bus games. We were able to learn about different leaves and trees, catch wildlife that lives in the arboretum, and walk through the canopy. During our work time this week, first, third, and fourth years worked with different extensions of the Constructive Triangles. First year students transformed the blue triangles into new shapes. Third year students explored equivalence of the shapes inside the Small Hexagonal Box. Fourth year students found equivalence between different parallelograms, squares, and rectangles with our Euclid’s Theorem Drawer. Second grade students had their first look at our Geographic Feature Cards to learn about caves, icebergs, fiords, and islands.

This month, students are focusing on Composition of the Earth experiments. This experiment is about the density of solid objects. This experiment has a pot filled with sand. In the pot are iron objects, ping pong balls, and other plastic objects. Students push all objects to the bottom of the sand, then shake the pot to see what happens. The iron objects sink and the plastic objects rise to the top. Students can conclude that denser objects settle under substances or objects that are less dense.
These first and second year students are completing their constellation viewing tubes. Students have poked holes through printed constellations and glued them to tubes to be able to view the constellations in the light. Other students have decided to paint constellations or poke holes in a sheet of paper to use to cover a light! There has been a lot of creativity with this project!
One of our favorite parts of the Holden Arboretum trip was the Canopy Walk. This Walk was 500′ long and 65′ above the ground. We were able to walk through the canopy of the forest to see a different perspective of the trees and animals.
Here, our students are on top of the Emergent Tower, 120′ above the ground! Our students were nervous as they climbed higher and higher, but everyone made it to the top! The view was amazing.
These students are searching for live and dead forest material!
One of our activities at the Arboretum was finding the age of trees. Partners were given ribbons of differing lengths and were sent to find the tree it fit around. Our guide told us there is a mathematical formula for finding the age of live trees based on diameter. This formula changes based on type of tree.
These students are holding the fruit of a Buttonbush. These fruits were used on clothing as actual buttons!

A Peek into Next Week

Lower Elementary students will be working on small and large bead frames, beginning dinosaur research, adding angles, and studying the layers of the Earth. Upper Elementary students will study homonyms and prepositions, will explore the rules of electron clouds, and work through angle word problems.

REMINDERS: Next week we have our first “Bring Your Parent to Work Time” Days. If you are signed up, you will receive an email reminding you of your time, with some information to review.

Parent Education Night Wednesday, October 25th at 6:30pm (Tallmadge Campus) click on the link to register: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-montessori

 

A Peek at Our Week | Ms. Courtney’s Classroom | Week of October 9th

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Topic: This week we learned about apples. The children enjoyed tasting different types of apples: granny smith, red delicious, gala and honey crisp. They also discovered what the inside of an apple looks like and how apples grow.  Some of the students even had the chance to do apple stamping and make homemade applesauce.

Work Time

Snap Dressing Frame: This child is learning to manipulate snaps so that she can dress herself. She is also developing motor skills and learning to follow logical steps.
Introduction Tray: These children are being introduced to the decimal system and becoming familiar with the symbols and quantities associated with units, tens, hundreds and thousands. They are visually seeing the difference between 1 unit, 1 ten, 1 hundred and 1 thousand.
Teen Board: This child is showing that he knows the symbols 11 – 19 and can successfully match the corresponding quantities, for example to make the number 14 he places one ten and four units.
Crumbing: This child is helping clean up sand after he was done using our kinetic sand work.
This child is learning how to prepare snack for his friends with Ms. Faith.
Object to Picture: This child is matching objects to pictures, by doing this she is making the connection that what she holds in her hand is the same as what she sees on the picture. In another sense that the picture of an apple is an apple, and the apple she is holding is an apple. This is a pre-reading material which aids in abstract thinking. This is essential preparation for reading.
These children are tracing and identifying the letter ‘e’ and its sound by using the sandpaper letter ‘e’.
Color Box 4: This child is selecting the lightest of the colored tablets and placing them in order lightest to darkest until all of the tiles have been put in order.

Guest Readers

  

Reminders

  • Parent Education Night Wednesday, October 25th at 6:30pm
    You can register to attend and for childcare by clicking this link
  • Bring Your Parent to Work Time Monday, October 23, 2017
  • Halloween Party Friday, October 27, 2017

A Look Into Next Week: Pumpkins

  • The students will describe a pumpkin using all of their senses.
  • The students will discuss the different shapes pumpkins can be.
  • The students will explore the inside of a pumpkin.
  • The students will guess and count how many seeds are in a pumpkin.