The children will talk about ice fishing and then do their own ice fishing in the classroom.
The children will experience what it is like to be a penguin.
The children will learn about all of the different polar animals.
1/12: Ocean Animals
The children will learn about the ocean habitat.
The children will compare their length to a blue whales length.
The children will create waves in a bottle.
1/19: M L King
Monday, January 19th– NO SCHOOL (MLK DAY)
The children will learn what a hero is.
The children will create a classroom “I Have A Dream Book”.
The children will learn that even though everyone is different on the outside, we are all the same on the inside, through an egg experiment.
1/26: Zoo Animals
Learning about different animals we find at the Zoo.
On Thursday 1/29 each child is invited to bring their favorite stuffed animal. The animal should be one commonly found in a zoo. They can have snack or lunch picnic style with their stuffed animal.
The children will create zoo cookies.
Letters of the week
1/6: Mm
1/13: Nn
1/20: Oo
1/27: Pp
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Go to the pet store together and have fun exploring different animals.
Try and spot all the different animals outside during winter.
Have a birthday party for M L King.
Talk to your child about what his/her dream is and share yours.
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.
1/05: Introduction to decimals/ columns
Intro to decimals
Learning what is and says ( 1, 10, 100, 1000)
1/12: Introduction to 9 Tray/ 45 layout
Recap of decimal system
Reinforce by placement and identification of numbers within each decimal place
1/19: Composing Numbers
Working with 9 tray / 45 layout
Using single units, 10 bars, 100 square and 1000 cubes
Reinforce number placement with creation of numbers
1/26: Addition
Introduction of addition
Using single units, 10 bars, 100 squares and 1000 cubes
Sight Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
1/05: oil, people
1/12: come, number
1/19: could, who
1/26: now, made
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.
You can view this link to give you more information on how the math materials are used in the Montessori classroom http://www.montessorialbum.com/montessori/index.php?title=Math. You may also google the name of the work to find more videos and information on the purpose of that material.
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.
Themes of the Week (in addition to Montessori Work time)
1/05: Review of Ground Rules
Ringing of the bell, circle walk, line time
Process of working with a materials, rolling mats, carrying trays & work areas
Respecting teachers, classmates and the materials
Grace and Courtesy lessons
1/12: 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
1/19: Five Senses
Monday 1/19- 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
1/26: 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.
1/05: Nn
1/12: Oo
1/19: Pp
1/26: Qq
Rhyming Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
1/05: BOB, fob, gob, job, lob, mob, rob
1/12: BUG, dug, hug, jug, mug, tug
1/29: BUN, fun, nun, run, sun
1/26: 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.
Themes of the Week (in addition to Montessori Work Time)
1/5: Whales
Facts about Whales and different types of Whales
Create a Whale Chart
How do Whale’s float? “Staying Afloat” Science experiment on density
Afternoon group lesson: All about the artic: Various crafts, location of the artic on the map, its inhabitants and arctic resources.
1/12: History of Martin Luther King Jr.
Similarities and Differences(hair color, eye color, likes, dislikes)
Egg experiment (brown egg vs. white egg) discuss their differences on the outside– discover how they are the same on the inside.
Afternoon group lesson: Variety of crafts and activities to learn more about MLK JR.
1/19: Polar Pals
Monday 1/19 ‐NO SCHOOL (MLK Day)
The Arctic Climate, Map of the Arctic
Exploring the worlds of the Polar Bear, Seal and Walrus.
Afternoon group lesson: All about hibernation: information, activities, and crafts to teach us about hibernation.
1/26: Penguins
Facts about Penguins, why don’t they fly?
How Penguins communicate
Where Penguins live
Afternoon group lesson: All about snow: how snow is formed, different activities, crafts and science experiments to help us learn about snow.
Letters of the Week: Try to find objects that begin with each letter wherever you go with your child.
1/05: Nn
1/12: Oo
1/19: Pp
1/28: Qq
Sight Words of the Week: Try to find each word in books as you read to your child.
1/05: am
1/12: go
1/19: at
1/26: they
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.
Go on a whale hunt! Draw whales or print out whale pictures and hide them around your house. Have your child count out how many whales they have found, or place them in different categories.
While reading to your child have him/her pick out the sight word “am.”
Go outside in the snow, fill a spray bottle with food coloring and water. Have your child spray out the letters and sight words we have been talking about all month. Also your child can create an Alaska theme using seals, polar bears, walruses, and penguins.
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.
12/1: Use of a Ruler
Inches and Centimeters
Measuring with a ruler– practice with many different objects
Recording measurements
12/8-12/19: Christmas Program
We will be taking time with the children to practice and prepare for the Christmas Show.
12/21—1/4 Christmas Break—School Resumes Monday, January 5th
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.
12/01: Parts of a Animals
Parts of a mammal, amphibian, and bird
Parts of a reptile and fish
Working with animal puzzles and control charts
12/08: Parts of Arachnids/Insects
Parts of a spider
Parts of a wasp
12/15: Use of a Ruler
Inches and Centimeters
Measuring with a ruler– practice with many different objects
Recording measurements
12/21—1/4 Christmas Break—School Resumes Monday, January 5th
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Practice measuring different objects at home and recording those measurements.
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.
Themes of the Week (In addition to Montessori Work Time)
12/01 Christmas around the World
Taking a look at the Christmas traditions in Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, and England
The legend of the Poinsettia, tradition of the Christmas Tree, Le Reveillon (traditional Christmas Eve meal) and many other traditions.
How to say “Merry Christmas” in different languages
Afternoon group lesson: Ms. Ashley will be offering crafts, games and activities to enhance the children’s understanding of traditions around the world.
12/08 All about giving.
This week we will be doing a variety of activities that teach the children about the act
of giving. These activities include: wants vs. needs collage, a giving circle time
activity, the construction on a “lovie” blanket and sending it to Children’s Hospital,
talking about the importance of donations and lastly, we will be writing and drawing
letters to send to a nursing home.
Afternoon group lesson: Ms. Ashley will be providing a variety of holiday crafts.
12/15 Holiday Crafts
We have planned fun Christmas themed crafts and activities (Letters to Santa, Gingerbread houses, Reindeer hats and much more!)
Ashley will be focusing on making holiday ornaments, telling classic Christmas stories, and having fun at movie & PJ day!
Christmas Show Rehearsal (not a dress rehearsal) Wednesday, December 17th 6:00– 7:00pm Cuyahoga Falls Hgh School 431 Stow Ave. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
Christmas Show December 19th 6:30pm Cuyahoga Falls High School 431 Stow Ave. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
** All students arrive by 6:00pm ** Doors will open at 6:00pm
12/22—1/4 Christmas Break—School Resumes Monday January 5th
Things to do at Home this Month to reinforce our themes:
Make cookies together. Deliver them to your friends, families and neighbors.
Themes of the week for the month of December ( in addition to Montessori Work time)
12/1- 12/19: Christmas Program
We will be taking time in the morning and afternoon to practice for our Christmas Show!
We have fun Christmas themed crafts and activities planned for our students!
Christmas Show Rehearsal (not a dress rehearsal) Wednesday, December 17th 6:00– 7:00pm Cuyahoga Falls Hgh School 431 Stow Ave. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
Christmas Show December 19th 6:30pm Cuyahoga Falls High School 431 Stow Ave. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
** All students arrive by 6:00pm ** Doors will open at 6:00pm
Christmas/Winter Crafts and Baking
The children will be enjoying the holiday spirit by doing a lot of fun crafts and baking.
The children will be making holiday rice krispie treats together.
The children will be making a snow globe.
The children will be making sock snowman.
The children will be making reindeer out of their hands and feet.
The children will be making Christmas trees out of popsicle sticks.
12/20—1/4 Christmas Break—School Resumes Monday January 5th
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Bake holiday treats together.
Make homemade ornaments and festive decorations together.
Watch classic winter and Christmas movies together.
Go caroling as a family.
Volunteer at a homeless shelter as a family.
Play outside as a family and enjoy the winter weather.
Themes of the Week (in addition to Montessori Work time)
12/1—12/19 Christmas Show Practice
We will be taking time in the morning and afternoon to practice for our Christmas Show!
We have fun Christmas themed crafts and activities planned for our students!
Christmas Show Rehearsal (not a dress rehearsal) December 17th 6:00– 7:00pm Cuyahoga Falls High School 431 Stow Ave. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
Christmas Show December 19th 6:30pm Cuyahoga Falls High School 431 Stow Ave. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
** All students arrive by 6:00pm ** Doors will open at 6:00pm
12/22—1/4 Christmas Break—School Resumes Monday January 5th
Things to do at home this month to reinforce our themes:
Help prepare your child by talking with them about being on stage, how excited you will be to see them, and what to expect. Invite your family and friends, there will be plenty of seats! You won’t want to miss this event, see you there!
Starting out the week, students got a closer look at plants in preparation for our up-coming “Leaf Walk” fieldtrip! Hopefully, you noticed their “Parts of a Plant” artwork on the bulletin board. They will be learning about plants and leaves in more depth throughout the next couple of weeks. Also, this week, students are playing games and hearing stories in relation to “The Noun” to kick off our initial steps into the Grammar Boxes. Turn your life around with . The Grammar Boxes have activities that solidify the function of each word in a sentence. Including the activities the student completes with his or her friends, the students are learning to symbolize each word, leading to Sentence Analyses which helps us know what our options are to building interesting and varying sentence structures that will develop into your child’s writing “style” and the capability of understanding others’ styles.
A highlight this week is budding new research by students. Students have really enjoyed all of our new reference and non-fiction books that several families have donated. The pictures with the information are outstanding! Thank you for supporting our student’s quest for knowledge. Another highlight is our students who have elected to join dance. The music has started grooving and students have been busting out the moves in the gym already! We will get to enjoy their preparations at the next school performance event.
Week 7
Constructing the Elementary classroom to meet the needs of the Elementary student, one will often view the Elementary classroom as a flexible workshop or laboratory for experimenting, imagination and exploration. The classroom as a whole has been conducting the first experiment that highlights the Needs of Plants. Each plant of the four plants potted for the experiment were labeled to track the outcome of the results of the exclusion of heat, light and water, each, separately. They have found that heat is one of the most critical aspects that can determine the success of a plant to live. The plant that had heat taken away did not last the weekend! As stewards of the earth, our class saved the plant and it is happily prospering as new greenery in our environment.
This week many students have begun Fractions lessons and continue to progress in all the other areas in lessons. Also, our class went on our very first official fieldtrip: The Leaf Walk at Holden Arboretum. Holden Arboretum is considered the largest outdoor Museum or collection of trees and woody plants in the entire United States. The students rode the public school bus, some for the very first time! Using a map and clues, students found the correct trees and collected one leaf from the ground that belonged to that tree. Discussions about the correct identification and interesting facts about some of the trees were enjoyed by all along the path. The classroom leaf collection returned to the school with the students to be used as a more in-depth research project of the leaves by all the students.
Week 8
Monday was a busy day as students showed mastery, explored art projects, learned a new song and took Spelling quizzes. This day of the week often is the most productive day of the week as students seem to dive into work as if they miss the classroom and their work time. They also look forward to our Community Meeting on Mondays where we come together as a community and decide how to deal with issues during the week, make exciting announcements of opportunities and have voting rights to make important decisions. Recently, many sign-up sheets have been made available for students, by students, to hold a Fall Festival, join a book club, to perform in a play and many others. Our students are confident in their interests and their abilities to lead others!
Surprisingly, our students rescued another plant from our on-going experiment. The plant without water had sunk so low, students were worried that it could not be saved but they found that the plant stood up half way by the next morning with a drink of water! Discussions of the length of time the plant could last without additional water compared to the lack of heat created some debate and theories about the plants’ needs.
Along the lines of looking at our environment, How Wolves Change Rivers was an interesting short film students viewed Monday. Students were amazed by the immense impact of reintroducing the wolf back into the Yellowstone Park after many years of humans ridding the area of wolves. The plant and animal life completely changed in a positive way and in turn, the geography of the land and river changed. A lesson in how connected we all really are! Check out the video online: http://youtube.com/watch?v=ysa50BhXz-Q.
In Math, Squaring lessons have been enjoyed by some students interested in new materials in the classroom that were not available last year. Squaring lessons are closely related to the Multiples lessons in that students start seeing that one Math concept is the same but used in a different perspective, over and over again. Squaring and Cubing lessons will then lead the students to see the connections over time to Powers and other advanced Math offered in the Montessori classroom.
“If the idea of the universe be presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying. The child’s mind then will become fixed and can work. The knowledge he then acquires is organized and systematic; his intelligence becomes whole and complete because of the vision of the whole that has been presented to him and his interest spreads to all, for all are linked, and have their place in the universe on which his mind is centered. (Montessori, Maria 1973 To Educate the Human Potential Kalakshetra Press, India)”.
Week 9
In preparation to our first visit of the Tallmadge library next week, student leaf/tree research projects are under way! Many students have already started collecting facts about their special leaf that they selected and others look forward to searching for books at the library. Each student will complete one research project alone and two research projects with a team. The class project will be bound into a book that will feature a hands-on leaf and tree matching game.
Our annual Halloween party planners kicked it into gear this week, preparing games, crafts and food for all to enjoy! Halloween celebrations began with two costume parades and a community lunch with fun yet creepy food. The students bowled, pinned the hat on the witch, raced in relay races sweeping pumpkins and carrying candy corn on spoons in the gym. Everyone entered the donut eating contest that was sticky and hilarious. The day ended with three spectacular crafts: a spider on a web, a walking spider and a bat-like monster! Boo!
Latin
For October the Grade 1 and 2 class continued to practice words related to the family. In order to reinforce the family vocabulary, the students learned about a real family that lived in the Roman town of Vindolanda in northern Britain. For a supplement, they also looked at a video and pictures from the archaeological site of Vindolanda and from Hadrian’s Wall.
The Grade 3 and 4 class learned the terms subject, verb, and direct object.
The students translated short sentences on flash cards and were able to identify these grammatical terms successfully. In addition, they watched a short video showing a modern version of a Roman banquet.
Physical Education
In the first two months, the physical education program has already embarked on a plethora of sports. We kicked off the year with a game of capture the flag – it’s an all-time favorite and a great way to get all the kids excited about movement.
A rainy Friday lent itself to a nice indoor game of hockey. The gym was transformed into a hockey rink which even included penalty boxes…its not hockey without a penalty box, right? I can already see growth in the returning students. Last year the students only scored one goal during our field hockey games and this year we had well over ten goals…amazing!
A great addition this year will be our ‘field trips” to the park around the corner from the school. We already ventured there this fall, playing a game that combines both tennis and baseball. All the kids enjoyed the twist on baseball by hitting the ball with a tennis racquet.
Track and field heats up with a tight race for “fastest kid in the class.” Maddie was the undisputed champ last year but many other students have increased their speed over the summer and are giving her a run for her money. Something tells me Maddie will be ready to run during our next timed event.
We have some fun field trips scheduled for this year. Our first is coming up soon with a trip to the Football Hall of Fame. I look forward to learning all about the history of the NFL with the kids.
