Happy Armistice Day! I want to take a moment to thank everyone that has served and those who have supported and encouraged and stood by service members. It is call that has a heavy price tag attached to it and you should never be forgotten for the sacrifices that have been and continue to be made.
We started our physical science unit this week discussing matter in all sorts of creative ways as you will see in the daily notes. We continue on with our conversations about North America and invite any new projects that have been created to be dropped of at school once they are complete. Our working meetings has been a lovely addition to our classroom time. We had our first Art Masterpiece lesson with Mrs. M on Monday. Finally we created a mural to celebrate the Veterans we know of in our class. If you did not get a chance to send me the name of one you know, you can still do so and we will add the name to the mural.
The class is SO EXCITED for our Learning Celebration this week. I hope that you are all able to attend.
Monday:
Art Masterpiece with Mrs. M: Thankfulness project “3 Poplar Trees in Autumn” by Claude Monet (Impressionism)
Introduce new sight words
Handwriting: lowercase a,d
Physical Science: Matter Defined: something that takes up space
Dimension #1: Size: small, big, little, tiny, huge, medium
Observation Table: Textiles from Native Americans/Language cards of various Native American textiles
It is been 12 weeks of working, growing and sharing together as a community. I truly hope this has been a beautiful experience for your families. I marvel at the opportunity to witness the changes in your children as they are introduced to new concepts and then delight and thrive in the processes that a Montessori classroom offers. This month we are moving into becoming more independent in the classroom as each one becomes more comfortable with what a work cycle entails. Specifically, this means that every day each student has an opportunity to work on language, math, handwriting and cultural studies with practical life and sensorial activities rounding out the day.
This week we began having working meetings when we sit together and bring our folders which contain some of our long tern activities like creating and publishing a book, writers workshop activities and our maps of North America and we discuss how we can help each other to complete the tasks and discuss anything new we may be learning in the creation process.
The building projects that have come in based on the theme North America have been incredible! You would be so proud to see how each one has been able to stand in front of their peers with minimal prompting and give us his/her three interesting facts. The bonus is how I have witnessed spontaneous encouragement like “great job!” or “that is so good” and to hear from students who may not necessarily speak up in group time share with confidence.
Sorting/Language: seeds/planting,bats, spiders, life cycles
Tuesday:
Morning Handwriting: uppercase J
Smelling jars: pumpkin spice seasonings
Make cover of book “A Noun Is a…”
Life cycle of a bat
Bat gestation vs. human gestation
60 days vs 270 days In tens/more/less/larger/smaller
Begin community work meetings:working on publishing our books together
Math review: skip counting by 5’s/5s cubed bead chain
Character trait: industrious
ABC’s of North America: lobster
Wednesday:
Early Dismissal: 11:00AM
Language work in groups: lesson on alphabetizing
Art: draw a scarecrow/lesson on the purpose of scarecrows
Continued conversation: life cycle of a bat
Sequencing: how to roast pumpkin seeds
Shared snack/food tasting: pumpkin seeds
ABCs of North America: Maple
Thursday:
CHANGES IN THE CLASSROOM WITH NEW MONTH
· Choose handwriting option from your cubby
· Choose math option from your packet
· Practical life decreased to 2 bookshelves
· Working meetings
Goal: more independence
Student presentations:
· Redwood forest — (use of nonstandard measurement to figure out width of trees), Looked up bark in the dictionary
· Niagara Falls — watched a video of what Niagara Falls sounds like
· Big Ben — Video: sound of Big Ben
Narrative writing lesson: talked about beginning, middle and end of a story
H.W.T: START LOWERCASE: t,o,c,w,s to make cvc words
Working meeting: construct our maps of North America
Friday:
Morning work: choose your math
Working meeting: Continue book making — A Noun is a ____
Small Group lesson on adjectives
Finish reading Stelluluna — look at the skeleton of a bat wing vs human arm
Student presentations:
· Golden Gate Bridge
· Chicago Water Tower
Character trait: loyal
ABCs of North America: Niagara Falls
Next week, we will start a weaving project to accompany our study of Native Americans. If anyone has any weaving/baskets/etc. that you wouldn’t mind allowing us to have in our class next week, we would be so appreciative.
I can’t believe how quickly this month has gone. To say that your child is learning and growing at a rapid pace seems like an understatement. These last few weeks have been full of discovery and interest in the life cycles we have been exploring and in our book making skills. Plus we have extended our learning on measurement because so many are fascinated by measuring everything in our room! A few have created their own charts to document their data. It is an honor to see each one take ownership of his/her education.
We began to create our individual maps of the main countries found in North America and I anticipate we should have them created and labeled by mid November, just in time for our Learning Celebration on November 15. We finished our 4 day project of making individual dream catchers which you can now see displayed outside of our classroom. And we explored symmetry by creating individual spiders; those can be found hung in the classroom. And we did a cool experiment to discover why spiders do not stick to their webs.
We finished up our 30 days of emotions this week. Next conversations will center around character. So the progression is Peace — kindness — emotions — character and then we go back and review as needed tying all four concepts together.
Monday:
Writers Workshop: sentence/question/exclamation
Introducing: mini reader stories/comprehension questions
Art Lesson: spiders/Native American/North America tie in — dream catchers
Math Lesson: subtraction
Emotion of the Day: Calm
ABC’s of North America: Finger Lakes
Afternoon Lesson: Land and Water globe/Land, Water, Air Lesson
Sorting/Language: land, water, air/autumn/living or nonliving/plant or animal
Handwriting: I, T
Tuesday:
Morning Handwriting: C,O
Art walk: Native American Homes
Science Experiment/Spiders: Why don’t spiders stick to their webs?
Symmetry/line: complete the drawing of a spider
Morning Lesson: what is a line?
Math: fill in the missing number/sequential numbers
Math: what is the difference between 1,10,100,1000
Day 2: Dreamcatcher project
Video: Why don’t spiders stick to their webs?
ABCs of North America: Grand Canyon
Wednesday:
Morning Handwriting: J
Continue dream catchers
Morning Lesson: Math — addend + addend + addend
Continue lesson on Lines: making lines with our bodies
I apologize for being in your inbox so much this week — feels like the first week of school, eh? I have a ton to communicate with you and want to make sure you are part of the process in your child’s education. I am trying my best to create an appropriate subject line just in case you need to find something quickly. That said, be on the lookout for a Signup Genius link for our Autumn cooking project Pumpkin smoothies! BIG THANK YOU to Lincoln’s mom for sharing a recipe that covers all allergies in our classroom. I hope to have the class creating the smoothies this Thursday.
OKAY so on to what we did this week 🙂
Monday:
Morning Handwriting: Uppercase A-Z worksheet, 1–20 fill in the missing numbers
Book making: parts of a pumpkin, parts of the spider, continents, sight words
Morning Lesson: subtraction
Emotion of the Day: Nervous
ABC’s of North America begins: alligator
Observation Table: Autumn leaves from Michigan
Afternoon Lesson: Trinomial cube
9:31am — 9:56am: P.E./10:00–10:30am: Farmer Sean
Tuesday:
Morning Handwriting: Writers Workshop Lesson 1
H.W.T: C,O
Morning Lesson: measuring with a tape measure
Lesson: What are 3 part cards/the language of Autumn cards
What number comes before____
What number comes after ____
Emotion of the Day:
ABC’s of North America begins: bison
Afternoon Lesson: rhyming words using sight words
9:31am — 9:56am: P.E./12:47–1:12pm: STREAMS
Wednesday:
Morning Handwriting: Draw AND write a story about a spider
Moby Max testing
H.W.T:
Morning Lesson: types of Native American Homes/create a structure out of clay
It was such a JOY to be able to meet with each of you to celebrate all of the milestones the students have experienced personally and collaboratively. I hope that the journals that went home brought about some laughs, conversations and celebrations as well as a deeper view of what your child is doing in class and the beauty and depth found in a Montessori classroom. I believe we have discussed in newsletters and conversations about a program we use called MRX which takes what is taught in a Montessori classroom and translates the concepts to correlate with Common Core Standards which is the guidelines that Arizona follows. If you are interested in that report — it is a bit more lengthy than the one page ILP you received — please let me know and I will be happy to email it to you.
Monday:
We began our discussions about Autumn and began to talk about what Autumn looks like around the world beginning with North America. We began conversations about ending punctuation adding to what we have discussed about what makes a sentence a statement vs. a question. I introduced a pin poking work which helps with pencil grip and the students have loved it. We begin by poking out 2D geometric shapes but soon this will transition to pin poking maps of the Continents. I introduced the 5s chain from the Montessori Bead Cabinet and we counted by 5s to 25 (5 squared) and 125 (5 cubed).
-Rhyming
-cvc spelling by counting sounds
-Handwriting: 1/2 V,W Full Day: Z
Tuesday:
Life Cycle of a pumpkin
We watched this video with a fun rhyming song and then we discussed the 6 steps in the life cycle of the pumpkin and diagramed it together as a class:
Math Conversations: Will numbers ALWAYS get bigger? How will we know when they are supposed to get smaller? Introduced the word ‘subtraction’
Played the Silence Game
your choice handwriting page
Wednesday — Friday Early Dismissal 11:00am
– Discuss parts of a pumpkin
-Write first/last name and numbers 1–20
-Sound table/reading
-What goes at the end of a sentence: beginning discussions of period vs. question mark
-Drew a pumpkin and its pumpkins, wrote labels phonetically and glued them to the drawing, watercolor painting
Enjoy the week dear families and thanks for all you do to support and nurture this community.
Fall is here! It’s the end of the month and so your students will come in tomorrow with a transformed room full of activities that reflect the season. We will begin to move more into our study of other cultures and continents with a discussion this week on how Autumn looks around the world.
We continued to study length and standard and nonstandard measurement and we had a week long discussion on temperature and practiced reading a thermometer — I hope your student enjoyed marking the temperature each day on the sheet I sent home. We learned about Celsius and Fahrenheit, degrees, warmer, colder and continued using what we learned about antonyms and synonyms in these discussions as well.
We talked about the part of the speech “article” and said it was a good indicator that “announces, “A NOUN IS COMING!” and tied that back to our discussions about nouns.
You are now seeing not only sounds in the secret message books sent home but also sight words — we will be moving more into engaging these words in the next semester. I am so excited to see how engaged each of your children are with the beauty of learning to read, write and communicate their thoughts on paper. With our newest project, many of them asked, “Can we write words too?” — YES YOU CAN!!!
Just a quick note to please make sure to send readers back the next day so that we have them for other students.
We continued with our Handwriting without Tears curriculum which has come to the forefront as one of the most favorite times in class — everyone loves working on the chalkboards together and talking about the beautiful and simplistic ways that uppercase letters are created.
Monday:
Sequencing work: How to make a snowman
Emotion: grumpy
Lesson: How to read a thermometer
Geometry: Discussion on the BASE of Geometric Solids
Student led reading time
Letters: H,K
Tuesday:
Antonyms, Synonyms
Emotion: happy
Language lesson: fahrenheit, celsius, degrees, hotter, colder, marking the temperature on a thermometer
I hope your weekend is full of fun adventures! We have a lot going on over the next two weeks as far as half days and conferences so please make sure to mark your calendars appropriately. This Wednesday we have a shortened day as well as NEXT Wednesday, Thursday and Friday which will be our first parent teacher conference today -YES! I am incredibly excited to share what I have been experiencing with each of your children in the classroom and to hear your feedback on your Montessori journey thus far. For SPECIFIC times of dismissals please check out your newsletter from Mrs. E. We worked on a couple of major projects this week: peace banners for International Day of Peace which was Friday and a science experiment on Frost and Condensation which turned out so cool! 🙂
Monday:
We had our first Farmer Sean visit and our special guests were Charlotte the pig and a piglet that was so new the members of the farm had not named her yet. We also began to work with a program called Handwriting without Tears. I attended a workshop on Saturday and I was really excited to roll the handwriting curriculum out in the classroom. I work with the students in 2 groups — 1/2 day and full day — and we go back to the basics of how letters are formed. We had a lesson on 3 options for how to hold a pencil, we practice together on chalkboards (thank you to L’s family for the chalkboards!) and then they work on the letters separately on a sheet of paper using the techniques we have practiced on the chalkboards. We use the terms ” long line, short line, large (or big) curve, small (or little) curve. The emphasis is on uppercase letters at first but we are still working on lowercase letters. We started creating our peace banners by choosing fabric and designing mandalas and thinking about our wish for the world.
Share 1 minute of silence with the Montessori students all over the world
work plans go home
30 days of Emotions: proud
Geometric Solids: Ovoid, Ellipsoid
Sensorial Lesson: Baric Tablets
A little note about the work plans: you may see that sometimes a student is working on the same topic/math type all week. I want to point out a few things that you need to know about the way the classroom works. Because most of the work in the classroom is choice based, a child at this age tends to work on something for about 5–10 minutes and they she/he is ‘finished’ or when talking about the single addition math work, the student works on 3–5 math problems. So what’s key to remember is this age group is working on concentration and repetition is a valuable part of this process. Also, please know that I try my best to pay attention to a student who may be picking something that does NOT invite the child to grow in knowledge.
Extending the learning:
1. On Monday, we are going to discuss types of thermometers and I will give a lesson on temperature. A worksheet will go home on Monday and each day your child is invited to find out what the temperature is for the day and mark it on the log I am sending home. I leave it to you to decide how you would like to have them discover that information. Please send the log back on the following Monday.
2. Now that we are in full swing of the handwriting process, those of you who have students that are wanting to practice writing at home, have them practice making lists of things like items you need at the store or chores for the day. They do not necessarily have to spell word correctly — phonetically is fine. The invitation is for them to discover organizational skills, how time works and the amount of time tasks take to be completed and the way words work as they attempt to figure out the sounds. I leave these choices to you as you notice your child’s developmental stage.
3. (I know! Last week I did not share any learning extensions — here is my week to make that up to you) Also I want to keep in mind that you have a half day this week and a few next week so I want to make sure you have some ideas handy. I found a great tutorial on how to make a barometer which would be a bit too cumbersome for me to do with 20 students. Here is the link and if anyone tries it, feel free to have your child bring it to class:
I
hope you are having a good weekend. I saw the documentary about Mr.
Rogers a few weeks ago and it was a reminder for me just in time for our
classroom discussion on 9/11 that the world’s problems can seem so
overwhelming AND YET we each have a part to play in shining light in the
world. This week we talked about 9/11. I used something that Mr. Rogers
has mentioned his mother saying to him in ‘his day’ when bad things
happened. She said to ‘look for the helpers.’ This aligns so beautifully
with what we are talking about in class about community helpers and how
each one can help one another. It also aligns with this week’s
conversations about emotions and how we can still feel our emotions and
yet find a way to still be kind.
We
talked about the 20 World Peace Bells that have been created in the
world to remind us to strive for peace. The students got to watch a
video of the bell located in Kentucky ringing and then they created
their own peace bells. The peace bells WERE NOT easy to make and that
was intentional because the reality is peace is not easy. But when we
work together each day at it in our choices and in our interactions, the
results are beautiful.
30 days of kindness: Say hello to someone you don’t know OR make a card
Math: discussion about the bead cabinet, what is multiplication
Math: 100 chain, count to 100, skip counting by 10
Continue peace bell project
Language lesson: What is a statement/What is a question
Wednesday:
Start new Grace and Courtesy Conversations: 30 days of emotions
Day 1: mischievous
Science:
Weather write the room — there are real life pictures of different
weather systems on the walls of the room. Students take a clipboard and a
checklist and set out to find AND WRITE the names of the weather
systems.
Introduction to writing informative l texts: 6 steps for how to fly a kite
30 days of emotions: lonely
Game:
what’s wrong with this picture (afternoon only — will present again on
Monday with whole group) Looking at real life pictures with one silly
thing one with them. DO NOT SAY what is wrong until the whole group has
seen the picture (this is SOOOO hard to do!).
Thanks
again everyone for coming through with the dishwasher pods and the
disinfecting wipes. It is the little things that help us to be inspired
to bring our best to the classroom every day for your children.
