My Family: This past week we learned that we are all part of a family and that families are configured in different ways with many factors affecting them like marriage, divorce, adoption, remarriage and therapies with biblical marriage counselors, ethnic diversity, grandparents as primary care givers, single parents, foster care, etc. We read many books and the student’s shared a lot about their families. Through this they discovered that there are different kinds of families, but most importantly all types of families love and care for each other!
Work Time
Introduction Tray: This child is being introduced to the decimal system and becoming familiar with the symbols and quantities associated with units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He is visually seeing the difference between 1 unit, 1 ten, 1 hundred and 1 thousand.Addition: These children are using the golden beads to discover that when you put two small numbers together you get a larger number and that this process is called addition.Knobbed Cylinder: This child is able to visually discriminate the dimensions of each cylinder to find its correct placement in the block.Dishwashing: This child is using many motor skills while also remembering the order and sequence of each action to successfully wash dishes, which naturally leads to the development of concentration.Nesting Dolls: This child is using her fine-motor skills, coordination, concentration, and sense of order to visually discriminate between the smallest and largest nesting dolls in order to correctly put the dolls back together.Microscope: This child is learning how to view different organisms under a microscope, including the mushrooms she brought to school.
Guest Reader
Reminders:
September 21 | All School Field Trip | Ramseyer Farms
Line Time: Hemispheres- We learned a few weeks ago the Earth is the shape of a sphere. We are going beyond that and learning the Earth is divided into hemispheres. Hemi means half or divided and sphere states the obvious. We have an imaginary line that runs east/west called the equator and an imaginary line the runs north/south called the Prime Meridian. These lines divide the Earth into Hemispheres (northern hemisphere, eastern hemisphere, southern hemisphere, and western hemisphere).
A Kindergarten Student being quizzed on hemispheres.
Handwriting: We practiced our cursive cups and trees, trees and loops, upside down and right side up cups. Your children are doing a nice job.
Showing off there handwriting assignment.
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 7 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, and Greek).
Next Week:
Lesson- North America and Surrounding Water and Countries
Line Time: Healthy Habits! We discussed how important our personal hygiene is. It is important that we wash hands, brush teeth, and take showers or baths. When I say wash our hands I mean with soap and for at least thirty seconds (you could sing the alphabet song). The same amount of time is needed to brush your teeth at least twice a day. When taking a shower actually get wet, soap up, and rinse off. Do not be like my youngest who just sticks his head under the water and tries to convince me he is clean. To remain healthy we must also exercise (walking, running, climbing, riding a bike, swimming…), eating healthy foods, and getting plenty enough sleep. with the right bed and mattress for this, which is easy to get with a Nolah Mattress coupon code online… if I ever catch anyone of my students smoking I will bop them!
Cultural Subjects: Your Children can now count to ten in 5 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, and German)
Peek In Our Classroom:
This Student is working on the Knobless Cylinders. This material promotes OCCI (Order, Concentration, Coordination, and Independence). She worked on this for a good amount of time because she had to find the places for forty cylinders and had fun doing it.
This boy is working on a matching material. There are 9 compartments and nine colors. But the nine colors may have different shades of color. This makes the work a bit more challenging.
This work is the Knobless Cylinder and focuses on the area of Visual Discrimination (smaller to larger, shorter to taller, thinner to wider). Eventually, they will find matches between all four colors.
In the foreground an older student is giving a lesson to a younger student. The presentation is the Spindle Box which is a Math Material. This material helps the child make the connection between the symbols/numbers and the quantity.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Food Groups
Letter Of The Week- D d
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bag
Next Language is French
Person bringing snack for week of 9/17/2018 is Aayush
Upcoming Events: Ramseyer Farms on Friday, September 21, 2018. Students can take pleasure in the very things that autumn brings us! We will enjoy picking out our own pumpkins while on a guided hayride, learning all about the working farm, and having some fun with farm animals like pigs and chickens, we will learn some interesting things about their diet, we will be finding out one of the questions a student asked, can chickens eat black soldier fly larvae? Below is all the important information for the trip.
We will depart the school by 8:20am to Ramseyer Farms and look to arrive back at the school by 1:00pm. Please know that this field trip is only possible if we have enough chaperons and volunteer drivers.
**If your child is a half day student please note the change in our daily schedule as we will be arriving back to the school at 1:00pm that day to plan accordingly.
The Leak-proof Bag: We took a plastic bag, filled it with water and then poked a few pencils through it. The students learned that the plastic bag was made out of polyethylene molecules. They discovered that when the pencils were poked through the bag the molecules in the plastic created a seal making the bag leak-proof.
Walking Water- We placed three glasses side by side, filled the two outside glasses with water and food coloring (yellow and blue) and left the middle glass empty. Then, we twisted two paper towels placing one end in the glasses with water and the other end in the empty glass. After about 30 minutes we noticed that the water started to climb the paper towels making its way to the empty middle glass. We learned that this process is called capillary action and is also how flowers and plants move water from the ground up through their stems and into their petals and leaves.
Our friends are practicing rolling and unrolling a mat! This helps with the coordination of movement, development of muscles, and concentration.One of our returning students is showing our new friend the knobless cylinders. With this work the child is to observe and compare the different series with each other. They are also getting a clearer understanding for the different dimensions and their interplay.These sweet kiddos are working on our grasping work. The purpose of this activity is to teach the child to carefully move items from one container to another.When working with the metal insets, it teaches the children to develop their pencil grip, refine their motor skills, and learn how to draw within an outline , which is the materials control of error. This work indirectly allows the child to practice concentration and order as they work with, and master the material.
REMINDERS:
Please don’t forget to turn in your permission slips!
Line Time: Ground Rules redux…. Not really redux because we added more things such as RESPECT! and Social Responsibility. Your children are catching on very quickly which makes Ms. Kathleen, Ms. Ashlie, and Mr. John very happy people. Ms. Brandy (Owner and Founder of AMMS) observed our classroom without notice. She was pleasantly surprised how you children nicely sat on line time for over 30 minutes and how the were engaged in work throughout the morning. She said our classroom was “Peaceful and Productive.” That is saying a lot for having 17 brand new students and only being the second week of school. I just want reiterate the teachers have some part in this behavior but it is your children are the ones “catching on” This is going to be a GREAT year!
Peek In Our Week:
This Practical Life Material is stringing small beads. This helps with the child’s concentration and fine motor skills.
This Math Material is The Teen Board. The Teen Board is one of the first works introduced within the math sequence within linear counting. It also continues the concept of quantity and symbol. Notice how other children are observing the student work.
Ms. Kathleen giving a group lesson on the Color Box 2. The main purpose of the Color Box is to develop a child’s visual sense of color and helps with developing concentration.This student is working with one of our Science Bins (Insects). She finds a rubber insect (not real) and finds the matching insect in the book.
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 4 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, and Spanish).
Next Week:
Line Time- Healthy Habits
Letter Of The Week- C c
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bap
Language- We will be adding German
Who Has Snack- Katherine Dale
Upcoming Events:
**********Ramseyer Farms ***********
Ramseyer Farms onFriday, September 21, 2018. Students can take pleasure in the very things that autumn brings us! We will enjoy picking out our own pumpkins while on a guided hayride, learning all about the working farm, and having some fun with farm animals, slides and duck races!
We will depart the school by 8:20am to Ramseyer Farms and look to arrive back at the school by 1:00pm. Please know that this field trip is only possible if we have enough chaperons and volunteer drivers.
The kindergartners learned that there are seven continents (Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia). They also learned where they are located on a globe/map and a fun fact about each one. For example Australia is often referred to as “the land down under.”
Continent Map: this child is tracing and labeling all seven continents.
Cardinal Directions
The kindergartners learned that the cardinal directions (North, South, East and West) are the most commonly used form of directions. They discovered how to use a compass to find their way and learned that their are also primary inter-cardinal directions (Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and Northwest).
Cardinal Direction Race: The kindergartners labeled the playground using the cardinal directions, then had fun racing each other toward the given direction.
Cursive Handwriting
A peak into next week: Equator, Prime Meridian and Hemispheres
“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and strength, use it to create.” -Maria Montessori
My favorite thing about the Montessori Elementary Curriculum is the amount of opportunities students are given to use their imagination to learn, create, and grow. This week we have seen students take an interest in something and run with it. We had two first year students, inspired by the nest in our room, complete a research report about wasps. Other students that were inspired by their research spent time observing the nest. Our second and third year students were responsible for reading the laws of the universe and coming up with their own science experiment to demonstrate to the class how the law works and they experiment the education technology by hand. Our fourth and fifth grade students started their first “Word of the Week” project where they chose any word that they thought others wouldn’t know and needed to come up with a creative way to show what it meant. When students have the opportunity to follow their interests and use their imagination, they often create something that exceeds our expectations and combines skills from many areas of the classroom into just one work!
Our introduction to the solar system is always an exciting lesson. One student is the sun and other students get to be the planets. To show students how far our planets are from the sun, we use the scale of one step = 36 million miles! Our friend holding Neptune had to take 78 steps away from the sun to show that it is 2.8 billion miles away! You can barely see her in this photo! The students that did not hold a star or planet had a race around the solar system towards the end of our lesson. Before we went inside, our second year students shared something they learned about each planet from their research as first graders.A second and third grade student work together on their Laws of the Universe lesson. Today, they will present their poster and experiment to the rest of the class. These students are going to teach their friends about inertia!These first, fourth, and second grade girls are working together on our volcano experiment. In the elementary classroom, students are able to complete experiments on their own using experiment cards about anatomy, water, air, matter, and many other topics. If students are interested in discovering something we don’t have written out, they are able to research an experiment or idea and write a material request if we do not have what they need. This is another opportunity for students to be creative while practicing the Scientific Method and learning to cooperate with others.These first grade girls have worked for two weeks on their wasp research! They used book and internet resources to write over a page of research. They also are making progress on a paper mache nest. To complete their report, they drew a picture of a wasp nest and added some laminated wasp specimens. They finally laminated their work and hung it near the nest so others could learn, too!Inspired by the ongoing research, this first year student is getting a closer look into the nest!
A Peek into Next Week
Next week, we will begin our Spelling Assessments. The following week, we will begin our first Spelling lesson and homework! First year students will learn about the history of clocks, the noun, fractions, and the first plants. Second year students will practice greater than and less than, feminine and masculine nouns, the intersection of two straight lines, and work with our Animal Kingdom Chart. Our third year students will solve equations with the squares and cubes of numbers, will learn about suffixes, will begin their study with congruent figures, and will study the taxonomy of vertebrates. Fourth year students will review the commutative and distributive laws of multiplication, will begin advanced grammar studies, will continue their study of Pythagorean Theorem from last year, and will study basic life processes. Fifth year students will complete the Table of Pythagoras, will continue studying Native Americans, will study energy on earth, and will begin studying advanced botany.
REMINDERS:
Our Ramseyer Farm Field Trip is Friday, September 21. Please make sure to turn in your permission slip!
Picture Day – September 26
Sign ups are ready for “Bring Your Parent to ‘Work Time’.” You can sign up here.
This past week we focused on community helpers in honor of Labor Day. The students not only learned about firefighters, police officers, doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, veterinarians, construction workers, paramedics, farmers, mail carriers, chefs etc. They had the opportunity to meet and get to know some of them. The students and I greatly appreciate those that volunteered their time to come in and speak to us about their careers.
Police
Honda/Acura Specialist
Firefighter
Family Medicine Doctor
HR at Goodyear
School Psychologist
Pilot
Reminders:
September 21 | All School Field Trip | Ramseyer Farms
Weekly Lesson: Cardinal Directions- The Kindergarten Students learned about the Cardinal Directions. We learned north is always on top, south is always on the bottom, east is always to the right, and west is always to the left. We went into a bit more detail when using the Cardinal Directions. In between north and east is called northeast and so on… We traveled from continent to continent asking what direction we needed to go to get to the appointed continent.
Handwriting: We continue to practice the pre-cursive writing exercises big and small loops connected, tents (upside down v) not connected and connected.
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 6 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, and French).
Next Week:
Weekly Lesson- Hemispheres
Synonym of the Week- sad (miserable, gloomy, depressing, downtrodden, glum, unhappy)
