This week was all about community helpers. On Monday the kids took a field trip to the fire station. They had a blast learning about fire safety, seeing behind the scenes at the station, watching a firefighter put on his turnout gear, and more! It was a great field trip. We also talked about the different community helpers that we have in our neighborhood, and how they make an impact on all of us. This week we also celebrated grandparents day!! It was amazing watching the grandparents and their grandchildren interact together, it was super special.
Such a great time at grandparents day!!!The purpose of the red rods is the visual discrimination of differences in dimensions, and the muscular memory of length. This work also prepares them for mathematics.The direct purpose is to observe and compare the different series with each other. The indirect purpose is for them to get a clear understanding for the different dimensions and their interplay.While working on the addition snake game the child is to familiarize with all the possible number combinations that make up ten. They can also aquire a subconscious knowledge that no two numbers together amount to more than 18. This gives practice in getting the first basis of memorizing the essential combinations with which, when known, one can make any addition.
Our two kindergarten friends preparing for graduation!
Take A Peek Into Next Week:
Next week is all about outer space. We will have fun learning about our 8 planets, the sun, moon, and stars, the space shuttle and more!
The kindergarteners listened to a set of poems these last two weeks. We defined unfamiliar words and held discussions about the different poems. The group even came up with a poem that was a riddle about a holiday. Their last activity was to create a mural using the words from the Apache poem at the end of the section. The kindergarteners had to work together to create the work of art. They delegated who drew what and the colors they would use.
Adverb: The kindergarten students learned that an adverb is a word that describes a verb and usually ends in “ly”.
Above the students are labeling all of the parts of speech they learned so far (nouns, verbs, articles, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs). They are doing this by using dry erase markers to draw the shapes and our wooden symbols.
Eggs in different liquids: We decided to do an experiment by placing eggs in different liquids to see how the different liquids would affect the egg shells. We chose to place an egg in water, milk and vinegar. The water and milk had caused the eggs to gain weight. The vinegar caused the egg not only to gain weight but striped off a layer of the eggshell making the egg squishy.
Parachute: We created two parachute’s one out of paper and one out of plastic. Then, we dropped both parachute’s to see what would happen. When we dropped the parachutes the strings that were attached to the plastic and paper pulled down, which in turn made the parachute’s open to full size. When the parachute’s opened to full size it created a large surface area and more wind resistance. The more wind resistance there was the slower the parachute’s went down.
Baby animals was the theme for the week. We started out by what we call human babies (younger children). We came up with the term “kid”. We then discovered a kid is a baby goat and we should call humans children. We went over the easy animals such as cats/kittens, dogs/pups, but went on with ducks/ducklings, chickens/chicks, pigs/piglets, manatee/calf, geese/gosling, peacock/peachick, kangaroo/joey.
Peek In Our Classroom:
An older student getting a younger student interested in reading.
She is putting the animal puzzle together outside the frame.
Two friends working together on the Monomial Cube
It has been awhile since our line time was on the Skeletal System but Elvis the Pelvis is still a popular work.
Interjections!!!!!! We learned that the Interjection enhances the message of the sentence. If the Interjection is followed by a comma the emotion is not strong but if the Interjection is followed by an explanation mark that emotion is pretty intense.
Practicing handwriting in Kindergarten Class. And obviously someone has a burning question.
“The child is truly a miraculous being, and this should be felt deeply by the educator.” – Maria Montessori
The end of the year is one of my favorite times. No, not because I am leaving behind my 5 am alarm for a few weeks, but because we are able to reflect upon the huge progress our students have made since August. All of our students have become more successful in so many areas – interpersonal communication, public speaking, planning, organizing, managing time, and with all of our wonderful areas of the classroom. It is inspiring to see the hard work and determination our students put forth every day. They are becoming more independent and knowledgeable every minute and it is really a privilege to be a part of it.
At the end of each year, we finish our Writer’s Workshop lessons with an autobiography. Last week we interviewed friends and wrote about them as practice for writing about ourselves. These students are filling out their autobiography questionnaires which they will then turn into a written autobiography about themselves. We will also be making a self-portrait diorama so keep sending in those shoe and tissue boxes!Our fourth year students learned about transitive and intransitive verbs this week. As follow-up work, they had to choose a paragraph to copy down and label the verbs. This student chose to write about Alice Bell, an African-American chemist that helped pave the way for a cure for Hansen’s disease, while services as Inspire online support groups help people deal with this diseases. What a great opportunity to complete a Grammar assignment while learning about an important woman!Dr. Montessori believed the best way for students to truly understand something was to experience it in real life – that is why you will always see real objects and photographs in a Montessori classroom instead of cartoon images. One way we make this possible for students is to bring in real things from nature for them to touch and experience. This week any interested students were able to come dissect an owl pellet. These pellets contain the bones, teeth, and feathers of the animals the owls ate. Students were so excited to use the information provided to determine what mammals their owl ate! They found skulls, pelvic bones, femurs, jaws, and vertebrae!For Grandparents’ Day, our students played recorder and piano for all to hear. They also shared their knowledge of the gods and goddesses with props! This first year student is sharing his information about Mars, the god of war!These students are our only two students so far to make it to the “Black Belt” Recorder songs. They played “Ode to Joy” together on recorder. Our third grade student also transposed “Ode to Joy” from her piano book in C to G so they could play a duet with her on piano and our fourth grade student on recorder. What amazing work!Here our students are playing “Merrily We Roll Along” all together!
A Peek at Next Week
Our first year students will work on fractional equivalence, learn the different phyla of the animal kingdom, and discover new information about Antarctica! Second year students will begin dividing with two-digit divisors with the Racks and Tubes, will begin studying circles, and will discuss flower placement and arrangement. Third year students will divide fractions by a whole number, research different plants, build a Roman arch, and discuss economic geography. Fourth year students will continue discussing protists and begin discussing fungi. Next week all of our students will be writing letters to the incoming students to their grade! They will offer advice, share insight, and explain their favorite parts of the past year! Look for these to be delivered in June!
REMINDERS:
Final “Bring Your Parents to ‘Work Time'” sign up: Work Time
Preposition was the focus of this week. We learned that the preposition is a “where” word not a werewolf. Some common prepositions are by, at, in, down, up, over, under, after, and before.
Pronoun: The kindergarten students learned that a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a particular person or thing. For example the word ‘Kenadie’ is a noun, and the words ‘her’ and ‘she’ are pronouns that replace that noun.
Above the students are having fun writing sentences using each others names. For example ‘Myles jumped on a log’ then crossing the noun out and replacing it with a pronoun.
