“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
