This week our class learned about the Artic and the animals you would find living there. We had fun learning about how tall and wide a polar bear is, what types of food they eat, how many cubs they can have, and the reasons why they are endangered. We also had fun learning about the penguin through a What they have, what they are, and what they do graph. Throughout the rest of the week we learned and watched amazing videos on the artic!! It was such a fun week!!!
Could these kiddos be any cuter?! I love watching the friendships bloom in our class as the years go by!Two of our kindergartner’s are working on our blue rhyming work. This work is our most advanced rhyming material in our classroom. This work takes time and patience.One of our younger friends is working on our Vertebrate and Invertebrate work. This work has them practicing classification and sorting skills. They are also learning about backbones and which animal has one and which animal or creature that does not have one. He was super proud of himself of this work he completed 🙂The purpose of the metal insets is to prepare the child for printing, to teach them how to hold a pencil correctly, and to encourage the lightness of touch when using a pencil.It is so very important to keep different types of books in a classroom. Books spark imagination, can start to see the difference between print and pictures, can start recognizing sight words, and gaining knowledge from books, plus much much more.
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Take A Peek Into Next Week:
Next week we will be learning about living and nonliving. The children will be learning these differences through a variety of books and activities!!
The students learned that oceans are the largest habitat for an animal to live in. They discovered that ocean animals can be found on the coast to all depths from the surface to the deepest darkest trenches of the ocean. We also talked about how only five percent of the world’s animals live in the ocean. We looked at the similarities and differences between dolphins, sharks, whales, seahorses, fish, squids etc.
Work Time
Log Numbers: This child is memorizing the sequence of numbers from 1 to 10. While also refining her fine motor skills by stringing the numbers onto the rope.Pattern: This child is creating specific patterns using different colors and shapes.
Movable Alphabet: This child is saying the word of the object and matching the symbol with the correct initial sound to the object. She is also practicing writing each cursive letter that she has matched to an object.
Pyramid Puzzle: This child is matching the different colors together in order to create the pyramid shape. This puzzle involves not only the ability to concentrate but the ability problem solve.Balance Scale: This child is trying to match the exact same weight so the beam is in balance. She is doing this by placing cylinders in each pan until they are level with one another.Jellyfish Diver: This child is discovering that when she changes the pressure inside the bottle by squeezing, the added force pushes the jellyfish to the bottom. When the pressure is released the jellyfish floats to the top again.
Guest Reader
A Peak into next week: Zoo Animals
Reminders:
1/30/18 | Bring Your Parent to Work-Time | http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-bring
Week Of 1/15/2018: Addition with the 9 Tray and Stamp Game (with manipulatives)
Week Of 1/22/2018: Learning how to exchange/carry over (with manipulatives)
Week Of 1/29/2018: Learning how to multiply with the 9 Tray and Stamp Game (with manipulatives)
We love Math!
Purpose For The 9 Tray: The Nine Tray is an important lesson in the sequence of the golden bead work. This presentation allows the child to concretely see the growth of numbers and the progression through the hierarchy from one level to the next. Children are ready for this work when they can identify numbers 1-9 and after they have been introduced to the golden beads and the language of place value: units, tens, hundreds and thousands.
Purpose For The Stamp Game: The stamp game is a tool for learning and reinforcing knowledge of the four maths operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The stamp game directly corresponds to the golden bead material which gave the child exposure to the decimal system.
Cultural Subjects: We can now count to ten in 21 different languages (English, Sign Language, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese Dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, Hungarian, Irish, Kiswahili, Welsh, and Dutch/Flemmish).
Peek Into the Next Few Weeks:
Week of 2/5/2018: Even More Math– Learning how to subtract with the 9 tray and Stamp Game (with manipulatives) Language– We will be adding Polish Synonym of the week– bad Sight words of the week– first, than
Week of 2/12/2018: Even More Math– Learning how to divide with the 9 tray and Stamp Game (with manipulatives) Language– We will be adding Serbo Croation Synonym of the week– good Sight words of the week– other, some
This week was all about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I really love this theme because it teaches the children how everyone in the world is the same on the inside even though our skin color may be different and some of may need to use a psoriasis cream in order to treat certain conditions. We had so much fun learning about his life, the marches he ran, The I Have A Dream speech, Rosa parks, and about peace and love. It was a fantastic week!!
One of our younger friends is exploring with our sandpaper letters.Ms. Ame is working with a friend on our fabric box. The direct aim of this work is to stimulate the child’s interest in various textures.One of Ms. Ame’ s lessons was teaching the children how we are all the same even though our skin color is different. The children had to talk about what each of the eggs looked like. Then she asked them what they thought the insides looked liked. Ms. Ame then opened each egg and the children were able to talk about what they saw. It was a great lesson!One of our kindergartener’ s is working on building numbers with our golden bead materials. This step is to help them get ready for our static addition work.
Take A Peek Into Next Week:
Next week is all about the Artic and Artic animals. The children will explore the different types of animals that are able to live in this area, the purpose of blubber with a simple experiment, where the Artic is on our map and much, much more!
Telling Time: The past week the students have been learning how to tell time to the hour, half past and quarter past.
This child is reading the time “quarter past 5” and demonstrating what that would look like on a clock by drawing it on a dry erase board.This child was so excited to read 7:15 and then use a clock to create quarter past 7 on his own.This child is reading digital time and then creating it by himself on an analog clock.
A Peak into Next Week: continue time (quarter till)
Over the past few weeks due to all of the days off, the kindergartners listened to a story called The Fire Cat. This story is about a cat who constantly gets in to trouble, and then ends up doing great things after working with a group of firemen. We had an interpretive discussion about the story. We talked about why Mrs. Goodkind told Pickles he isn’t good or bad but “mixed-up”, and why was Pickles happy at the end of the story. They had to write down responses to questions and draw a picture of a scene from the story. The kindergartners even got to act out a scene where Pickles chased the smaller cats. They love getting to move and pretend to be the characters from stories.
The students learned how Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to make the world a better place. We talked about how people were being treated unfairly based on their color and he stood up for them. We discussed how he wanted to change the law in a peaceful way, because he had a dream to have people of all colors get along and work together. We also talked about why it is important to try and make the world a better place for everyone and ways that we can accomplish that. But it is also important that while the kids work together they should be keep safe and are far away from any injury, so we decided to get some tips and ideas from St. Louis Personal Injury Lawyer they offer free consultation today.
Work Time:
Cursive Writing: This child is practicing writing cursive letters on a dry erase board. He is developing multiple skills involving his eyes, arms, hands, memory, posture and body control.Sock Washing: These children are using many motor skills while also remembering the order and sequence of each action to successfully wash socks, which naturally leads to the development of concentration.Pink Tower / Brown Stairs: This child is able to visually discriminate largest to smallest, while also refining his motor movements by placing the cubes one on top of the other, with one single movement of the hand.Sponge Squeezing: This child is strengthening his hands and fingers for writing as he squeezes the water out of the sponge from one bowl to the next. He is also developing a sense of order, concentration, coordination, and independence by being able to follow a series of steps.Bead Stringing: This child is stringing beads one by one while matching them to the correct colored pipe cleaner. This task not only develops concentration, order, coordination and concentration but it takes a lot of persistence and patience.
Reminders:
1/30/18 | Bring Your Parent to Work-Time | http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090b48a8a92da6f94-bring
This week the Elementary students had an exciting field trip and jumped right back into working. The cold weather definitely can’t stop us! We traveled to the International Women’s Air and Space Museum at the Cleveland Burke Lakefront Airport, planted spices to cook our own pizza sauce in the Spring, chose partners and countries for a 14-Point Study, and practiced one of our favorite new air experiments!
Our trip to the International Women’s Air and Space Museum was such a blast. Students learned about women in aviation and space exploration. Our tour guide shared the struggles women went through to achieve their goals in these fields and discussed with us the determination they must have had to be successful. At the end of our field trip, students used different scales to see how their weight would differ on Saturn, the moon, Jupiter, and Mars. We will be graphing our findings next week!These students are inside a space station exhibit. Each day astronauts in the space station have to exercise for two hours! Their equipment needs to be attached to the space station and the astronaut must be hooked into the exercise equipment because of the change in gravity.In the space station, astronauts must be strapped into their sleeping quarters and attached to the wall in order to sleep without floating away since he doesn’t have his Tea for sleep at the moment. This student thought he also looked like Batman!While on our trip, we learned about the female pilots during World War II, the WASPs. Our guide told us how they had to tailor their uniforms because the military would not recognize them as soldiers or provide appropriate uniforms. Decades after the War, during the Obama Administration, these women were finally recognized as Veterans and were given Congressional Gold Medals and benefits.This month we are focusing on experiments related to air. This experiment has been a favorite so far, “An Air Pressure Effect.” Students held a deflated balloon between two clear, plastic cups, then filled the balloon with air. Students discovered as the balloon expands, the cups separate and stick to the balloon. They saw part of the balloon in each cup. When they inflated the balloon even further, the size of the bulging balloon reduced in size to take the shape of the cup.This first grade student is working on a Reading Group assignment. His group is finishing up the book, “Strega Nona.” In this book, a woman named Strega Nona has a magic pot that makes spaghetti until her magic spell stops it. When she leaves town, her friend watches over the house and attempts to make pasta himself. He does not know the entire spell and can’t make the pot stop. The entire town is taken over by pasta! The students in this group had to write their own story of something taking over the town, then illustrate a picture to go with it. We had ideas of water, slime, and lava!The third year students are very interested in plants this year. They are already growing lima beans under our growing lamp. Now, they have planted the spices needed to cook our own pizza sauce! When our plants grow, we will be baking a pizza using our own ingredients!
A Peek into Next Week
The Lower Elementary students will be continuing their practice with Racks and Tubes, building a snake for a multiplication game, discussing direct objects, and reading food labels. Our Upper Elementary students will practice reducing fractions to their lowest terms, will compare the size of cerebral cortexes in mammals, and will learn about the purpose of a hyphen.
REMINDERS:
1/22 TKD Demo
1/26 Kids Bop Classes Begin
We are collecting food labels for a project. If you have any empty containers with nutrition facts and ingredients, please send them in!
Cultural Subjects: Your children can count to ten in 17 different languages (English, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Arabic with the Lebanese dialect, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Swedish, Tagolog, Hebrew, Korean, and Hungarian).
Line Time: We started to learn about our body and how it works. We learned about our five senses (touch, hearing, sight, smell, and taste). Did you know you can “feel” with any part of your body? Of course parents know that. Who has not stepped on a Lego in bare feet and screamed in pain? But we associate touch with our fingers (hot/cold, hard/soft, rough/smooth). We hear loud noises, quiet noises, high and low noises, “Are we there yet?”. We need light to see and if we close our eyes we can’t see. The lights being turned on at 5 am on a Saturday morning. There are good smells like cinnamon, vanilla and bad smells like a dirty diaper and vinegar. My favorite was the taste test where we tasted sweet (sugar water), salty (salt water), sour (pure lemon juice), and bitter (unsweetened baking chocolate). The children enjoyed “most” of the tastes. Hehe
The pictures in order from our line time taste test. Students not sure about the taste of sour (concentrated lemon juice). A mad dash to spit out the salt water. Really diggin the sugar water. And she can not get the bitter, unsweetened baking chocolate out of her mouth fast enough.
Take A Peek Into Our Room:
These students are having a fun time working with the Knobless Cylinders. The direct purpose is to observe and compare the different series with each other (there are for boxes). The indirect aim is getting a clearer understanding for the different dimensions (height and diameter) and their interplay. In this case they are creating different patterns from a template.The Montessori classroom is not your typical classroom and it is very unique as are the students in the room. As you can tell with the above picture (notice the tutu around the neck). Each child progresses at their own pace and this is not what we call a cookie cutter classroom and each child is treated as an individual.The Co-Teachers (Kathleen and Sabrina) do a lot! Every day classroom assistants in a Montessori classroom are integral support staff to insure that children have an authentic Montessori experience. An effective assistant supports the teacher, helps prepare and maintain the environment, observes behaviors, and models grace and courtesy. They also preserve and protect lessons, assist in the development of independence classroom, assist with lessons with the lead teacher to prepare and maintain an orderly, attractive, and joyful environment. They are another pair of observant, attentive eyes and ears. Classroom assistants are also crucial in modeling courteous and respectful behavior as well as contributing to the warm, supportive, and calm atmosphere that is the essence of a Montessori classroom.
Looking Into The Future:
Line Time For Week Of 1/22/2018: The Skeletal System Letter Of The Week: Q q Rhyming Word Of The Week: bub Language: Irish will be added
^^^^^ Daddy/Daughter, Mommy/Son Dance — Saturday February 10, 2018, 2 pm to 4 pm ^^^^^
An email was sent for information for the second round of Parent Observations
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Telling Time: The past couple of weeks the students have been learning how to tell time to the hour and half past.
Parts of a Clock: These students are learning the different parts of a clock: face, minute hand and hour hand.I Have… Who has??? These students are playing a game where they have to read an analog clock to identify what time their clock says, then they have to read the digital time to ask who has a specific time.
A Peak into Next Week: continue time (hour and half past)
