Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with plant and butterflies.
5/:09 Sea Life
Warm water vs. cold water and types of fish in each environment
Sea creatures, different types of Fish
Coral Reef
Sink and float science experiments
Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with sea life.
5/16: Outer Space
The planets in our Solar System
Facts about each planet
What is Gravity?
Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with outer space.
5/23: Outer Space
Constellations, the Sun
History of the space shuttle, Kennedy Space Center
Astronauts, Neil Armstrong
Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with outer space.
5/30: All About Insects
What makes an insect?
How are insects different than spiders?
All about bees and ladybugs!
Afternoon Group Lesson: Variety of fun books, activities and crafts having to do with insects.
Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.
5/04- 6/01: Review
rhyming words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
5/02: Bee
5/16: bright
5/23: blue 5/30: sun
Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
While reading a book have your child point to all of the letter of the week she/he can find. Have them do this with the sight words as well. Play I‐Spy using things that only start with the letter of the week/ sight words.
Make fish sugar cookies together! Read Rainbow Fish and create an underwater scene in your child’s bedroom (use blue saran wrap to cover the windows and create fish out of paper).
Visit the aquarium in Cleveland. Create a story about all of the Fish and Mammals you saw!
Make a telescope out of paper towel rolls, tape, markers and crayons. Talk about the constellations you see!
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.
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. Faith on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Ms. Faith will keep you updated, most work will be sent home on Wednesdays and will need returned the following Monday for their next lesson.
5/2: Introduction to prepositions
Rules of the prepositions
Worksheets, practicing with prepositions
5/9: Introduction to interjections
Rules of the interjections
Worksheets, practicing with interjections
5/16: Introduction to punctuation (end of a Sentence)
Rules of the punctuation
Worksheets, diagramming sentences
5/23: Introduction to capitalization
Rules of capitalization
Worksheets, practicing our capitalization
5/30: Review of the year
Telling time, landforms
Coins, paper money
Mathematical operations
Geography
Synonyms of the week
5/2: UNDER, below, beneath, underneath
5/9: QUICK, fast, swift, rapid, speedy, hasty
5/16: NEAT, tidy, clean, arranged, well-ordered
5/23: LOOK, see, glance, stare, gaze
5/30: FUNNY, silly, playful, crazy, foolish Sight Words
5/2: some
5/9: time
5/16: write
5/23: people
5/30: many
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.
-Practice identifying different parts of speech when reading together.
The month of March has been very busy in our classroom. We learned about Dr. Seuss, Space, and all about our state of Ohio. The children also enjoyed celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and wearing green and celebrating having the most Box Tops with Silly Sock Day and a Pizza Party! We also had a blast on Pajama and Show and Tell Day!
During the first week, we had fun learning all about Dr. Seuss. The children enjoyed reading “ The Cat In The Hat”, “ Horton Hatches The Egg” , and “ The Alphabet Book”. The Cat In The Hat even came for a visit to our classroom! He showed us how to make Cat masks and read to us from his book! The children also learned that Dr. Seuss’ real name was Theodore Seuss Giesel. We also learned that Dr. Seuss lived near a Zoo as a child, which is where he began to think of all of his imaginary creatures in his stories!
During week two and three, we enjoyed learning all about Outer Space. The children enjoyed learning all the names of the planets in our solar system, learning all about the phases of the moon, and all about constellations. The children also enjoyed watching footage of the first moon landing and they also enjoyed making their own constellations using stickers with Ms. Kim!
We learned all about Ohio during week four! The children learned our state bird, the Cardinal. We learned that the male cardinals have bright red feathers, while the female Cardinals have more brown, dull feathers in order to camouflage themselves and to protect their nest. We also learned that our state capitol is Columbus, and that our state tree is the buckeye tree. We also talked about how our state is a small piece of our country and our city is a small piece of our state.
For St. Patrick’s Day, the children also enjoyed making a shamrock craft with Ms. Kim and reading a story about how St. Patrick’s Day became a holiday. The children really enjoyed decorating their shamrock with Lucky Charms! Also, when the children arrived at school that day, we discovered that a tricky leprechaun had made a mess in our classroom!
During the last week of school, the children had a lot of fun hunting for Easter Eggs outside! Ms. Kim placed Easter eggs all around the playground, and the children enjoyed trying to find them. And let me tell you, those eggs were packed full of candy!
Academic Enrichment | Kindergarten
In March we began our focused reading groups for our kindergarten students. Kindergarten students are meeting with Ms. Kate on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Students read through a classic work of literature, discuss and have activities each week. These activities have included dramatizations, creative writing and art projects. It has been a wonderful program, our students are gaining so much!
Ms. Kristen begins our afternoon academic enrichment lesson with handwriting lessons and practice. Students have been doing wonderfully!
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.
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.
The Kindergartners 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, Hungarian, and Tagalog, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemish, Serbo-Croatian, Cebuano, Malay, Hindi.
Enrichments (Ms. Kim)
Music In music this month the children sang hello to Tina the Turtle, Freida the Frog, Jerry the Giraffe, and Bernie the Bernard! We finished up the story, Peter and the Wolf, by listening to the sounds of the instruments on Ms. Lisa’s keyboard. When Ms. Lisa played the sound of an instrument on her keyboard, the children guessed what character from the story it was. We also acted out the characters for fun! The children spent a lot of time this month learning about the sounds and keys of the keyboard. Ms. Lisa showed the children where the high and low sounds on the keyboard are located. We then learned the difference between smooth and jumpy sounds. Next the children noticed that the keys on the keyboard are black and white, and then got to play them!
Science For our first experiment, Mr. John poured colored water into a liter bottle. Then he added vegetable oil. The vegetable oil stayed on top because oil and water do not mix. Next he asked the children what would happen when he added Alka-Seltzer tablets. Would it bubble a lot or a little? Well we saw it bubble a lot because the Alka-Seltzer tablets created carbon dioxide bubbles when they hit the water. These bubbles floated to the top where the oil was, but then went back down because again the water and oil do not mix. It almost looked like a lava lamp!
For our next experiment each child received a bowl of milk. Then Mr. John went around and added different colors of food coloring to the milk. The children were told not to mix the colors. Next each child received a cotton swab that had been dipped in dish soap. When we were ready, the children carefully dipped the cotton swab into the colored milk. We saw the colored milk quickly move away from the cotton swab and create a rainbow. The milk moved away quickly because the dish soap broke the surface tension.
Art In art we continued to create projects for our upcoming International Festival. At the beginning of the month we made hands out of clay that we painted henna designs on. Ms. Michele and I helped the children cut their hands out of clay. When the clay hardened they painted with a special paint to make a henna design on them. We learned that in India henna designs are popular.
For the rest of the month, the children worked on a yarn weaving project. We learned that Navajo Indians are excellent rug weavers. The Navajo use wool from sheep for their weavings. The children were given a small cardboard loom with string and yarn to weave. Ms. Michele reminded the children to weave over and under or under and over! It is amazing to see the focus and concentration our young students have for this project!
Finally:
I would encourage you to review with your child what they have learned this past month. Read a Dr. Seuss book together and ask your child to point out some of the rhyming words. Discuss with your child the name of our planet, continent, county, state, and city. Practice naming the planets together and discuss which one you and your child would visit if you could. Ask your child to sing the Planets Song they learned this month as well!
Maria Montessori was quoted as saying, “ The child becomes a person through work.” I am enjoying seeing how your children continue to grow in their independence, laying the foundation for the adult they will one day become. I am so fortunate to have front row seat to watching each of these wonderful children learn and grow and I considerate a joy to come to school and learn alongside them every day!
March was a busy month for us. The children had fun talking about Dr. Seuss, learning about different artists, and exploring the Rainforest. We also had fun celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day.
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The first week was all about Dr. Seuss. Throughout the week the children came to school dressed in crazy & mismatched socks and hats and Wacky Wednesday! The first few days we concentrated on rhyming activities; the first activity was a rhyming ball game. I placed different words onto a ball and the children had to throw the ball to one another. When a friend caught the ball they were able to pick out a word and identify another word that rhymes with it. The children loved this activity! During the second activity, I wrote out a number of sentences from The Cat In The Hat and placed note cards at the end of every other sentence. The children had to guess what word was under the note card that rhymed with the last word of the sentence. I was super impressed at how well they knew the rhyming word! Throughout that week we went down in the kitchen and cooked green eggs and ham and then had a taste test, for this we used the best cooking utensils and knives from https://www.all-knives.org. We then graphed who liked what better. For the last activity we focused on four sight words, “I, and, the, & that.” Four students came up at a time. As I was reading The Cat In The Hat my four friends had to keep a tally on the sight words that we were looking for. At the end of the book we counted up the tally marks to see which sight words were used most in the story. At the end of the week the children made a Cat In The Hat hat to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday. It was a very fun week!
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The theme for our second week was, Art Appreciation. This week we focused on different artists and their works. The children were able to create their own works from the artists they learned about. The first day we learned all about Claude Monet. We discussed landscapes and why he chose to only draw them. We also learned about oil pastels and how to blend them. The children then created their own landscape while using oil pastels. On the second day, we discussed Pablo Picasso and his different Periods. The children learned about his Blue period and how he was very sad. We also talked about his Rose period where he fell in love and became very happy and all of his paintings were a rosy hue. We then went over his angry period, where all of his paintings were a bit scary. I showed them how he would drew faces in a different way and how all of his drawing were different. The children then drew self-portraits of themselves, cut their pictures up and created their own Picasso with Ms. Ame. The next thing we learned about was Vincent Van Gough. The children learned the history behind his art, they were also able to explore his different paintings and why he painted certain paintings the way he did. The children then created their own 3D Sunflower portrait! They also had a lot of fun learning, exploring, and doing different types of art with Ms. Ame!
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Then we had fun exploring the Rainforest. The children learned about the four layers of the rainforest which are The Forest Floor, The Understory Layer, The canopy Layer, and the Emergent Layer. The children learned about which animals and creatures lived in which layer. We also went over the insects and animals they would find and why they are becoming extinct. Throughout this lesson we also talked about things that we use that come from the rainforest such as wood for our furniture, fruits, coffee beans, and rubber to make rubber bands. For the preschool lesson, Ms. Ame did awesome rainforest art projects! We also had a very special leprechaun visit our room. The children had so much fun going on a shamrock hunt and finding all of his gold coins he left for them!
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The last week of March we had fun learning about our five senses. The first day the children learned about hearing and how the ear works. We also listened to an awesome cd that played different environment sounds where the children had to guess what the sounds were. We then learned about touch and the children had to place their hand in the mystery bag and guess the item that they were touching. We also had fun learning about taste where the children got to taste something sweet, salty, sour, and bitter! We then played a take away game that explained all about sight, and lastly the children had to place a blindfold on while smelling different smells such as bananas, vanilla, lemon , peppermint, orange, and cinnamon. I loved seeing all the children’s facial expressions!
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I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe spring break! See you in April!
Academic Enrichment | Kindergarten In March we began our focused reading groups for our kindergarten students. Kindergarten students are meeting with Ms. Kate on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Students read through a classic work of literature, discuss and have activities each week. These activities have included dramatizations, creative writing and art projects. It has been a wonderful program, our students are gaining so much!
Ms. Kristen begins our afternoon academic enrichment lesson with handwriting lessons and practice. Students have been doing wonderfully!
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.
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.
The Kindergartners 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, Hungarian, and Tagalog, Polish, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, Dutch/Flemish, Serbo-Croatian, Cebuano, Malay, Hindi.
Ms. Ame’s Corner
In Music last month Ms. Lisa reviewed the story of Peter and the Wolf. The students continued to identify the names of the different instruments used and were able to identify which instrument sound was each character. They all enjoyed the story with the accompaniment of Ms. Michelle’s clever artwork to go along with it. One week she brought in her keyboard and the students identified the animals with their instrumental sound. They acted out each part along with the music. Ms. Lisa also demonstrated with her various instrumental sounds for the students to recognize. She also reviewed the Baby BumbleBee song, ask your student to sing it with you at home. Ms. Lisa brought her synthesizer piano another week and had the students listen and guess the different noises it could make. We also played one of the students favorite games, Cat and Mouse. This game has the students listening to different sounds to know when their animal can enter the house. The students also got a chance to play the white and black notes on the piano, what a treat!
In Science last month Mr. John had the students participate in some fun experiments that had the students using their scientific thinking skills. He started the month off with a groovy lava lamp experiment. Mixing water, food coloring and oil, Mr. John created a lava lamp! Then the students created a hypothesis about what would happen if they added an alka seltzer tablet. Ask your student what happened to the bottle. On St. Patrick’s Day Mr. John did an experiment exploring surface tension. The students came up with a hypothesis of what food coloring would do in milk,and what would happen when soap was added. Before Spring Break Mr. John did an experiment with corn startch and water. The students created a hypothesis about what would happen. The 2 mixed together created a substance that was liquid when there was no pressure,but when squeezed it turned into a solid! Check your child’s folder on Thursdays to see the directions to repeat the experience at home and to see you child’s hypothesis.
In Art last month Ms. Michelle taught the children about art from around the world. This month all of our art will be used at our International Festival. Please leave these wonderful creations on our art rack. Michelle started with India. The students colored an intricately designed elephant while taking turns having their hands cut out of clay. Using water colored with the spice turmeric, the students decorated their clay hand mimicking Hena designs. Ms. Michelle also took the kids on a trip to parts of North America and introduced them to Native American weaving. The students worked on creating their own weaving project with some help. The weaving was a little difficult for our tiny fingers, so it took a couple weeks to finish this project. Look in the hallways as Ms. Michelle will be displaying her weekly art projects along with a description.
We started off the month of March talking about Dr. Seuss and Eric Carle. The children loved coming to school dressed up with their hats, silly socks, and wockets in their pockets! We enjoyed reading Green Eggs and Ham and watching the students cringe as they tried their first bite of their very own green eggs and ham.
The second week of March we learned all about insects. The children learned how to identify animals belonging in the insect category and those that do not. They learned the main parts of an insect and the preschoolers made a beautiful diagram to display in the classroom.
For the third week of March we talked about plants and flowers. The children discovered the four elements needed to grow a plant soil, seeds, sun and water. They also learned the word photosynthesis! We planted flowers to watch grow in the classroom.
The last week of March we talked about butterflies and caterpillars. Students had a blast learning about how butterflies go through stages of growth and change called a life cycle.
I hope everyone enjoyed their spring break and is ready to get back into the swing of things!
Kindergarten
The kindergartners started their grammar unit by learning their five vowels and what isn’t a vowel is a consonant. We learned a fun song to the tune of BINGO there are five letters that I know and vowel are their name O’s A,E,I,O,U A,E,I,O,U A,E,I,O,U and vowels are their name O’s. Then we looked at noun and verbs. Nouns are people, places, and things. Verbs are action words or something you can do. We also learned that there are three articles, a, an, the. We learned that “a” hooks up with consonants, “an” is very picky and only hooks up with vowels. And “the” is not picky at all and hooks up with anything!
Science
For the first week of March we made our own oobleck. Oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid; it has properties of both liquids and solids. We learned that we can slowly dip our hands into it like a liquid, but if we squeezed it it felt solid. The name oobleck comes from the Dr. Seuss book, “Bartholomew and the Oobleck.”
The second week of March we made a hoover craft using a CD, balloon and water bottle cap. The air flow created by the balloon caused a cushion of moving air between the disc and the surface of the table. This made the CD lift and reduced the friction which allowed the disc to hover freely over the table.
The last two weeks of March we talked about how in every seed there is a tiny plant and food to help it grow. Using paper towels and plastic bags we germinated bean seeds. The children learned that when a seed first starts to grow it is called germination. The kids learned that germination can be done without soil. After we germinated our bean seeds and saw the seedlings we planted them in soil.
Art
By: Ms. Faith
We continued our journey through different cultures and places this month with Ms. Michele. The students learned about India and the tradition of henna tattoos. Henna is made from a spice, turmeric, and is used to draw temporary intricate designs and patterns on the skin for celebrations and special occasions. Ms. Michele showed us a video demonstration of someone drawing a henna tattoo. The week before the students got to trace their hands into clay and cut out the shape to make a replica of their hands. After seeing the video, the students were able to use markers to draw designs and patterns on their clay hands to look like the henna tattoo in the video. After learning about this Indian tradition, the students were introduced to an American Indian tradition of weaving. Ms. Michele showed the students a video of how Navajo Indians sheer sheep and use the wool to make yarn. It then showed a lady using a loom to weave a blanket. Ms. Michele made little looms out of popsicle sticks and string for the students to weave with yarn of their choosing. I know the children will be excited to see what cultures we’ll be learning about next month leading up to our International Festival.
Music
By: Ms. Faith
To start off March, Ms. Lisa reviewed the characters and instruments of Peter and the Wolf. The students had to remember the instruments by listening to them and the got to pretend to play that specific instrument. Then, they had to remember what character the instrument represented and it’s song and got to pretend to be that character. The students enjoyed acting like the characters from the story. Ms. Lisa introduced the musical terms of staccato and legato to the class. Staccato are notes that are played short and quickly and legato are notes that are played smoothly and connected. The students got to dance to music with scarves while listening to a song that played staccato and legato notes. The group quickly picked up on what movements to use when they heard the notes being played staccato. They jumped and skipped around moving their scarves in this manner as well. When the song started playing legato, they would twirl and danced slower and moved their scarves around in a flowing motion. Another activity that Ms. Lisa shared with the students is one of their favorites, a game called Cat and Mouse. One student is the cat and the rest of the students are the mice. When Ms. Lisa plays a song on her piano using high notes, the mice have to move into the “house” to get the cheese, then when she plays the song in low notes the cat has to move into the “house” and try to tag as many mice as he/she can. When mouse is tagged, he/she becomes a mouse as well. The game continues until one mouse remains untagged. This game is a great way for the students to recognize high and low notes while having fun. We look forward to our next music lesson!
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.
What I will learn this month (in addition to Montessori Work Time…)
4/4: Continents & Countries | International festival
The children will learn about the geography, culture, and language of North America and South America.
4/11: Continents & Countries | International festival
The children will learn about the geography, culture, and language of Europe and Africa.
4/18: Continents & Countries | International festival
The children will learn about the geography, culture, and language of Asia and Australia.
4/25: Continents & Countries | International festival
The children will learn about the geography, culture, and language of Antarctica.
We will be practicing individual lines and songs in class in preparation for the Festival, please practice your line at home too!
*For the month of April, we will be concentrating on preparing your child for the International Festival and will resume letters and rhyming words of the week in May.
