Just a few short days until we have our break. I will be sending a reminder email filled with all of the activities to plan on attending next week. Also, please keep in mind that NEXT Thursday and Friday, we have early dismissal at 11:00am WITH NO AFTERCARE options so please plan accordingly.
Monday:
We finished our Laurel Burch inspired Christmas cats — you will see them displayed in next week’s art walk.
Introduction to blends through Winter vocabulary: skiis, sled, snowball, snowman, gloves — created a write the room activity to practice spelling and handwriting
Sing Christmas songs
Kwaanza video and discussion:
Yuletide logs craft
Math: introduction to ten frame/teen number practice
Happy Sunday! I hope you are enjoying the cool weather and all of the fun activities going on around town. It is so fun to run into your families as we are out and about enjoying the holiday season.
We are finished with week 1 of MAP testing and are preparing for another week of testing. There is still plenty going on in the classroom. You will begin to see some of what we have been up to on the walls of our school. We continue to work on Writers Workshop prompts where we incorporate sight words, handwriting, structuring sentences and creativity. We also began to learn about many traditions celebrated in November and December, beginning with Diwali and Winter Solstice. The students created rangolis and yule logs. The class is transitioning to more of the responsibilities for care of the classroom and now sweep and wipe tables after lunch along with the other responsibilities they have for preparing for lunch and cleaning up after eating together as a class. And we celebrated two birthdays this week!
Monday:
Finish Great Horned Owl Writing Prompt
“I am a great horned owl. My name is ___________. I like to ___________.”
History/Time: Day of the Week and Months of the Year
Diwali and all of its traditions including Diyas and Rangolis
Video:
Math: single digit addends
Language Lesson: Introduction to Verbs
Tuesday:
Math: Introduce number lines/addition
Practical Life — Sewing Circle: introduction to sewing using sewing cards
Handwriting: lowercase “l”
Review addition vocabulary: addend, sum
Free Reading: Cultural Holiday books
Character: Content
Wednesday:
Isaac’s Birthday celebration
Food tasting: Rambutans
Verbs Review
Character: Virtuous
Handwriting Centers: days of the week/months of the year/major cities in Arizona
Math: number line addition
Cultural/History: Winter Solstice
Thursday:
Ember’s Birthday Celebration
Math: number line addition
Language: Noun/Verb connection
Cultural: yule Logs/art project
Video: Winter Solstice
Friday:
Start Art Masterpiece Holiday Theme: Christmas Cats
Math: what comes before/what comes after
Review: numbers 11 and 12
Complete various projects half day/absent students
Noun/verb group game
Video: Winter Solstice
I hope to get the sign up link out this evening for our cooking project on Friday. Have a good rest of your weekend.
Here is the beginning of a series of the things we do when we are NOT TEACHING art. some you may catch up posting pics of on my instagram account. There is so many ways to take creativity and nature and bring them together to make some exquisite memories with your loved ones.
16 weeks of learning and growing together. This has been quite a journey getting used to being a part of a Charter School. What I love about the environment is your child gets an amazing opportunity to connect with so many wonderful teachers and have amazing experiences that just would not be possible for me to give him/her if I want to stay aligned with the beautiful Montessori curriculum — which of course I am biased but I LOVE teaching it and inviting your child to discover the world through the approach. There are definitely times it can be a bit overwhelming. There is so much to communicate because there is so much going on all the time. So it is definitely a give and take to have the opportunity to have these additional experiences and I am growing along with you. Your trust and patience with this process is DEEPLY appreciated. I could not do what I do without your support. Thank you.
Monday:
Continue to work with the Botany Cabinet
Free Reading: Penguins, Chickens, Owls, Flamingos
ABCs of North America: Yukon and Zuni
Character Trait: Mannerly
Handwriting: lowercase k
Study of Great Horned Owls
Reading: “Great Horned Owls” by Melissa Hill
Vocabulary: predator, prey, hatch, danger, swoop
Choose your math
Tuesday:
Writers Workshop:
choose a story prompt
1. write the topic sentence
2. write a second sentence about your story
3. label your picture
Language: compound words review — take the words apart
Review of North America — through living and nonliving and plant/animal sort cards
Review of teen board
History Lesson: time broken down by morning, noon and night
Book: “Do You Really Want to Meet an Owl” by Bridget Heos
“The constructive triangles are used to demonstrate that all plane geometric figures can be constructed from triangles. There are five boxes: 2 rectangular, 1 triangular, and 1 large and 1 small hexagonal. Each box contains triangles of different sizes, shapes, and colors. With the exception of Rectangular Box 2, black guidelines are painted in different positions on the triangles to help the child to construct other figures. This should be encouraged as an exploratory work that will provide a foundation for later concepts of equivalency, similarity, and congruency.”
Thanks so much for extending grace to me with communication responses. With the move, the holidays, a house guest, Josey’s softball games and non existent internet at our new place, my response time may not have been as quick as you have experienced from me in the past. We hoped to be settled in (ha ha! at least with internet access — still trying to locate shoes!) by this weekend so that I can at least return to the routine we have established together.
Here is a recap of Thanksgiving week:
Monday:
Kevin’s Celebration of Life
life cycle of a penguin
Land and Water forms: strait and isthmus
North America: living vs. nonliving
Handwriting: lowercase e
Writers Workshop: beginning/middle/end of a story
Tuesday:
History: Seasons — how they mark time/history
Continued Conversations about bodies of water/art project: island, lake, strait, isthmus
Fire Drill
Cooking Day — so awesome! Tex Mex Quinoa YUM
Math: what comes before/what comes after
North America: Grand Canyon Project shared with class
Handwriting: your choice worksheet
Wednesday:
We are thankful place mats — thank you for all the leaves that we had to choose from. We began the morning with the investigation of our Botany Cabinet and discovering what types of leaves are available in Arizona. Why do we have a botany cabinet? Directly, the Botany Cabinet is a great activity for a child to develop visual discrimination. The activity relies on the child being able to distinguish one leaf shape from another. Indirectly, the Botany Cabinet is preparation for further botany work in the Primary and Elementary classroom, including developing appropriate language and investigation of the natural world.
We looked up the word “botany” in the dictionary. We discovered we had eight different types of leaves to work with for our project. When creating the place mats, we applied the use of fractions and pattern making to create the designs you see on the placemat. We also included the poem we say before we each lunch together every day (please forgive the typo UGH!)
It was so good to see you all at our Learning Celebrations this week. Your children were so excited to be able to show you how much they have learned and grown in our 14 weeks together. It was beautiful to watch everyone become immersed in the environment that we all have created together. It was TRULY student led and as a teacher I felt very blessed to witness it.
Some of the work you saw in your child’s working folders included:
-one of our first art projects based on the theme “living and nonliving” — flowers and cow skulls inspired by Georgia O’Keefe
-flip book: life cycle of a bat
– “A Noun is A …” book written by your child where they had to choose a person, place, thing illustrate it and write the sentences on his/her own — including spelling the words phonetically
– Map of North America — I want to share a bit about what went into that project. The countries were ‘cut out’ through a pin poking activity — NOT scissors — and was completed entirely by your child. Pin poking helps a child develop his/her pincer grip, co-ordination, and concentration. A child must be able to sit and focus, be ready to handle a sharp object without hurting themselves or others, and show interest in the activity. The placement and the writing of the countries and their names was also done by your child. This really is a BIG work.
Monday:
No school
Tuesday:
-Riot’s Birthday Celebration
-Introduce: Turkey, Penguins, chicken, turkey, kitchen utensils language work and life cycle work for the month
-Physical science: Matter — solid, liquid, gas
-Group discussion: chickens-where do they live? How do chickens begin their
lives? What does a rooster look like?
-H.W.T: practice review of all uppercase letters/ introduce lowercase u and cvc words with “u”
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
