This Week in the Tulip Room

With the election and our presidential studies we are now on the midst of a study of the US government. With our special studies, it is always exciting to do a “simulation”, so each of your children has been elected or appointed to a branch of government and a position in that branch, next they will work on passing a bill through the three houses. Watch for governments of the world studies to come next!

With our interesting art project that went amiss we want to remind everyone to send your child in play clothes everyday. While we learned something from this experience and stains are something we are better prepared to prevent, we also have noticed some children having difficulty during outside and P.E. time and don’t want anyone to get hurt.

LOTS OF CALENDAR NOTES

For the next few weeks we will continue our emphasis on thankfulness and giving to others. We will be collecting new mittens and gloves to donate to a local charity. Our elementary class is challenging the school to bring in as many gloves as we did food items! This amounts to 265 gloves or 5 gloves per student! Wow! We are aware that we might not make this goal but if we challenge ourselves great things are possible!

On Friday, December 14th the Tulip room will be visiting Greenwood Villages South and caroling the residents and delivering ornaments that have been made by extended care. We will need a couple of chaperones/drivers but all parents are welcome to come. We will have a rehearsal performance on December 12th at school, performing for the primary room.

We will also be taking a field trip to the Scottish Rite Cathedral to see The Nutcracker December 21st at 7:30 p.m. The school will cover the cost of the ticket for your elementary child and you may purchase additional tickets at $12 each for you, yourself, friends or family members. These tickets do need to be ordered in advanced and can be done so with Ms. Brenda and must be done by December the 7th (please RSVP your student by then as well). We are very excited for this opportunity!

During this season of giving we wish to request that in lieu of holiday gifts for the teachers we ask that anyone interested in purchasing a gift, focus on gifts for the classroom! Look for a wish list to be posted soon!

Mark your calendars now! A Walk through math presentation will be held on January 24th at 6:30 pm put this one your calendars now, its a chance to see how your children use the different math materials!

A very popular material lately has been our word study towers! In these towers the children work with compound words, synonyms, antonyms, homophones, homonyms, capitalization, punctuation, alphabetical order and much more! Ask your child about the towers (they might also call them drawers and tell you they are on g6) :).

Recipes

Hello!

The children in the elementary classroom have been gathering recipes that contain vegetables we have been working with, and have gathered some interesting and delicious ideas. We are organizing these into a recipe book that you may purchase as holiday gifts.

As we are getting these ready we have noticed that a few children have only one or no recipes. If you haven’t done this with your child please gather recipes by Friday, November 30th in order for them to be included in the book. Our recipes were in the following categories: broccoli, squash and apple. Thanks so much!

This Week in the Tulip Room

What an exciting week in the Tulip Room! Like most Americans we got our vote on! It was a good lesson in privacy, respecting the opinions of others and independent thinking. We also received a “visit” from a couple of past presidents (ask your child who they were), learned about the constitution & bill of rights and immersed ourselves in voting & government conversations. The children have taken a real interest in researching our presidents, learning many interesting and fun facts along the way (did you know that all the presidents have had siblings?).

As you may know, we have been collecting non-perishable food items for the food bank and the elementary class will be delivering them and touring the facility on Friday, November 16th. We will leave the school at 9am, please be punctual this day. Also we are looking for parents who might be interested in transporting & chaperoning on this day.

The mathematical mind is evident in our classroom every day. Even as parents most of us, when we first visited a Montessori school we were drawn to the bead chains. As a  student the children use these chains, first in the primary classroom to practice their linear counting, then to practice skip counting and now as elementary students to explore squaring & cubing of the numbers one through ten. Kate even discovered that if you add up all the numbers on the Pythagoras board it equals the same as if you were to add up all the cubes of one through ten. Watch your email in January as we are working on scheduling “A Walk through Math in the Elementary Classroom”.