Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Look for our sight words when reading a story, point out words you use that begin with the letter of the week. Cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
While driving your car, have your child tell you all the items they see that starts with the letter of the week.
Take a long walk in your park or neighborhood and point out the seasonal changes to your child. Discuss what you did as a child during each season and share some old and new memories with your son or daughter. Make special plans for each season.
To reinforce our space theme, do some star gazing each night. Have your child pick their favorite, brightest one and share in making a special wish together!
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Our Academic Enrichment time is daily from 12:00-1:00pm. This time is specifically designed for our Kindergarten students to join together as a group to work and progress through the advanced materials and lessons in the Montessori primary curriculum. Throughout the school day in their classroom they are still working individually with their classroom teacher on these and other materials at their level.
Reading Group (Junior Great Book Program):
In March we began our focused reading groups for our kindergarten students. Kindergarten students are meeting with Ms. Kate on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Ms. Kate will keep you updated, most work will be sent home on Wednesdays and will need returned the following Monday for their next lesson.
05/02: Introduction to prepositions
Rules of the prepositions
Worksheets, diagramming sentences
05/09: Introduction to interjections
Rules of the interjections
Worksheets, diagramming sentences
05/16: Introduction to punctuation (end of a sentence)
Rules of the punctuation (end of a sentence)
Period, question mark, exclamation mark
Worksheets, practicing with interjections
05/23: Introduction to capitalization
Rules of capitalization
Worksheets, practicing our capitalization
05/30: Review of the year
Telling time, landforms
Coins, paper money
Mathematical operations
Geography
Sight Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
05/02: word, when 05/09: which, what 05/16: there, their 05/23: way, my
Synonyms of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Look for our words of the week when reading a story, cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
Practice using the different synonyms of the week in a sentence together.
Mr. John will be sending homework home to reinforce these lessons. Please turn homework into the orange box outside of Mr. John’s classroom. Please email him if you have any questions: jkotradi@thesmarterkids.com.
The chorus of a great song by that great, Chicago based, punk band Naked Raygun. Do you “wonder” about really really random stuff like me? For instance, I have asked myself the question how many tons of paper clips are produced in the world each year? To go along with that, is how many tons of staples are produced? Is it even tons? I don’t know , although I bet I could google it! My favorite daughter, (or as she would reply “I’m your only daughter”) wonders about things as well. She wonders if horses would be happy jumping in a bouncy house or where do railroad tracks begin and end. Although, she also has more profound inquiries. She wonders why the universe wasn’t created one year, one month, one day or one millisecond earlier or later than it was created. I asked my oldest son if he wonders and he just stared at me with a blank look and left the room. My youngest son wonders how much gum he can shove and chew in his mouth at one time or how long can he go without wearing socks or not taking a shower. (Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that boy’s brain! Then I realize I really don’t want to know). Then I go back wondering how many tons of BB’s are produced each year…
Line Time Lessons Our students “wonder” too! We want to give them every opportunity to explore in the classroom and learn how they can answer all of their “wonders”.
The month started off by going back in time and studying the Ancient Romans. The Ancient Romans had similar Gods as the Ancient Greeks. The king of all Gods in Rome was Jupiter and his wife Juno who was the Goddess of Marriage and childbirth. Pluto was the God of the Underworld, Neptune was the God of the Seas, and finally we came across the God of War, Mars. Did you notice that a lot of these Gods had planets named after them?
Geometry at it’s finest!!!
(Inspecting rocks with a magnifying glass. Both wet and dry rocks)
Plug your noses we are entering the pollution zone. Pollution is TOXIC! We all agree that pollution is a bad thing. All pollution including air , water, land, and noise pollution. We learned how we could help our environment by using the 3 R’s.. Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
I spy with my little eye Friends working together
Writing rhyming words
Hold your breath (not because it stinks) but we are jumping into the ocean. The salty, deep, vast oceans. We learned about the several amazing animals that live in the ocean. We do not want to mess with a shark or get too close to a jellyfish. But clown fish are cool and the grouper has two eyes on one side of its face. We got reacquainted with the mammals of the oceans, dolphins, whales, and the orca.
(Sisters working on the 100 board) (Working with the continents)
(Bro power!)
We ended the month by learning about our own state of Ohio. The students were first taught how to spell Ohio. OH-IO ! We learned that the flag of Ohio is the only flag that is not the shape of a rectangle. The official nickname of Ohio is the Buckeye State and the Buckeye Tree is the official tree of Ohio. The white tailed deer and trilobite are the mammal and fossil of Ohio. We found a theme of the color “red/scarlet” for the rest of the official things of Ohio. The flower is the scarlet carnation, bird is the cardinal, insect is the lady bug and the official drink is tomato juice. The official rock and roll song is “Hang On Sloopy”
We had a field placement student, Lyndsey, from Stark State visit us. She said Absorbent Minds was one of the best field experiences she has had! Good luck in your studies Lyndsey!
(Lyndsey, our field placement student having fun working with our students!)
Cultural Subjects
We had a very cheeky visitor on St. Patrick’s Day. It is that same leprechaun named Shane O’Keefe that has been messing my classroom for the past several years. He flipped tables and chairs, threw materials throughout the classroom, but left chocolate eggs for the students and the teachers. Until next year Shane O’Keefe!
We now can count to 10 in twenty six languages… English (that is our native language), Spanish, Sign Language, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic w/Lebanese dialect, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Hebrew, Swedish, Korean, Polish, and Tagalog, Hungarian, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemish, Serbo-Croatian, Cebuano, Malay, Hindi
(2 Cents A Meal donation)
(Pastor Kirk reading to the children)
Kindergarten Lesson
We capped off our lessons in geometry by learning our geometric solids (Cube, sphere, cone, rectangular and triangular prisms, ovoid, ellipsoid, cylinder, square and triangular based pyramids.
…”Don’t know much about Geometry…” but our Kindergartners do!!!!
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 leaerned 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.
We now can count to 10 in twenty six languages… English (that is our native language), Spanish, Sign Language, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic w/Lebanese dialect, Italian, Romanian, Russian, Hebrew, Swedish, Korean, Polish, and Tagalog, Hungarian, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemish, Serbo-Croatian, Cebuano, Malay, Hindi
Music
In Music the children learned a new activity called Cat and Mouse. It sharpened their listening skills, both high and low. They also learned different sounds. The children played the keyboard, as well as learned to listen well for different sounds. They also learned movement songs.
Art
In Art the children made Henna on Hands sculpture and Weaving. Do talk to the children about these awesome classes?
Science
Magic Milk Rainbow (Surface Tension) and Bubbles in a Bottle (Density) were their Science experiments. They were so much fun!!
Swirling food coloring in milk-surface tension A closer look at a “lava lamp”
Our Academic Enrichment time is daily from 12:00-1:00pm. This time is specifically designed for our Kindergarten students to join together as a group to work and progress through the advanced materials and lessons in the Montessori primary curriculum. Throughout the school day in their classroom they are still working individually with their classroom teacher on these and other materials at their level.
Reading Group (Junior Great Book Program):
In March we began our focused reading groups for our kindergarten students. Kindergarten students are meeting with Ms. Kate on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Ms. Kate will keep you updated, most work will be sent home on Wednesdays and will need returned the following Monday for their next lesson.
Mr. John will be sending homework home to reinforce these lessons. Please turn homework into the BLUE box outside of Mr. John’s classroom. Please email him if you have any questions: jkotradi@thesmarterkids.com.
Our Academic Enrichment time is daily from 12:00-1:00pm. This time is specifically designed for our Kindergarten students to join together as a group to work and progress through the advanced materials and lessons in the Montessori primary curriculum. Throughout the school day in their classroom they are still working individually with their classroom teacher on these and other materials at their level.
Reading Group (Junior Great Book Program):
In March we will begin our focused reading groups for our kindergarten students. Kindergarten students are meeting with Ms. Kate on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Please review the information sent home. There will also be work sent home on Wednesdays and will need returned the following Monday for their next lesson.
2/29: Geometric Shapes and Constructive Boxes
Handwriting Workshop with Ms. Kristen (practicing proper letter formation)
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Look for our words of the week when reading a story, cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
Practice using the different synonyms of the week in a sentence together.
Mr. John will be sending homework home to reinforce these lessons. Please turn homework into the orange box outside of Mr. John’s classroom. Please email him if you have any questions: jkotradi@thesmarterkids.com.
…A rock anthem by BOC but what an appropriate song for this last month of celebrities that are no longer with us. We kind of knew Scott Weiland(Stone Temple Pilots) would go before the age of 50. We didn’t expect Lemmy Kilmister(Motorhead), Glen Frey(Eagles), Paul Kantner(Jefferson Airplane), or David Bowie to pass so quickly. On the acting side of the coin we lost Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, and Abe Vigoda. They say this comes in “3’s” but it seems more than that lately.
In celebration of life, I introduced one of my lucky female mice to a young, virile male in hopes to breed more mice. We will find out soon!
Line time lessons:
We all returned to school after a well rested winter break. Due to the long break we did a refresher week covering the classroom ground rules. We went over the four basic rules of: 1) No running in the classroom. We do not run because we can get hurt or hurt someone else. 2) Use our listening ears. The students pay attention to the teachers during line time and before cleaning the room and line time. Important information is shared during line time and listening is a sign of respect and courtesy. 3) Keep our hands to ourselves. We do this to honor other student’s personal space. In addition, we do not hit, push or do anything to physically hurt other students. 4) Respect others. This is basically being nice to your fellow students. Use nice words, smile instead of giving mean faces, sharing, and helping those in need.
My Lunch Bunch
We also talked about family (since we spent so much time with them over the holidays, good or bad, lol). We talked about our mom and dad and what we call them (mommy, mama, daddy, and papa). We also have grandparents that we call yiayia, papou, oma, papa to name a few. We told stories about our aunts, uncles, cousins, and of course our brothers and sisters. We determined that pets are part of our family even though they are not human.
To honor the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we learned a bit about his life and his accomplishments. The students became actresses and actors as they recreated Rosa Parks making her stand on a bus in Montgomery Alabama. The students enjoyed playing the part of the bus driver, Rosa Parks, “the mean guy”, a police officer, Martin Luther King Jr., and passengers on the bus. We discussed our differences such as skin color, eye color, hair color, and gender. Then we discussed how we are similar. We talked about discrimination and segregation. We talked about if someone with red hair wouldn’t be allowed to do art “just because” they have red hair or if anyone who had blue eyes would have to go to a different classroom with less materials, broken crayons, or no books “just because” they have blue eyes. I had only boys fetch the chairs for the skit and brought that to the attention of the class. We had some very sad girls…. I did let the girls take the chairs back after the skit.
Back of the bus skit…anyone can sit anywhere, YAY!
We also began to learn about our body and how it works. We learned about our five senses (touch, hearing, sight, smell, and taste). Did you know you can “feel” with any part of your body? We hear loud noises, quiet noises, high and low noises. We need light to see and if we close our eyes we can’t see. There are good smells like cinnamon, vanilla and bad smells like a dirty diaper and vinegar. My favorite was the taste test where we tasted sweet (sugar water), salty (potato chips), sour (pure lemon juice), and bitter (unsweetened baking chocolate). The children enjoyed “most” of the tastes.
This chocolate and lemon juice sure taste yucky!
We ended the month learning more about our body. We looked at the skeletal system and if we didn’t have a skeleton we would be one messy blob on the ground! We learned the skull protects our brain, the rib cage protects our lungs, and the spine keeps us sitting and standing straight. We learned technical terms for our arms, leg and our digits (which is a funny name called phalanges). We brought our life sized foam puzzle into our room. His name is Elvis because we learned about the pelvis and it was a cool rhyming name.
Cultural Subjects
During line time lesson we can count to 10 in twenty different languages (English, Sign Language, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic w/Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, and Dutch/Flemmish).
Academic Enrichment (Kindergarten Students):
This month we started our section in Math. We explored about the unit (ones), ten, hundred, and thousand columns. The kindergarteners composed numbers, and were introduced to addition with and without carry overs (static). Kindergarten students across all the classrooms in our Academic Enrichment lesson can count to 10 in twenty different languages (English, Sign Language, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic w/Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, and Welsh Dutch/Flemish, Serbo-Croatian, and Cebuano).
Enrichments:
The children had such a great time in Art, Music, and Science. There were quite a bit of squeals, as well as laughter. The children also showed much self control, and attentiveness. In Art the children started making mystical creatures from scratch!
Science
The children also conducted experiments involving a peeled orange and an unpeeled orange ~ the peeled orange sank, and the unpeeled orange floated, as well as one that made a crumpled piece of paper float in a glass of plain water, and sank in a glass of water with dish soap. They love learning about why. Please talk to the children about these classes. Not only do they know much, but they also are pretty expressive! Thank you for sharing them with us!
In our classroom, the children had so much fun with Mr. John, doing the tasting experiment. They tasted several tastes, and by far they were most expressive with the chocolate (bitter). I let out a laugh, and very nearly slipped of my chair, watching them!
Art
The children first studied about mystical creatures with Ms. Michele. They then drew out their creatures (combining 2-3 different animals to create their imaginary creature). What a creative bunch we have! The next class the children made their creatures out of foil, and covered them with clay. The creatures are now in Ms. Michele’s hands, being baked. We can’t wait to paint them!
Music
In Music the children are studying the piece of music in Peter and the Wolf. They studied the characters, as well as the instruments that represented the characters in Peter and the Wolf. The children finished this study last week, and are quite proficient in it!
…. Father Christmas Give Us Some Money…. That song just make me laugh. While the majority of people are listening to the classic Christmas songs of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra I lean toward more…. contemporary artists such as The Kinks/ Father Christmas, Chris Squire/ Run With The Fox, Greg Lake/I Believe In Father Christmas, Pretenders/2000 Miles, London After Midnight/ Christmas Song, Waitresses/ Christmas Wrapping, Band Aid/ Do They Know It’s Christmas, David Bowie& Bing Crosby/ Little Drummer Boy, Cruxshadows/ Happy Christmas(cover), The Pogues/Fairytale Of New York City, U2’s poem/Driving To Midnight Mass On Christmas Eve… You get the picture, not my dad’s Christmas Songs!
With a heavy heart I must inform you that we lost the matriarch of my rat colony, Blixa. She was one of the original rats in the room. She developed a tumor, which most rats do, and she passed last month. But I did get a new Blixa and she is doing well!
Line Time Lessons:
We spent the majority of our time preparing for the Christmas show. Our little Muppets and Sesame Streeters did an Ab Fab job!
Cultural Subjects:
We can now count to 10 in 18 different languages. (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, and Irish).
(Feeding time with the snake, Elise)
Students enjoyed their Montessori Work time this month. Much of our group time this month was used to prepare for the Christmas Show, but Music, Science and Art continued as usual.
Music:
Ms. Lisa continued to introduce new songs and movements to the children. They loved singing Jingle Bells, while ringing their hand bells. Skipping around the room was so much fun, while pretending to be reindeer! We also were appreciative of her help practicing our songs for the Christmas Show!
Art:
For the first week of December, Ms. Michele had the children finish their warm and cool color tile mosaics from last month. The second week Ms. Michele had the children draw their self-portraits. The children used mirrors and pencils to first draw an oval for their faces. Then they added eyes, nose, mouth, ears and eyebrows. Lastly they added details such as shoulders and hair.
Science:
Mr. John did three experiments with the children, in Science Class. They enjoyed wondering whether it is the lemon or the lime that would sink (or float), they enjoyed seeing the colors on the Skittles spread in the water. The red color in the peppermint candy did the same thing as well. Please talk to your children about these activities that they so love!
Academic Enrichment | Afternoon Lesson with Kindergarten Students: Children love animals and I enjoy teaching the children about different types of animals. This month we started discussing mammals. I chose mammals because we are mammals. We learned that mammals have hair or fur, are born alive, and drink mother’s milk when first born. We learned that mammals are warm blooded (their body temperature remains constant) and that they are vertebrates (have spines). We learned that dolphins and whales are mammals and that the bat is the only mammal that can fly.
Then we slithered our way into discussing reptiles. We came to the conclusion that the snake is the most popular reptile. We learned reptiles are cold blooded, vertebrates, lay hard shelled eggs, and have dry scales. Lizards, snakes, and turtles topped the list of reptiles.
We hopped into our discussion of amphibians. We all agreed that the frog was the most popular amphibian and that amphibians are cold blooded and vertebrates. We also learned that their skin is moist and soft and that they can live on BOTH land and water. Amphibians lay eggs but the eggs have no shell but are like jelly. We found that frogs, toads, and newts were amphibians.
We swam to our friends called fish. We learned that fish are cold blooded (their body temperature changes to the temperature in their environment) and are vertebrates. We learned that most fish have scales, gills and fins, and some fish lay eggs and some fish are liver bearers (babies are born alive). We introduced a new word, “habitat”. This is where something lives and the fish’s habitat is the water. The children were thrilled to learn that the shark is a fish.
We then flew with the animals called birds. Birds have feathers, are warm blooded, and are vertebrates. All birds lay hard shelled eggs and have wings. All birds have wings but some birds are flightless (cannot fly) such as the penguin, ostrich, and emu.
We looked at some creepy crawlers that were a bit different. They were invertebrates. we looked at insects which have a head, thorax, abdomen, six legs, and two antennae. Beetles, flies, bees, butterflies, and crickets are all insects. Arachnids are invertebrates but have eight legs, cyphelothorax, and abdomen. Spiders, scorpions, ticks, and mites are all arachnids.
We ended 2015 learning how to use a ruler. The students went home and measured many things in inches and in centimeters.
We can now count to ten in 20 different languages. (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, and Welsh).
1/11: Martin Luther King Jr./ Similarities and Differences
History of MLK, Rosa Parks.
Our similarities and differences (eyes, hair, gender and skin color)
MLK/ Rosa Parks skit
Friday 1/15 NO SCHOOL | Teacher In Service Day
1/18: Five Senses
Monday 1/18- NO SCHOOL (MLK Day)
Introduction to the Senses
Focus on each Sense throughout the week
Activities and experiments to support our knowledge of the senses
1/25: Skeletal System
Arms, Hands and Fingers
Ribs, Pelvis
Legs, Feet and Toes
Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.
1/04: Nn 1/11: Oo 1/18: Pp 1/25: Qq
Rhyming Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
1/04: BOB, fob, gob, job, lob, mob, rob 1/11: BUG, dug, hug, jug, mug, tug 1/18: BUN, fun, nun, run, sun 1/25: BUB, cub, hub, pub, rub, sub
Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
Look for our words of the week when reading a story, cut out pictures beginning with the letters of the week.
Play “I Spy” with items beginning with the letter of the week, or find things around your home that begin with the letter of the week.
Talk about what makes you the same and different from your child. Do you have the same hair and eye color? If not, where did they get their eye color from?
Take turns trying to write your name on a piece of paper blindfolded. Wow! We appreciate the sense of sight!
Quiz your child about the different bones of the body, see if they can point to where their Femur is or tell you what their Phalanges are.
