Over the past two weeks, we read the book My New Friend Is So Fun. In this book, Elephant and Snake find out that their best friends are playing together. They get worried that their best friends are having more fun together and will forget about them. It ends up that Piggie and Brian Bat (Elephant and Snake’s best friends) were playing best friend games. They decided to draw their best friends, Elephant and Snake. At the end the two main characters are happy their friends are having fun.
After the readings, the kindergartners participated in discussions, writing activities, and drawing activities to aid in comprehension. Once the students are finished with their papers, they share and we discuss their ideas.
The kindergartners are drawing Piggie and Brian Bat playing best friend games.This sudent is sharing her drawing with the group.
A Peek Into the Next Two Weeks
-The students will be listening to the Mo Willems book, We Are in a Book.
-The students will be participating in comprehension and evaluative activities.
-The students will be participating in a craft that goes along with the story.
This past week the students learned about various parts of the human body. They discovered that even though all of the components of the human body work differently, they still manage to work together. They also developed an understanding of the basic functions of the bodies main components.
A peek into next week: Leaves
Kindergarten: Landforms
The past week the kindergarten students learned and explored the difference between a lake, island, bay, peninsula, gulf, cape, isthmus, strait, chain of lakes, and archipelago.
A peek into next week: Biggest (galaxy) to Smallest (person/atom)
Reminders:
10/17 Picture Day
10/18 Bring Your Parent to Work Time
10/24 Grandparents Day
11/1 Halloween Party
Enrichment Highlight:
This week in dance class we practiced our combinations across the floor and worked on improving our coffee grinder technique.
Work Time:
Movable Alphabet:This child is practicing blending and forming words using the different letter sounds he has mastered box, hat, drum, sled and trumpet.Forty-Five Layout: This child is becoming familiar with the names and relative sizes of the categories: units, tens, hundreds and thousands. He is also discovering that if he has 6 units and add 1 more unit than he will have 7 units.Pumpkin Scrubbing: This child is using many motor skills while also remembering the order and sequence of each action to successfully pumpkin scrub, which naturally leads to the development of concentration.
We had a great time in art class! Ms. Dana had us rotate through stations and explore with different types of materials such as paint, markers, and play dough. Thank you for a fun week in art class!
We had such a fun week this week!! Our theme was all about pumpkins!! Together we had fun doing a pumpkin investigation which included giving a description of what our pumpkin looked like, measuring our pumpkin with the pink tower blocks, seeing if our pumpkin sinks or floats, and we counted the pumpkin seeds! We also talked about the like cycle of a pumpkin, and labeled the different parts of the pumpkin!! They had a blast!! Our class also had fun creating different pumpkin crafts and science experiments!!
How does cutting help a child’s development? The opening and closing motion of cutting with scissors helps children develop the small muscles in their hands otherwise known as fine motor skills. These muscles are crucial for holding a pencil or crayons and gripping and manipulating small objects.Our kindergarten friend is working on the Vowel tree. The vowel tree is tactile, engaging way to teach and practice decoding words. This manipulative can be used with beginning readers to more advanced readers.The direct purpose of the sandpaper letters is to teach the child sounds of the alphabet by means of muscular and visual memory.
REMINDERS:
Book share is every Friday!
Friday I will be sending out Halloween party sign ups!
Please keep ALL toys in car or at home!! Thank you!!
Line Time: Mammals-This past week we learned about Mammalus. Mammals are vertebrates (have a spine or backbone), warm blooded (their body temperature does not change), have hair or fur, live bearers, and eat/drink mother’s milk when young. Some mammals live in the water such as dolphins and whales. The only mammal that can fly is the bat! Cats, dogs, elephants, and rats are mammals. Oh, and people are mammals as well. “Are we not men? We are MAMMALS………. ”
If you want to play Six Degrees Of Separation for DEVO, Mark Mothersbaugh’s (front man for DEVO) brother does the confirmation classes for my church. Also, I do childcare at the church and I have cared for his niece’s children. I know useless but interesting information. Bonus trivia: Mark Mothersbaugh went to Woodridge High School.
Did you know? Since football season is upon us it would be apropos to share this knowledge of the defensive term of “Blitz”. The term “Blitz” comes from the German word blitzkrieg, which means, “lightning war.” In World War II, the Germans employed this tactic which emphasized mobile forces attacking with speed and surprise.
Cultural Subjects: Your children can now count to ten in 10 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian).
October Birthdays: In the Montessori classroom we have students ranging from 2.5 to 6 years old. Here are our newest 3, 4, 5 year old students.
Peek In The Classroom:
These proud girls are doing equations (addition) with the golden beads. Montessori math uses the golden bead material; first to build numbers into the thousands. Once a child is able to build a visual representation of a number, the beads are used to teach basic operations. Young children are able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide numbers into the thousands using this material.
These girls are working on the Knobbed Cylinders. The Knobbed Cylinders are a Montessori sensorial material, designed to assist children in making distinctions in their immediate environment. This material primarily engages the senses of touch and sight. The material is comprised of 10 different cylinders with ‘knobs’ used to hold each object using the pincer grip. I like how they are working together and how focused they are.
This student is working on the Brown Stair found in the Sensorial area. The Brown Stair helps us see relationship and a visual understanding of objects getting incrementally thinner and thicker. Another purpose for this material is called “materialized abstractions” – the sensorial materials help bring concepts that were abstract into the concrete. I especially love the focused expression!
These boys are working on a pre-cursive handwriting material using a dry erase marker on a wipe board. In the classroom we teach cursive to children as young as three years old. The letters flow together because it’s easier and quicker. It is our unique hand writing. Cursive means “running”, and is simply quicker than picking up and putting down the pen for each letter. Visually, in cursive, all the letters that compose one word are touching, the same way we say them.
Peek Into Next Week: Line Time- Reptiles
Letter Of The Week- G g
Rhyming Word Of The Week- bid
Next Language is Russian
Person bringing snack for week of 10/7/2018 is Chase
Weekly Theme: Biggest to smallest where we live- We discovered we live in the vast galaxy of the Milky Way (not the candy bar), then we are still in space and live in a group of planets called The Solar System. Then the planet we live is the planet Earth. Once we touched down we found we live in the Northwestern Hemisphere and live on the continent of North America. Once we found land we live in the country of The United States Of America and live in the great state of Ohio (Go Buckeyes). We all live in Summit County but live in different cities and have different addresses and phone numbers. What a journey it was!
Handwriting: We practiced writing in cursive Vv, Ww, Xx, Yy, Zz
A few of the kindergarten students practicing cursive handwriting. The one on the left may be having too much fun.
Cultural Subjects: We now can count to ten in 10 languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian).
Next Week: Weekly Theme: Landforms
Synonym Of The Week: Calm: peaceful, quiet, inactive, serene, slow
“…The teacher’s task is first to nourish and assist, to watch, encourage, guide, induce, rather than to interfere, prescribe, or restrict.” – Maria Montessori
Something new in our room this year is “Focus Groups.” These are student-chosen groups about research topics that are not assigned by teachers. In these groups, students work to research a history, geography, writing, and art component for their topic. By the end of December, they will present their findings to the class before deciding if they want to move to a new group or to continue researching their topics. Not only are these students researching interesting topics like “Cats and Kittens,” “The Titanic,” “Dinosaurs,” and “STEM,” but they are learning how to work collaboratively in a group of peers of differing ages and skill levels. Below you will find two students researching the birthing process of cats!
Lower Elementary by Ms. Marlee
Our 2nd graders are working hard reviewing the Stamp Game this week. The Stamp Game furthers the students’ knowledge of all four operations. Mastering this work will prepare them for more challenging works in the Montessori math curriculum.Sometimes you need to take a break from writing to share your ideas with a friend. These two 1st graders are reading their journal entries to one another and offering helpful comments and support. Learning to collaborate with peers and seek advice are both qualities that lead to becoming a supportive and courteous individual. We are thankful to see friendships like this growing in our classroom.
Upper Elementary by Ms. Ashley
All of our Upper Elementary students love to play in the woods. Some of our students noticed that trash is often thrown into the woods and it can get in the way of their recess projects. Two of these students decided that each Thursday, they would dedicate their entire recess time to cleaning up the woods. They wrote out a plan, typed and formatted their sign, and hung it for volunteers. Our goal in teaching lessons is that students will realize they are a part of the larger global community and that they can make a difference. It is wonderful to see that in action!These Upper Elementary students have finished their study of the structure of the Earth. To review, they are going through the vocabulary they were introduced to and matching it to the correct definition. After they finished, they went through the answer key to check and correct their work. You can see the dictionaries nearby that they turned to while making their matches! These two students are masters of the dictionary!
Enrichments by Ms. Erica
Upper Elementary students have been making progress on their self-portrait collage. They have had a lot of fun cutting out pictures that they feel represent themselves.
REMINDERS:
“Bring Your Parents to Work Time” on October 8 and October 10 – Today is the deadline to sign up here!
October 9 – Third through sixth grade trip to Hale Farm
October 17 – Picture Day
October 22 – Grandparents’ Day
SAVE THE DATE – October 31, 8:30 am – Come see this year’s Halloween play, “Give Me Back My Bones”
November 1, 8:15 am – Drop off at Cuyahoga Falls Campus for our Halloween play performance there
November 1 – Halloween Party (students only) – details to follow soon
Miss Dayna introduced us to centers this week! We discussed primary colors, the color wheel, shapes, and drawing textures. We really enjoyed all of our art exploration!
We started with the three primary colors: red, blue, and yellow. Then we had the opportunity to mix our primary colors to see what would happen next!
This child is using the color wheel and colored rocks to experiment with the color order of a rainbow.
We were hands on with our play doh and created shapes and animals.
We learned that making small circles, lines, and zig zags could add textures and patterns to our art.
This past week the children learned how our five senses help us understand and explore the world around us. They learned that our five senses help us collect information about ourselves and our surroundings. They also learned to identify the five senses: hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and seeing. We discovered that sometimes we use two or more senses at once; and how important it is for our senses to work together. The children had the opportunity to practice using their senses to determine properties of objects and distinguish them from one another.
A peek into next week: Body Parts
Kindergarten: Ohio and surrounding states
This past week the kindergarten students learned where Ohio is located on a map of the USA and the names of all the surrounding states Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana, Kentucky and Michigan. They also learned different fun facts about Ohio like the state bird is a cardinal and that Ohio’s state flag is the only state flag that isn’t a rectangle.
A peek into next week: Landforms
Reminders:
10/17 Picture Day
11/1 Halloween Party
Enrichment Highlight:
For science this week we mixed a thymol solution into different chemicals such as NaHSO4, citric acid, citric acid and Na2CO3, NaHCO3 and Na2CO3. The students discovered that the color changed based on the pH level. We talked about how a pH level is either alkaline (higher than 7), neutral or acidic (lower than 7).
Work Time:
Movable Alphabet: This child is practicing matching and identifying cursive letters and print letters a through g.USA Map: These children are learning the names of the states and where they are located on a map.Object to Picture: This child is identifying and matching different objects to their pictures.
