“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!
