Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 10/10/22

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Our Focus Lesson:

This week the Cherry Blossom Class continued their study of Animal Classification by focusing on Amphibians! We learned the characteristics of an amphibian: vertebrates, cold blooded, wet/moist skin, born from jelly eggs, live in the water and on land. We also learned the life cycle of a frog and the parts of a frog. Ask your child about the life cycle of a frog, they all know it!

This child traced and labeled the parts of an amphibian. What beautiful work!

Preschool Lesson:

Our younger Blossoms learned about the different types of amphibians this week. They studied frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and axolotyls! They talked about what makes each amphibians different and how they are the same. Ms. Sam also read Frog on a Log to the class and the children practiced their rhyming skills!

We created watercolor resist frogs this week. Aren’t they cute?

Kindergarten Lesson:

Our older Blossoms studied Animal Classification this week during Kindergarten Lesson. They learned the characteristics of a horse, turtle, frog, bird, and fish! They learned the last of the curve letters in Handwriting and will be reviewing these letters next week. Reader’s Workshop and Writer’s Workshop continued hard work!

Reading group with Ms. Kelley! These Kindergarteners are working hard on isolating ending sounds!

Enrichment Spotlight – Music with Ms. Lisa!

Practicing piano and forte by singing our favorite song, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.

Peek Into Worktime!

This younger Prescchooler is tracing lines and then writing her own, from ladybug to ladybug. Tracing lines helps develop fine motor skills and gives children the foundation for beautiful penmanship.
This Preschooler is practicing Copy Writing. Copy Writing gives the child the opportunity to copy words or sentences given to them in order to practice handwriting.
This child is writing numbers from 1 to 100. Writing numbers gives children the foundation for beautiful penmanship. Montessori emphasized that writing comes first, then reading.

Peek Into Next Week!

Focus Lesson: Trees

Preschool Lesson: Leaves

Kindergarten Lesson: Parts of a Plant

Important Dates:

Wednesday, October 19: Bring Your Parent to Work Day! 1 spot left! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-cblossom1

Friday, October 28: Trunk or Treat!

Friday, November 11: Parent Teacher Conferences – No School for Students.

Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 10/3/22

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Our Focus Lesson:

This week we started talking about Animal Classification! We introduced Vertebrates and Invertebrates. We learned that Vertebrates have a backbone and are classified into 5 main groups – mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and fish. We learned that Invertebrates do not have a backbone and are classified into many groups. We introduced some of the groups, but will focus on insects and arachnids this school year.

We added Vertebrate and Invertrbrate Cards to the Science area so the children could sort animals into their appropriate classifications. This Kindergartener completed some Copy Writing to share some information about Invertebrates.

Preschool Lesson:

Our younger Blossoms learned about spiders this week! They talked about the life cycle of a spider, the parts of a spider, they counted spiders, and made spider books. We were very excited to make the connection between our Invertebrate lessons and our Spider lessons! And there was a visit from a friend of Mr. John’s…

We added spiders to our Ten Frame Counting work this week. This preschooler found a spider web on the playground and was so excited to see an egg sac in the middle of it!
Mr. John brought Charlotte, the Chilean rose tarantula, down to our classroom so we could observe the parts of a spider. We enjoyed getting a close up look at how the spider moved and pointing out the legs and spinnerets. We found out that Charlotte uses her venom to turn her cricket dinners into a goo like applesauce!

Kindergarten Lessons:

Mr. John introduced Kindergarteners to Land and Water Forms this week. My favorite landform is an island… somewhere warm. Ms. Tonya introduced our older Blossoms to curve cursive letters this week, practicing a, d, and g. Then they surprised Ms. Tonya by writing cursive words all week long!

In Reader’s Workshop, the children continued to be sound detectives to sound out words and reviewed color sight words. In Writer’s Workshop our young authors completed their first writing unit where they learned to be writers and learned how to make books! We wrapped up the unit by sitting in the author’s chair and reading one of our books to the group!

So proud of our young writers and how well they did sharing their books to the class!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

A huge Happy Birthday to our Ms. Sam!

Peek Into Work Time!

This young preschooler is sorting apples by color. Early experiences in sorting things into groups help young learners to better observe how things are alike and different—essential early literacy and math skills.
This preschooler is using the Tens Board to compose numbers. This work helps a child to connect name, quantity, and symbol for the numbers 11-99
This Kindergartener is working with the Vowel Tree. The Vowel Tree is a tactile, engaging way to teach and practice decoding words. This manipulative can be used with beginning readers to more advanced readers. Originally developed as a Montessori material, the vowel tree reinforces skills for all learners; tactile learners, auditory learners, and visual learners.

Peek Into Next Week:

Focus Lesson: Amphibians

Kindergarten Lesson: Parts of Animals

Preschool Lesson: Frogs

Important Dates:

October 19: Bring Your Parent to Work Day

October 28: Trunk or Treat

Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 9/26/22

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Our Focus Lesson:

This week we studied pumpkins in preparation for our trip to Ramseyer Farms! We talked about the life cycle and parts of a pumpkin. We also tasted some more delicious treats – this time all pumpkin flavored! Using our 5 senses we determined that most pumpkin treats look brown, smell like pumpkin, sound like nothing, feel squishy, and taste delicious! Thank you again to all of our parents that donated special snacks to our class, we appreciate you!

Pumpkin Pie was definitely a thumbs up!
This Pumpkin Bread was absolutely delicious!
Everyone’s favorite part of the Pumpkin Roll was the cream cheese!
We wrapped up our 5 senses taste testing with Pumpkin Cupcakes!

Preschool Lesson:

Our younger Blossoms also learned about pumpkins this week! We sang pumpkin songs, danced pumpkin dances, read pumpkin stories, traced pumpkin shapes, and created a special pumpkin craft that you’ll see on the bulletin board very, very soon!

Kindergarten Lessons:

Our older Blossoms discussed where they live in the world with Mr. John this week. They learned that our galaxy is called the Milky Way and promised to bring Mr. John a Milky Way candy bar! They reviewed planet, continent, country, and state. They also practiced their address and completed learning how to form swing letters in Handwriting. Kindergarteners continued to grow in both Reader’s Workshop and Writer’s Workshop! They were sound detectives and practiced reading color words and number words with Ms. Kelley, while they worked on finishing their informational books in Writer’s Workshop with Ms. Tonya. Next week, our writers will read their books to the class and bring them home!

Enrichment Spotlight – Music with Ms. Lisa!

We have settled right back into our music lessons with Ms. Lisa. We have reviewed our vocabulary words of piano, forte, adagio, and allegro. We sang some of our favorite songs and marched around the room.

Check Out Our Handwriting!

Our Handwriting area of the classroom is full of tools to help us learn how to write. This week many of our Blossoms chose to practice Handwriting with the dry erase board. You’ll notice many different stages of Handwriting in a Montessori classroom. Our younger students will begin with the letters they find in their name. Once they are comfortable with that we will introduce them to their names in cursive. Our older students work on each cursive letter individually, and finally learn how to connect cursive letters to form words!

Peek Into Next Week!

Focus Lesson: Vertebrates and Invertebrates

Preschool Lesson: Spiders

Kindergarten Lesson: Land and Water Forms

Letter of the Week: a, m, s, t review

Important Dates:

MONDAY, October 3, is Ms. Sam’s Birthday!!!!!

October 7 & 19: Bring Your Parent to Work Day! https://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-cblossom

October 28: Trunk or Treat!

Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 9/19/22

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Our Focus Lesson:

We learned about Apples this week! We talked about the life cycle of an apple from seed, to tree, to blossom, to apple! We also observed the parts of an apple and made our own books showcasing the different parts. We touched apples, looked at apples, smelled apples, and then cut them open to see the different parts on the inside. We even found the special star!

This Kindergartener is working on her Parts of an Apple book.

Preschool Lesson:

Ms. Sam introduced our younger Blossoms to the Farm this week in preparation for our upcoming field trip! They sang songs, played games, and practiced writing skills all while learning about different animals you would find on a farm.

This Preschool student is working on his farm color book.

Kindergarten Lesson:

Our Kindergarteners learned about our state of Ohio this week, as well as the states that surround Ohio. They found Ohio on the United States Map and learned about our state bird, flower, and tree.

Enrichment Spotlight – Library with Ms. Lindsey!

We had our very first Library Time with Ms. Lindsey! We talked about Library expected behaviors and each chose a book to add to our class library!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday to our newest 4 year old!

Apple Week Treats!

This week we used each of our 5 senses to explore delicious apple treats! We tasted apple muffins, apple cider, apple oatmeal cookies, and apple pie! Thank you so much to the parents that brought in treats this week, we appreciate you!

These apple muffins were so good! What a great start to our apple week!
We used our sense of touch to explore apple cider. Don’t worry, we washed our hands! We decided that apple cider feels “wet and cold.”
These apple oatmeal cookies were delicious!
We used our sense of hearing with our apple pies and determined that apple pies sound like… nothing.
We really enjoyed our apple treats this week! We can’t wait for pumpkin week next week!

Peek Into Next Week!

Focus Lesson: Pumpkins

Preschool Lesson: The Farm

Kindergarten Lesson: Me in the World

Letter of the Week: Tt

Important Dates: Field Trip to Ramseyer Farms is on Friday! Wear green!

Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 9/12/22

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Our Focus Lesson:

This week we learned about what makes something Living or Non Living. We know that Living things needs food, water, and clean air. Living things also change or grow, can move on their own, and can reproduce. We really enjoyed thinking of all of the living things we know of and looking for nonliving things in our classroom.

Preschool Lesson:

Our younger Blossoms studied “Me in the World” this week with Ms. Sam. We also made books to show where we live, from our planet Earth, all the way to our school.

We found “our Ohio” on the map of the United States of America!

Kindergarten Lesson:

Our older Blossoms were introduced to the continent of North America this week with Mr. John in Kindergarten Lesson. They practiced labeling the countries of this continent and the oceans that surround it. In Reader’s Workshop, the Kindergarteners continued being “sound detectives” to practice their reading skills. In Writer’s Workshop, our young writers practiced stretching out words like a rubber band and writing down the sounds that they hear!

Check out these writers!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday to our newest 5 year old!

What are we working on in the classroom?

Our Kindergarteners practiced building words with the Moveable Alphabet this week. We worked on “stretching our words out like rubber bands to hear the sounds!”
Our older Preschool Students worked with our Cards and Counters this week. They are doing a wonderful job counting out one counter at a time until they reach the number.

Teachable Moments!

Our Monarch Butterfly hatched this week, and we let him go on Tuesday. This butterfly is going to fly all the way to Mexico!
We were lucky enough to watch the Cuyahoga Falls Fire Department practice their skills at a house near our playground this week.

Peek into Next Week!

Focus Lesson: Apples!

Kindergarten Lesson: Ohio

Preschool Lesson: The Farm

Letter of the Week: Ss

Important Dates:

Wednesday, 9/21, is PICTURE DAY! Bring your smiles!

September 30: Field Trip to Ramseyer Farm – wear green!

Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 9/5/22

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Our Focus Topic:

This week we learned all about our 5 Senses! Seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching! We know that we use our 5 senses to explore the world around us every day. We use our sense of seeing when we match our matching cards or complete patterns in Language. We use our sense of hearing to match Sound Cylinders in Sensorial. We use our sense of touching to match our fabric box with a blindfold and to feel different temperatures with the Thermic Tablets. But our favorite activities this week were smelling spices and tasting foods! We took turns voting if we liked the smells and tastes!

Do we like the smell of cumin?
We loved the sour taste of lemon!

Preschool Lesson:

Our younger Blossoms learned about Emotions this week with Ms. Sam! We talked about feeling words, showed feelings on our faces, and were introduced to our new Feeling Pages in the classroom. Whenever we are having big feelings we can take a Feeling Page, color the feeling, and draw a picture of why on the back! These pages will come home in folders and can be a great start for conversations at home!

How are you feeling today?
Ms. Sam was feeling happy to be at school with friends!

Kindergarten Lesson:

Our older Blossoms continued their study on Cardinal Directions with Mr. John this week, as well as added information about hemispheres. They were very proud to tell us about the Equator and the Prime Meridian.

Reader’s Workshop is working on either beginning sounds or picture to word matching, while in Writer’s Workshop students are creating a class book about the playground as well as their individual books. In Handwriting, students learned how to form lowercase i and t in cursive.

Mr. John practicing sight words with the Kindergarteners.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Happy Birthday to our newest 4 year old!

What are we working on in the classroom?

Our Kindergarten students were introduced to their Kindergarten Binders this week. These binders will serve as their Kindergarten portfolio where we will showcase all of their hard work!
This Second Year Preschooler is grinding coffee beans using a mortar and pestle. We worked on scooping the coffee beans and then grinding them down as much as we could. Our classroom smelled wonderful!
This First Year Preschooler is sorting families into the correct color houses! Our students enjoy talking about their own families while completing this work!

Enrichment Spotlight – Science!

Mr. John taught us about carbon dioxide this week with a fun experiment that used the gas to fill balloons for us to take home!

Peek into Next Week!

Focus Topic: Living and Non-Living and North America

Preschool Lesson: Me in the World

Kindergarten Lesson: North America

Letter of the Week: Mm

Important Dates:

September 21: Picture Day

September 30: Field Trip to Ramseyer Farm

Peek into the Cherry Blossom Classroom – week of 8/29/22

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Our Focus Topic:

This week we learned about Sunflowers! We discussed the life cycle of a sunflower, and loved learning that the sunflower grows the seeds in the center of the flower. We also found it very interesting that the sunflower will follow the sun across the sky. We talked about the parts of a sunflower, and one of our friends brought in a real sunflower for us to observe!

We used three part cards, also know as nomenclature cards, to discuss the parts of a sunflower. We were lucky enough to observe the parts on a real sunflower too!
Observing a sunflower and sunflower seeds with a magnifying glass in our Science area!
We wrapped up our Sunflower study by drawing along with Art for Kids Hub!

Preschool Lesson

Our younger Blossoms continued talking about the ocean and beach this week by reading books about the different animals you would find there and voting for their favorite sea creature! They also created name puzzles this week to practice name recognition!

Sharks were the favorite sea creature in the Cherry Blossom class!

Kindergarten Lesson

Our older Blossoms learned all about cardinal directions this week with Mr. John. They learned to Never Eat Soggy Worms and labeled the directions on their homework!

Reader’s Workshop with Ms. Kelley and Writer’s Workshop with Ms. Tonya started this week! Our readers were introduced to their Book Buddy Bags that will be filled with books and other reading activities for the children to work on. Our writers started writing books already! Their first book is all about something they know a lot about, most of the children chose their pets!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

A very Happy Birthday to our newest 5 year old!

What are we working on in the classroom?

This Kindergarten student is learning how to write words in cursive. She began with individual letters and letter blends last year, and is now writing words that she finds in her reading work!
Our Second Year Preschoolers are working hard on their Quantity and Symbols with the Spindle Box. Most of these students are comfortable with numerals 0-5, so we are now learning 6-9 by counting out the appropriate amount of spindles and putting them in the correct section!
Our First Year Preschoolers are being introduced to our Practical Life and Sensorial works in the classroom. This student is using the Knobbed Cylinders to learn the descriptive words of thick and thin with this block.

Teachable Moments this week…

We found a grasshopper friend outside on the playground this week! We were able to observe the different parts of the grasshopper and watch him hop away!
One of our friends spotted this huge preying mantis outside of our classroom window this week. Ms. Tonya quickly ran outside to catch him so we could take a closer look! Then we let him go!

Peek Into Next Week!

Focus Topic: The Five Senses

Preschool Lesson: Emotions

Kindergarten Lesson: Hemispheres

Letter of the Week: Aa

Important Dates:

Monday, September 5: No School, Labor Day

September 21: Picture Day

September 30: Field Trip to Ramseyer Farm!

Peek At Our Week – Cherry Blossom – Week of 8/24/22

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We had a wonderful start to our school year this week! The Cherry Blossom class was so excited to be back with old friends and meet new ones! We talked about routines and expected behavors this week during line time. We reviewed how we work in the classroom, where all of our favorite works are located, and our important ASL classroom signs. We settled quickly back into our schedule and are looking forward to our classroom chores beginning again next week!

Preschool Lesson was all about the beach this week! Our younger Blossoms learned about seashells, sand dollars, and sea stars this week. They poured sea shells, sorted shells by size, and ladeled sea glass.

Kindergarten Lesson with Mr. John began this week for our older Blossoms! They talked all about the different continents and interesting facts about each one. We were very proud to see that they remembered so much from our Africa study last year!

We would also like to give a big Cherry Blossom welcome to our two new friends that are joining our classroom community this school year!

Peek Into Next Week!

Focus Topic:  Sunflowers and Butterflies

Preschool Lesson: The Beach

Kindergarten Lesson: Handwriting, Reader’s Workshop, and Writer’s Workshop begins!

Important Dates:

Monday, September 5: Labor Day – No School!

One Last Peek At Our Week – Cherry Blossom – Week of 5/31/22

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A Peek At Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!

And that’s a wrap on the 2021-2022 school year in the Cherry Blossom Class!  We took some time to celebrate a wonderful year with our friends this week.  We had a picnic outside on a beautiful sunny day.  We enjoyed watching Luca and eating snacks.  We read books, drew pictures, played games, and showed our toys from home.  We had one last science experiment with Mr. John. We had a BLAST at Bash & Splash Day!

 

Ms. Sam and I have had such a wonderful year with your children.  They brought us so many smiles and laughs every single day.  We are proud of their hard work and all of the amazing things they have learned.  They are kind, caring, funny, unique individuals.  They worked together so well and truly built a classroom community that makes my heart full.  We love them all with our whole hearts!  We hope your family has an amazing summer.  To those that we sadly said goodbye to, we will miss you!  And to those that will return, see you later alligators!  Love, Ms. Tonya

 

Peek At Our Week – Cherry Blossoms – 5/23/22

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A Peek At Our Week in the Cherry Blossom Classroom!

This week we learned about Pollinators!  This was the perfect way to wrap up our May lessons as flowers are important to pollinators and pollinators are important to flowers!  We learned about different types of pollinators: bees, butterflies, bats, and hummingbirds.  We learned that pollinators drink nectar from the flowers and while they do that, pollen sticks to their bodies.  We then learned that the pollinator takes that pollen to another flower and drops it off, allowing that flower to make new seeds! We ended our week with a special presentation from a beekeeper and tasted honey straight from the hive!

 

Operation Releasing Butterflies!

We let our Painted Lady Butterflies go on Monday and Tuesday this week.   We were sad to see them go but were able to watch one of them fly right to a flower and drink nectar!  How lucky are we?!?

Enrichment Spotlight!

We had our last Music, Art, and Science lessons for this school year.  We enjoyed playing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt one more time with Ms. Lisa.  We finished most of our art projects with Ms. Varela, and brought our art portfolios home.  And Mr. John showed us an experiment with FIRE!

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

A very Happy Birthday to our newest 4 year old!

Peek Into Next Week!

Focus Topic:  FUN WEEK!

Important Dates:

It’s the last week of school! We can’t believe it!

Monday, May 30: Memorial Day – No School!

Tuesday, May 31: Outdoor reading and drawing, picnic lunch, indoor games!

Wednesday, June 1: Maker space, Show & Tell (for children that attend Mon/Wed/Fri ONLY), and watching a movie! ** No Aftercare **

Thursday, June 2: LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!  Board games, Show & Tell, and BASH & SPLASH DAY! ** No Aftercare **