“Our children can be our greatest teachers if we are humble enough to receive their lessons.”
As we have discussed at “Meet the Teacher” and Parent Education events, the elementary-aged children are in a sensitive period for rudeness. This means they often say things without thinking about how they sound or say things without realizing it may hurt someone’s feelings. It can be challenging sometimes when it feels like the situations and disagreements caused by the things they don’t mean to say take more time to handle than the lessons we are teaching, but we know both are just as important as each other. We see the time it takes to talk through disagreements or to explain why you should phrase something differently pay off when we have visitors in our classroom. We have students carefully choosing their words and working to be role models to new friends around them. We see them taking their time to explain something to a new person and helping them through their frustrations. The students make sure to include someone new and ask them questions to learn more about them and make them feel welcome. Watching them in these moments reminds us to focus on the important things in life and the end goal of preparing them to be kind and helpful adults.
Our kindergarten visitors receiving a lesson about building different types of triangles using our Box of Sticks. This third grade friend explained how to build triangles with different sides and had the kindergarten students follow along with her. These students were able to complete the work on their own when she was finished!This first year student is showing a kindergarten friend how to practice multiplication facts with our Snake Game. First they build a snake using bead bars, then count to ten, exchanging when necessary. At the end, they count by tens to find out their sum. Next, they find the multiples of the bead bars they have used and add those products together. If the sum of the products and the sum of the snake match, they are correct!Our third year students are continuing to learn about the human body. This week, they learned about the lobes of the brain, the parts of a neuron, and built a model of the spinal cord (seen here). Their research from this week will be added to their human body model!During the fourth year in our classroom, students study plant and animal cells. At the end of their study, they complete a 3D model of a plant or animal cell, making sure to include all of the parts of whichever cell they choose. These fourth year students have both completed animal cells. One student built theirs out of Rice Krispies while the other built theirs out of cake. Each student explained the parts of their cell model and what those parts do inside of our cells. At the end of their presentation, they filled out a rubric to show if they met the expectations for creativity, accuracy, and presentation. We ate the models afterwards!Our second year students have spent the last few weeks building models of atoms with our Bohr Diagram. These students have built the model of dysprosium. They used the Atomic Number to find that the atom has 66 protons and 66 electrons. They then subtracted the Atomic Number from the Atomic Mass to find it has 97 neutrons! The second year students have set their own goal of building every element on the Periodic Table!
“A Peek at Next Week”
Next week, we will write the bibliography and rough draft for our Wax Museum research. Our Lower Elementary students will study the year and its parts, rainbow factoring, indirect objects, and the skeleton. Our Upper Elementary students will use Napier’s Bones to solve math equations, will change a number from its square to its cube, and will solve word problems.
REMINDERS:
Tuesday, February 12 -Orchestra Field Trip – this is a bus field trip and we will be eating lunch at school
Friday, February 15 – Student Only Valentine’s Party. Sign up to bring something here.
Tuesday 2/26 and Wednesday 2/27 – “Bring Your Parents to ‘Work Time'” sign up here.
