Diary of a First Year Montessori Kindergarten Teacher - Week 9

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Good morning Montessori Kindergarten Families,

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.

Warmly,

Mrs. Norgren