A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of December 17

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“Children become the things they love.” – Maria Montessori

How is this half of the school year already over? So far this year, we have gone to a pumpkin farm, traveled to the Cleveland Zoo, and have performed at Mulberry Gardens. We have learned about new friends and continued building friendships with our returning students. We have studied the external characteristics of vertebrates and how cells work. We’ve discussed North and South America and have cooked to celebrate our friendship. Our students are creating materials and presenting lessons. We share messages when we have concerns in the classroom. We work every day to learn more and become better. I am so excited for the rest of this school year!

This second year student is writing about the Ancient Greek Civilization. He has drawn different clothing, different structures, types of exercise, and how they defended themselves. Next, they will study the Middle Ages.
These first year students are creating a crossword puzzle stemming from the word “happy.” They each take a turn to build a word and use a new word to branch off of when they run out of space. These students also enjoy building a word, then writing it backwards and trying to sound out the silly word they made. These activities help students build their knowledge of phonemes and practice decoding!
One of our favorite whole class lessons is “The Food Chain.” We throw popcorn on the floor and release the students that are chosen to be crickets. The crickets must move and sound like crickets throughout the activity and try to collect as much popcorn as possible. Next, frogs are released and try to capture the crickets. Then, hawks are released and try to capture the frogs. At the end, the remaining animals check their food bags for red popcorn. The red popcorn was contaminated food or litter that they accidentally ate. After that, whoever is left are the winners. After our lesson, we discuss what animals could also be in this food chain and what we learned from the experiment.
Our Last Day! We finally finished reading “A Little Princess” so we were able to watch the movie about it! After playing board games, we settled in for some hot chocolate and our movie!

See you next year!

A Peek at Our Week | Ms. Courtney’s Classroom | Week of December 10 and 17th

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Over the past couple of week the children read a lot of holiday books and did a lot of different crafts. I am so proud of how hard they worked during our Christmas Show practices. They did such a great job on their performance last Friday!

Work Time

Sandpaper Letters: This child is tracing and identifying the sounds of the letters ‘p’ and ‘t’ and connecting the sounds with the initial sounds of different objects like purse and turtle.
Movable Alphabet: This child is saying the words of different objects and phonetically spelling them:cup, dog and pom. He used both the print and cursive movable alphabet so that he could compare them.
Stamp Game: This child is doing static addition (a sum without exchanging) problems using the stamp game. He is practicing addition at a higher level of abstraction.
Rhyming Cards: This child is identifying and matching the rhyming object pictures. He is able to understand and hear when two words sound the same.

Guest Readers

Reminders

School Resumes | January 7, 2019

Take A Peek Into Our Week!/Ms Kate/December 19, 2018

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Happy Holidays everyone!!

I am placing both last week and this week into our last blog of 2018! These past few weeks have been filled with christmas concert practices, our Christmas program, and christmas crafts!! What a fun filled two weeks we had! During our time together we also learned about snow. We had fun lessons on how snow is formed, how many sides does a snow crystal have, what fun things we can do in the snow, plus much more!!

One of our kindergarten students is working on the map of Asia. When working on these puzzles they are gaining knowledge of the different countries, and also gaining fine motor skills. 
This cutie here is working on one of our syllable work. This is a stepping stone to reading. When children practice breaking up words into parts, reading becomes a bit easier for them.
One of our kindergarten students is working on the Addition finger chart. This activity allows the child to practice memorization of addition facts. 
When working on the nine tray the child is introduced to the decimal system. It also helps them to become familiar with the names and relative sizes of categories. 

I hope that all of you have a wonderful holiday break!! See you in the new year!!

Academic Enrichment — Cuyahoga Falls Campus — Week Of 12/17/2018

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Lesson:
Intro to Decimals (unit, ten, hundred, and thousand) and the 9 tray. The 9 Tray purpose(s):

Direct
To make the child familiar with the different categories of numbers, especially with regard to reading the symbols.  To give the child the wording of large numbers

Indirect
For the hierarchy of numbers, that is, that while the significant figure are always from 1 to 9, it is the place they occupy in the complex number which gives them the importance of 1, 10, 100 or 1000.
For the fact that in a large number made up of two or more categories, the zero merely shows an empty place. That is, that one of the categories is lacking (in 1065, for instance, the hundreds are missing).
For the fact that only 9 of each category are necessary to form any number.

 

 

Handwriting:
We practiced our cursive pit, big, fist, tick.

 

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 17 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog,  Hebrew, Korean, and Hungarian).

 

Next Week:
Lesson- Composing Numbers / Addition

Sight Words Of The Week- come number

Synonym Of The Week- quiet

The next language will be- Irish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Academic Enrichment | Week of December 17th | Tallmadge

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The kindergarten students have been working hard on learning different ways to solve multiplication problems. Below they are pictured using the multiplication bead board. This work gives them the opportunity to practice multiplication in a way that will lead them to memorization of the essential multiplication tables.

 

Cursive Handwriting: The students practiced writing the lowercase cursive words sat, us, rip, sad, gap and rust.

Peek In Our Week — Mr. John’s Class — Week Of December 17, 2018

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Line Time:
This week we learned about Christmas around the world and how different countries celebrate Christmas.  In Italy many children believe in Befana which is a kind old witch that leaves candy at children’s houses.  In England Christmas crackers (not a food) are used.  They are small tubes covered with colorful paper and when pulled a crack noise is made and a small toy and a joke falls out.  The Germans call the Christmas tree the Tannenbaum.  In France they say Joyeux Noel which means Happy Christmas.  In Sweden have St. Lucia Day on December 13th.  St Lucia was a young Christian girl who lived  circa 304. The most common story told about St Lucia is that she would secretly bring food to Christians in Rome, who lived in hiding in the catacombs under the city. She would wear candles on her head so she had both her hands free to carry things. Lucy means ‘light’ so this is a very appropriate name.

 

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 15 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, and Hebrew).

 

Guest Reader:
Pastor Kirk read a story about a Christmas Tree that was not perfectly formed. 

 

Peek In Our Classroom:

Beginning handwriting exercises include tracing. She is tracing her line time name tag. Students like to trace and collect their name tags or they trace the name and give it that particular student.

 

This boy is working on the metal insets (aka metal insects, hehe). The purposes of this material ( and there are a lot) is grip and hold the pencil (and hold the pencil upright), refine hand control to steady the pencil, develop movements of straight and curved lines, in preparation for letter formation or a continual line which can assist with cursive. Develop hand-eye coordination, to make small coordinated movements, develop fine muscles in the hand but also the larger muscles required for sitting and maintaining posture for writing, and focus the mind, develop and strengthen the child’s concentration. Make movements up and down and left to right (when filling in or shading), this is significant when reading and writing, practice order, repetition, and memory recall, develop geometric sense including the name of each shape, how it is constructed, how it looks when turned or moved, how it relates to other shapes.  **** We got our money’s worth out of this material ****

 

This student is working on the construction boxes. This material(s) is found in the Sensorial Area. The use of the shapes and vivid color attracts the student to this material. The aims for this material is Direct- To show that by joining together different triangles, four-sided figures are formed.  Indirect- Preparation for geometry: to show that all plane figures constructed with straight lines are composed of triangles.

 

 

 

This student just completed and mastered the Color Bead Bars found in the Math area. This material reinforces the relationship between quantity and symbol (the number). Each bead is colored which is attractive to the student and each color has a different physical quantity. She just matched the bead to the corresponding number.  *** Look how proud she is as looks upon her work ****

 

Next Week:
Line Time- The 5 Senses

Letter Of The Week- O o

Rhyming Word Of The Week- bug

Next Language will be- Korean

Snack will be brought to you by Josie

 

Upcoming Events:

****************  Winter Break: December 22, Saturday through January 6, Sunday  ****************

                                         — Have a safe and wonderful Holiday Season —  

                                                    Go Buckeyes beat washington!!!!!

                                                            

Fun, Frolic, and Friends:

     

 

Buddies just hanging out.

 

My Lunch Bunch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Peek Into Reading Group

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With Ms. Faith

The last story the kindergartners listened to was The Fire Cat. The story was about a cat who got into trouble a lot and didn’t have any friends. One day he chases a little cat up into a tree, and ends up getting stuck. A fireman comes to rescue him and ends up taking him to the fire house to become a fire cat.

Throughout the story the group was able to participate in discussion, share their opinions, and practice reading parts of the story aloud. They also completed comprehension activities that went along with the story.

The students are sharing their drawings of the fire cat chasing smaller cats

A Peek Into After Break

– The students will be listening to a poem called Every Time I climb a Tree.

– The students will learn about rhythm in poems.

– The students will learn the vocabulary words: skin,  dodge,  spot.

A Peek Into Art-December

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With Ms. Dayna

Ms. Dayna, the new art teacher, took this time to observe the students abilities and enjoy the season with them. We can’t wait to see what new projects she comes up with for after break! Welcome Ms. Dayna!

This month in art classes students were presented with seasonal projects in a variety of mediums: oil pastels, water color, tempera paints and paper.

Primary students made snowflake paintings using crayons to resist the water color and experimented with the effects of salt in watercolor. They also worked in tempera paints in a guided painting of snowmen.

Lastly, all s the students made paper ornaments to take home for the holidays. Primary students practiced threading with their ornaments and the elementary students flexed their origami skills folding German stars.

 

 

 

 

A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of December 10

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This week our “Peek” was written by two of our students! These students read our previous blogs, took pictures around the room, and filled in a blog template. The students did some editing together, and with a teacher, so what you will read below is their final product. There are still some misspelled words in their final product, but in a Montessori classroom we focus on the process, instead of the end result. Dr. Montessori believed when we put all of the emphasis on the final product, we devalue everything leading up to that point. This can discourage repetition which will make mastery of a skill difficult. The purpose of the students writing the blog is to provide you with a glimpse into the room through their eyes, to provide them with practice of real world skills, and to give them a deeper understanding of the materials in the room. We hope you enjoy their work!

“A Peek at Our Week” by Anelise (3rd Grade) and Remy (2nd Grade)

Throughout the week the students are working very hard. 3, 4, and 5 have gotten their microscope license. Everyone has been listening. The second graders learned subtracting fractions with like dinominators. The first graders learned energy transformation.

In this picture 2 second graders are working on geografic feature cards. After learning all of these cards they will make an imaginary island.
A fourth grader is working on the diseckting microscope. She was looking at foraminifera, which is a plankton.
The first graders are getting a lesson on Multiplication Stamp Game.
A third grader is reading a “Fish in a Tree.” It is about a girl that has dyslexia.

REMINDERS:

Friday the 21 is Pajama Day.

“A Peek at Next Week” by Ms. Ashley

Next week, first year students will practice the Multiplication Bead Board, learn the origin of their name, study straight and curved lines, and will practice being in a food chain. Second year students will review multiples with the bead bars, will continue studying the relationship between angles, and will learn about the rock cycle. The third graders will begin finding the divisibility of numbers, will write commas in lists, and will discuss the positions of flower ovaries. The fourth years will study the divisibility of 9, will study Early Humans vocabulary, and will discuss the parts of a cell. The fifth year students will review plural possessives and will finish studying the relationships of circles.

REMINDERS:

  • Friday, December 21st is Pajama Day. Your child may wear pajamas to school. They may bring a pillow and blanket to enjoy the movie “The Little Princess.” Students may also bring a board game. Each child will still need a lunch and a water bottle. Your child will still need to bring in their reading log for conferences.

Academic Enrichment | Cuyahoga Falls Campus | Week Of 12/10/2018

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Lesson:
Rulers- The Week of December 10th we discovered the ruler and started measuring things.  We learned how to line the ruler to whatever we were measuring and learned how to measure in inches (in, “) and centimeters (CM).

They are making sure the long edge of the paper in 11 inches or 28 cm. I could not get the picture to rotate so we are stuck with a surreal picture reminiscent of the TV series Batman.

 

Handwriting:
We practiced our cursive bed, men, deck, egg.

 

Cultural Subjects:
Your children can now count to ten in 17 languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Greek, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog,  Hebrew, Korean, and Hungarian).

 

Next Week:
Lesson- My fave subject…. MATH!

Sight Words Of The Week- Giving them a break before break.

Synonym Of The Week- Giving them a break before break.

The next language will be- Giving them a break before break.