A Peek at Our Week | Elementary | Week of September 11th

Elementary Classroom: Ms. Ashley and Mr. Ed

This week was filled with so many firsts! We had our first Taekwondo Demo, our first Spelling lesson, our first Handwriting lesson, our first Dance Demo, and our first Gym class! In between these exciting events, students have been independently researching and working with our materials. This week first year students worked with fractions, compound words, nouns, circles and other curved figures, and heard a story about “The Gift of the First Plants.” Our second year students practiced the ideas of greater than or less than, feminine and masculine nouns, oblique and perpendicular lines, and classification of the animal kingdom. Third year students worked on suffixes, congruence of shapes, taxonomy of vertebrates, and practiced adding and subtracting squares and cubes of numbers. Fourth year students had their first Writer’s Workshop, worked with acronyms and articles, practiced the Pythagorean Theorem, and built models of the molecules that make up our Earth’s atmosphere.

This second year student is comparing three numbers to determine if they are greater than, less than, or equal to each other. Students know from work with Alphabetizing, that they need to look at the first letter, or in this case the largest hierarchical place, then move to the right to compare these numerals. This work prepares children for self-checking of math equations. For example, if they notice their remainder in a division equation is greater than the divisor, they know to go back and find their mistake.

This student is grinding mint leaves to make tea. Practical Life in the Primary Classroom enables preschool and kindergarten children to be more independent and prepares them to read and write. In the Elementary Classroom, Practical Life often includes more challenging life skills – sewing, chores, making tea/coffee to serve to a guest, using tools, and self-care.

This first year student is matching fraction cards with pictures and written fractions to the fraction inset pieces. This prepares the child for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions with our insets.

This fourth year student has been reviewing the Pythagorean Theorem with a scalene right-angled triangle. After using the Constructive Triangles to build equilateral triangles on the legs and hypotenuse of his first triangle, he discovered that the Pythagorean Theorem also works with hexagons. This first year student was interested in the lesson and helped complete the hexagons!

These third year students are recording the taxonomy of a bald eagle. We use the nesting dolls to demonstrate the idea of starting with the largest, most broad topic – the kingdom of the living thing, then moving to the most detailed classification – the genus and species.

A Peek into Next Week
Next week, all students will begin Latin and participate in Zoology experiments. Lower Elementary students will be practicing telling time, learning about the life cycle of a star, and discussing how to use a table of contents and an index. These students will also learn how to avoid plagiarism in research reports. Upper Elementary students will hear about words coined by famous authors that we still use today, discuss the history of the English language, and use a yarn timeline.

REMINDER: Ramseyer Farm Field Trip Friday, September 22. Please make sure your child is in tennis shoes and is dressed for the weather. Please send lunches in a disposable container with disposable items. We will be unable to warm up leftovers at the farm.

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