A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of April 15 - Absorbent Minds Montessori School

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb

I feel like I am always writing about “one of my favorite things about Montessori,” but there is so much I love about it. Here’s another thing I love: collaboration. I am so glad to teach a philosophy that encourages students to find others to bounce ideas off of or to feel confident enough to ask about things they don’t know because they see others (even teachers!) are still learning and asking questions. Through collaboration and teaching peers, students strengthen their own skills and learn how to communicate effectively to be heard and be successful. Learning these skills at such a young age will lead to great success in interpersonal relationships as adults and great success in their chosen fields.

These fifth and second year students are working on finding the area of a circle. They took a circle that was broken into ten equal parts and attempted to turn it into a rectangle since they know the formula for finding the area of a rectangle. Once the rectangle was formed we found how many radii fit across the rectangle. It happened to be a little over three, like pi! We determined to use the formula for the area of a rectangle (base x height), we would have to multiply the radius squared times pi! They worked right away on their follow-up work to find the area of five circles!

This group was responsible for researching the religion of Great Zimbabwe. Through their research, they found that the Great Zimbabwe people worshipped a god named Mwari. To worship this god, they would visit a temple they built from stone, without mortar. This group is working to build a model of that temple!

These students are working to recreate a model of the water cycle. The fourth grade students learned about the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the carbon cycle. This third grader was interested in what they were doing and asked to learn about it. He joined in to complete this follow-up work together. It was great to hear them bounce items off of each other!

This first year student is guiding her peers through finding the parts of speech in the sentence she wrote. She is giving each student a word from the sentence and helping them talk through which part of speech it is. Once they agree on an answer, she places the correct symbol for that part of speech above the word in the sentence! This helps aid students in their own writing and sentence formation.

“A Peek at Next Week”

Next week our first year students will continue working on their Great Zimbabwe research, will discuss the function of the leaf vein, and will conduct leaf experiments. Our second year students will practice using commas in an address, will find the sum of the interior angles of a triangle, and will begin creating an imaginary island. Our third year students will review the interjection, will continue studying Pythagorean Theorem, and will finish studying the human body. Our fourth year students will continue studying Cro-Magnon Homo sapiens, will complete their fungi study guide, and will complete labs about solubility and acids. Our fifth year students will study phrases, will continue researching ancient civilizations, will look at the animal tree of life, and will study coastal plains.

REMINDERS:

We need a few more parent volunteers for our final typing lessons (on Fridays). Sign up here.
NO SCHOOL – Monday, April 22 – Easter Monday
Wednesday, May 1 – International Festival Practice
Friday, May 3 – Early Dismissal – Noon – No after-care
Friday, May 3 – International Festival

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb

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