Mr. John’s March, 2017 Newsletter Article

On a personal note…

March was a hard month for my animals.  I had many deaths which does happen once in awhile, but this time I had to contact animal removal Tampa to get rid of them.  It just seems that the animals get old and…. well, die.  With death comes life and new animals- which has been exciting in our room.  I did add Green and Brown Anoles and Long Tailed Lizards AND the popular Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.  These are calm and beautiful creatures are not like the cockroaches that shared my apartment in college at The Ohio State University.  Those roaches looked into my soul and gave me chills before they darted off behind the stove.  Dreadful beasts they were.  Although, it was sport for me and my roommate to capture them in the Roach Motel. A game so to speak.  The roaches toyed with us at times.  We would think we got a few the night before. Looking in the box and expecting to see roaches glued to the inner box only to have them taunt and mock us and some pretended to be stuck and when we picked up the motel they scurried out of the box behind the fridge laughing.   By Spring Quarter we all became friends and lived harmoniously together! We ate dinner together, watched TV, and sometimes they would go to out with us.  Although since they didn’t have an ID we had to sneak them in.  I often wonder what some of my six legged friends are up to now.

 

Observing Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches
Green and Brown Anoles and Long Tail Lizard        

 

Line Time Lessons:

The beginning of the month brought us looking at various artists like Monet and Picasso.  We looked at Claude Monet’s water colors and his view of the world.  Monet’s view was not as interesting as Pablo Picasso’s.  The children laughed as they saw some of his “weird” pictures.  We went to the Akron Art Museum and learned that paintings consist of lines, shapes, colors, and textures.  The students had a blast at the museum!

 

  

“I Spy”  (Language)                                                        Young and old in a Montessori Classroom

                                                                                           

We turned our attention to our environment.  We looked at what pollution can do to our environment.  What air, water, littering and noise pollution does to our environment and what we can do to help clean our world.  We learned the 3 R’s … Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  I showed them pictures of polluted areas and clean areas then asked which they would rather live.  It was a resounding answer of a clean environment.  We now know that pollution is TOXIC!

 

The 9 Tray(Math)

We prepared ourselves for the International Festival about learning about our own great state of Ohio.  We learned that our official tree is the Buckeye tree,  mammal is the White Tailed Deer,  fossil is the Trilobite, bird is the Cardinal, flower is the Scarlet Carnation, insect is the Lady Bug, drink is Tomato Juice… get what the predominant color is?  The official rock and roll song is Hang On Sloopy and the state flag is the only state in the union that is not a rectangle.

 

     

9 Tray(Math), Kindergarten Binder work             9 Tray and Blue Rectangle Box(Geometry)

 

Cultural Subjects:

My line time and the kindergarten class count to ten in 28 different languages (English, Sign Language, German, French, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Tagalog, Polish, Irish, Welsh, Hebrew, Arabic w/the Lebanese dialect, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish, Swahili, Korean, Serbo-Croation, Hindi, Flemish/Dutch, Malay, Cebuano, Farsi and Turkish!)

We had our cheeky leprechaun, Sean O’Keefe, visit us again.  He left the room a mess but left candy for the teachers and students.  I will catch you next year Sean O’Keefe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

                                                                       Sean O’Keefe aftermath

 

St. Patty Day Princesses

 

We had a wonderful field trip to the Akron Art Museum.  This yearly field trip is one of my favorites.  The docents do a great job of explaining the art and keeping the children’s attention.  The students love to see all the art and participate in the activities at the Art Museum.

 

Hands on at the art museum

I have a 9 year old Amaryllis flower that blooms every spring.  I am having the kindergarten students track and document the growth of this plant and form their hypothesis on how big it might get and what color the flowers will be.  They are measuring with a ruler and documenting in inches and centimeters the growth of this plant.

 

                                                             Tracking the growth of a plant

 

Spring has sprung.  Students noticed our flower in bloom looked like a work!

 

Visitor:

We had Ms. Taylor, a dental hygienist, come in and she gave a lesson how important it is to brush, floss, and eat healthy to protect our teeth you can also keep good dental and overall health with the help of supplements that’s why I buy maeng da thai kratom powder for this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Enrichment Group Time | Kindergarten
-with Mr. John

The kindergartners started their section in Language.  We will be learning about the parts of speech until the end of the year.  We went over vowels/consonants, and nouns and verbs.  A noun is a person, place, or thing.  A verb is an action word or something you do.  We the learned there are three articles.  They are A, An, The.  We learned rules when we use those articles.  “A” hooks up with consonants, “AN” hooks up with vowels, and “THE” hooks up with anything.

Cultural Subjects:
My line time and the kindergarten class count to ten in 28 different languages (English, Sign Language, German, French, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Tagalog, Polish, Irish, Welsh, Hebrew, Arabic w/the Lebanese dialect, Japanese, Hungarian, Swedish, Swahili, Korean, Serbo-Croation, Hindi, Flemish/Dutch, Malay, Cebuano, Farsi and Turkish)!

Handwriting Enrichment
-with Ms. Kristen

The children learned how to write vowels and consonant blends in cursive this month, such as ” oo”, “ee”, “th”, “sh”, etc. We also ventured into more creative journal writing, answering questions such as ” If you could go on vacation anywhere, who would you take with you and why?” and ” Tell me two things you plan to do over your Spring Break”. I’m daily impressed with their creativity and excitement for writing!

Reading Group | Kindergarten
-with Ms. Kate

For the month of March our Reading group read two wonderful stories called The Frog Prince, and Guinea Fowl And Rabbit Get Justice. With each of these stories the children were able to illustrate and write about what was happening in each of the stories. By illustrating, the children are visualizing the characters and setting of the story. As they make their own decisions about what the hardest thing is, they are learning that their individual perspectives on a story are important. They also had so much fun acting out the stories. Dramatizations can make it easier for students to take in detail and get plots straight! The children really enjoyed these stories!

Science Enrichment
-by Ms. Kathleen

This month in March we did 3 Science experiments,

  1. Density:  What happens when you put a lemon and a lime in a container of water? The lemon floats and the lime sinks. Why? because the lime is denser than the lemon, the lime has more water by weight in it, it is also guessed that lemons have more air in them which makes them float.
  2. Density: What happens when we mix oil, water and Alka Seltzer in a plastic clear bottle? But first we pour water into bottle about 1/4 full. Then pour vegetable oil into bottle until full, wait until it separates. Add 10 drops food coloring. Break a seltzer tablet in half drop into bottle. Watch it sink to the bottom and the bubble greatness begins, bubbles start wildly going up and down the bottle quickly almost in a dancing like fashion, truly entertaining. This fantastic experiment is because the oil stays above the water the oil is lighter than the water. Oil and water do not mix, the structures of the two molecules do not allow them to bond together. When the tablet pieces are added, they sank to the bottom and created a gas, As the gas bubbles rose, they took some of the colored water with them. When the bubbles reach the top, the gas escapes and down went the water. This was for sure one of the Children’s favorites this month because of all that it does, so fun to watch.
  3. Carbonation: What will happen when you place raisins in a fresh glass of ginger ale? The raisins sink to the bottom of the ginger ale. Then after just a few minutes the raisins get covered in bubbles and rise to the top. Then fall to the bottom. They repeat this pattern for several minutes. Why does this happen? The raisins are heavier than the ginger ale. When enough bubbles attach to the raisins they become” lighter” than the ginger ale. The bubbles raise the raisins to the top. When the bubbles reach the surface they pop dropping the raisins to the bottom again.

 

         Up up the dancing raisins go!

Music Enrichment

-by Ms. Sabrina

Music is so much fun! This month was all about good manners! A song and game about sharing was played! While listening to the directions in the song, the children passed and shared a ball, and had a lot of fun!  The magic words “please” and “thank you” were reinforced through song and by using movement and castanets. “You Have a Choice” was a song played during class, which taught the children that they had a choice to be kind. The children enjoyed using bells, tambourines and rhythm sticks as well this month. The children also learned the difference between forte and piano or loud and soft. They loved raising and lowering their voices with the music. Songs about forgiveness and telling the truth were also shared this month. Ask your child to share all these great songs!

Art Enrichment
-by Ms. Ame

The first week of March Miss Michele felt much better and brought some (much needed) sunshine into our rooms using modge-podge glue with different colors mixed in! The students each created their own sunshine using different colors. These masterpieces will look fantastic in a window that gets a lot of sunshine. The next week Miss Ame stepped in when Miss Michele was sick and taught an abbreviated art lesson on Andy Warhol, that’s what all those colorful cats were about! The students learned a bit about his life and the definition of pop art. The next week Miss Michele taught the students about the definition of monochromatic. Monochromatic means only using a single color.  The students each created their own “house” or creation out of gluing popsicle sticks. Then they painted their creation only one color. It was difficult to pick only one! The next week Miss Michele talked about complimentary colors and introduced the color wheel once again. The students had to identify the complimentary color to the color they painted their creation the previous week. Then Miss Michele provided small boxes full of all sorts of treasures! The students had to be very careful to pick out only the complimentary colored items and glue them onto their monochromatic creation! They turned out so beautiful! If you see yours on the art rack, feel free to take it home! We can’t wait for April and see what multicultural projects Miss Michele will have us make to display at the International Festival on the 21st!

 

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