Peek In Our Week ^^^ Thee Buckeye Room ^^^ Week Of September 5, 2022

Posted on September 10, 2022 at 7:50 pm.

Line Time:
Healthy Habits- This week we learned how stay healthy. We learned that we need to wash our hands thoroughly and keep our whole bodies clean by taking shower, baths, washing our hair, and brushing our teeth. We now know how long to wash our hands by singing the ABC’s which is a good idea but we decided it would be too difficult to sing while brushing out teeth. Another way to keep healthy is to cover our sneezes and coughs with the inside of our elbow to trap germs from flying all over the place. Another healthy habit is to get enough sleep to rest our bodies and our minds. Exercise such as running, biking, climbing, and even walking leads to a healthy body and mind. We discovered if we eat healthy food like fruits, vegetables, protein, and limited sweets that is good for our bodies. More on that next week.

A Message From Mr. John (What you talkin about Willis?):

Fun Fact:
Honeybees flap their wings 230 times every second. That is A LOT of cardio!!!!

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 6 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French) Also, I will be posing a video with the language added for that week. Oh ya, take a gander at the video below.

Know Your Languages (Greek):

Lets grab a gyro (pronounced year-o)

New Addition to the Classroom/ Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches:

Enrichments (Science):

Peek In The Classroom:

He is working on the Trinomial Cube found in the Sensorial area. The direct aim of the binomial and trinomial cubes is for the child to practice the steps to properly disassemble and build the cube, while refining dexterity and visual acuity.

The Number Rods also help children learn the names of numbers and their sequence and learn to correctly associate between the spoken number and its quantity. Children grow to understand that each rod represents a unique quantity and that each number is represented by a single object as a whole, separate from others.

The constructive triangles are used to demonstrate that all plane geometric figures can be constructed from triangles.

The direct purpose of the Sandpaper Numbers is to teach children the symbols that represent each number, allowing them to visually identify any number from 0 – 9. In Montessori education this is specifically taught separately to counting from 0 – 9, where children often fall back on rote memorization.

Peek Into Next Week:
Line Time- Food Groups

Letter Of The Week- D d

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bag

Next Language is Japanese

Upcoming Events:
Picture Day: Wednesday September 21, 2022

Just In… Ramseyer Farms on Friday, September 30, 2022.

Academic Enrichment aka Kindergarten:
Hemispheres- The kindergarten students and I went over hemispheres, The Equator, and The Prime Meridian. Actually, the hemispheres are made by The Equator and the Prime Meridian. The North and South Hemisphere are created by The Equator and the East and West Hemisphere are created by the Prime Meridian. We delved further and identified the Northwestern, Northeastern, Southwestern, and Southeastern Hemispheres. That was not as daunting as one would expect.

Just a really nice picture of the kinders

Next Week:
Weekly Theme: North America/surrounding waters/bordering countries

Synonym Of The Week: SLOW, unhurried, gradual, sluggish, stagnant, lethargic

Sight Words Of The Week: see her

Frolic, Friends, and Fun:

Your Child says The Dardest Things (Didn’t your mom say NOT to put things up your nose?):

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

Posted on September 9, 2022 at 5:42 pm.

Written by Tonya Shaw

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!

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!

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!

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

A Peek At Our Week- Aspen- 08/29/22-09/02/22 Reasons for Seasons!

Posted on September 7, 2022 at 11:51 am.

Written by Kelley Laney

This week in Aspen it was all about seasons! The Aspen class began our Seasons Lesson by learning about day and night. We discovered that our earth rotates (spins) on its axis, and as a result, we get daytime and nighttime! We were amazed when we found out that when we have day time here, there are children in other parts of the world having night time; therefore, when we are at school, children in other places are having dinner or even sleeping!! Aspen then learned that as our Earth rotates, it tilts. This tilt affects how much direct sunlight different areas receive, and as a result, we get our seasons! The more direct sunlight the Earth receives, the warmer/hotter the weather. On the other hand, the less direct sunlight, the cooler/colder the weather! Finally, we discussed the differences between the seasons in Ohio! Did you know that some places don’t have four seasons? Some places have only two! Or they have mild climate changes!

Throughout our exploration of seasons, we got to experiment with our painted globe and a flashlight! With this activity, we got to observe our key words axis, rotation, and orbit first hand. Our flashlight acted as the sun, and we helped rotate the Earth (painted globe), experiencing day/night and the changing seasons. We also got to take turns being the Earth, orbiting around the sun and rotating and tilting to represent how old we are. It sure was a fun filled week in Aspen!

In Kindergarten lesson, the kindergarten students have been learning about the continents and the concept of direction. They have been learning the names and location of each continent as well as the cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West. During Readers Workshop we discussed that reading is actually a science and as “Sound Detectives,” it is our job to find the clues and experiment putting sounds together. Sometimes, we will create groupings of sounds that make sense when they are put together, and sometimes our groups of sounds will be nonsense or silly! It is up to the Sound Detectives to use their clues! Our Readers Workshop is split into two groups: the Cardinals and the Chickadees. This week the Chickadees read the books Alphabet City and The Alphabet’s Alphabets and practiced their detective skills sounding out letters. The Cardinals also read the book The Alphabet’s Alphabet and focused on the formation of how each sound (letter) is formed. The Cardinals also began combining sounds to form words and were introduced to the concept of phonograms. In Writers Workshop both group began creating their very own book and worked on proper letter formation, becoming writers! What a busy and fun week these kindergarteners had!

Next week the Aspen thematic topic is all about Continents! The Aspen class will be introduced to the Continent Puzzle Map, The Sandpaper Globe, The Painted Globe, The Geography Envelopes, and The Continent Boxes. Aspen will learn the names and location of continents, be introduced to the terms land, water, continent and Ocean, and will begin exploring the world and culture around them with the Geography Envelopes and Continent Boxes! See you next week!

Working on matching the countries in Africa to the control map with the Africa Puzzle Map!

Admiring a completed activity!

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

Posted on September 2, 2022 at 4:39 pm.

Written by Tonya Shaw

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!

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 In Our Week === The Buckeye Room === Week Of August 29, 2022

Posted on September 1, 2022 at 10:59 am.

Written by John Kotradi

Line Time:
Ground Rules:
Week Two… Everything is fine! We continued learning about the ground rules in our classroom. We learned the expected behaviors for work time and were introduced to new work trays in the Practical Life area so that we can strengthen our fine motor skills. We learned how to get a teacher’s attention by putting a hand on the teachers shoulder instead of yelling across the room. We have been practicing when a teacher calls a student’s name they reply “Yes, Mr. John?” instead of “what?” or “ya?”

We also have been practicing placing shoes and slippers nicely on the their mat.

I expect this every time they change shoes/slippers.

A Message From Mr. John:

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 5 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French)

Know Your Languages:

August Birthdays:
A Montessori Classroom consists of 3 to 6 year old students. Here are our newest 4 and 5 year old students.

Fun Fact:

Drivers, in their life time, will spend on average of 6 months waiting at red lights. That’s a lot of time to catch up on your FaceBook page.

Peek In The Classroom:

He is working on the Vowel Tree which is a pre-reading material found in the Language area. As you can see the child uses a card with consonants on each end with a cut out in the middle. The student slides the card exposing a vowel to make a real word or a nonsensical word. This develops the ability to string letters together to form words.

She is rolling PlayDo which mirrors rolling dough with a rolling pin. This activity is found in Practical Life and strengthens fine motors skills and concentration.

This child is working on the First Introduction Of Decimals found in the Math area. The aim is to introduce the child to the concept of the decimal system and to make the child familiar with the names and quantity of each category.

Peek Into Next Week:
Line Time- Healthy Habits

Letter Of The Week- C c

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bap

Next Language is Greek

Upcoming Events:
Labor Day- ****No School Monday September 5, 2022. ***** There is always one family that shows up. Who will it be this year? LOL

Academic Enrichment aka Kindergarten:

Weekly Theme:
Cardinal Directions (N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW)

The Kinders pointing in their favorite direction.

Next Week:
Weekly Theme: N. America/surrounding bodies water

Synonym Of The Week: SLOW, unhurried, gradual, sluggish, stagnant, lethargic

Sight Words Of The Week: see her

Frolic, Friends, and Fun:

Notice the height difference in a Montessori classroom?

A new spin on casual day (see his bath robe?)

Your Child Says The Darndest Things:

Bugs for dinner?

Peek In Our Week — Thee Buckeye Room — Week Of 8/22/2022

Posted on August 27, 2022 at 10:36 pm.

Written by John Kotradi

Line Time:
Ground Rules:
What a wonderful start to our school year! This week we learned about the ground rules in our classroom. We learned the expected behaviors for work time and were introduced to new work trays in the Practical Life area so that we can strengthen our fine motor skills. We learned how to roll and unroll a mat. The four main rules are 1) No running in the classroom. 2) Listening Ears. 3) Keep our body to our self. 4) Treat people and the room with respect. We are learning how to shake hands, look each other in the eye while shaking hands, and reply with pleasantries when I say good morning (students respond “Good morning Mr. John). What a great start to a great school year!

A Message From Mr. John:

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 4 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish)

Know Your languages:

Fun Fact:
Did you know you can NOT imagine a new/undiscovered color!

Peek In The Classroom:

Peek Into Next Week:
Line Time-

Letter Of The Week- C c

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bap

Next Language is German

Upcoming Events:
Labor Day- ****No School Monday September 4, 2023. ***** There is always one family that shows up. Who will it be this year? LOL

!!!! Sign up for Remind and Transparent Classroom. !!!

Academic Enrichment aka Kindergarten:

Weekly Theme:

Next Week:

Synonym Of The Week: BORING, drab, dull lifeless, mundane, monotonous

Sight Words Of The Week: will him

Frolic, Friends, and Fun:

Your Kids Say The Darndest Things:

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

Posted on August 26, 2022 at 10:36 pm.

Written by Tonya Shaw

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!

Aspen -A Peek At Our Week 08/24/22-08/26/22 Welcome Back!

Posted on August 26, 2022 at 8:08 pm.

Written by Kelley Laney

Welcome back Aspen families! We hope you all had an amazing and relaxing summer vacation! The new school year is here, and the Aspen children are settling into classroom routine and have already begun exploring the classroom! This week we began our school year with the Procedural Movement Lessons (The How To’s Of A Montessori Classroom); therefore, we learned how to walk the line, how to move through the classroom, how to use indoor voices, how to carry and roll rugs, how to choose activities from the shelves, and how to take turns talking during line time. Returning children were amazing role models and helped our new classmates with all of the above and more! It was a great first week of school!

Next week we will continue with Procedural Movement Lessons and will begin learning all about seasons. We will learn why we have seasons, discuss the concept of day and night, and will learn the names and characteristics of each season.

Kindergarten students will also begin Reading and Writing workshop next week with Ms. Kelley and Ms. Tonya on Tuesday ‘s and Thursday’s. During these workshops we will focus on phonics, language rules (phonograms, blends, and more), comprehension, sentence structure, making inferences, sequencing, and the mechanics of handwriting. Each week I will include an update on concepts covered during the Reading and Writing workshop here on our classroom’s blog! The kindergarteners will also be attending a kindergarten lesson (Kindergarten Workshop) on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday with Mr. John. During kindergarten lesson, our kindergarteners will explore a variety of concepts in detail and are often given follow-up (homework) to be completed at home. Please check your child’s folder and return all homework to school the following day.

See you next week!!

Learning how to transfer water with an eyedropper.

using a pushpin to punch around the outline of continents.

Working on our new Binomial Cube!

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

Posted on June 2, 2022 at 7:56 pm.

Written by Tonya Shaw

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 In Our Week ### The Buckeye Room ### Week Of May 23, 2022

Posted on May 28, 2022 at 7:48 pm.

Written by John Kotradi

Thee Buckeye Room Bulletin

Line Time:
Solar System- Put on your space suit and get ready to explore our solar system. We started with discussing the planets nearer the sun then worked our way to the furthest reaches of our solar system. Mercury is our first planet and is the closest to the sun. Venus is the second planet. Even though it is further away from the sun than Mercury it is the hottest planet in our solar system. The third planet is near and dear to our hearts. It is the planet earth. It is the only planet in our solar system that has life. The next planet is Mars and is known as the red planet. The next planet is the biggest planet in our solar system and has a big red storm that has been raging for centuries. That planet is Jupiter. Saturn is the next planet and has really cool ring around it that are pieces of rock and ice. Uranus is next and it spins up and down instead of side to side like all the other planets. Neptune is the last planet in our solar system. I did not forget about Pluto. Oh! Poor Pluto. Pluto was once a planet but now has been demoted to a dwarf planet. As a side note learned that most planets were named after Roman Gods and Goddesses. We watched a few video clips about the Solar System and danced to the Sun Song by They Might Be Giants! How cool are these guys??

Did You Know? (More They Might Be Giants):
They Might Be Giants has a really cool children’s CD about science and a parent gave it to me decades ago. Also, a few of their songs were featured in Tiny Toons (see below). I saw these guys circa 1990 during the Flood Tour. They were a fun alternative band! To prove my memory is not shot. Here are a few vids of the cartoons. OH! Remember Malcolm In the Middle? The theme song “You’re Not The Boss of Me” ? YEP… You got it. LOL

Istanbul (Not Constantinople)…

Particle Man…

Not The Boss Of Me …

My hair hasn’t been this long since I was in the 7th grade building my Zep collection:

A Message From Mr. John (My hair and more importantly Angela) :

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 27 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagalog, Hebrew, Korean, Irish, Kiswahili, Irish, Welsh, Dutch/Flemmish, Polish, Serbo-Croation, Cebuano, Malay, Farsi, Turkish)

Impromptu Snake Viewing:

Enrichments (Music):

Fire Station Field Trip:

A fire fighter in full dress giving high fives to the children. His purpose was to get the children comfortable with him and not be afraid.

The well behaved group. The station told us we were the most well behaved group to pass through the station. Be proud of your children.

All About Bees:
We had a parent that is a Beekeeper come in and taught us some really cool things about bees. He had his assistants help as well!