This week in the Tulip Room

It was a map-tastic week in the Tulip room! The glory of Montessori is frequently when one child is working on something they found interesting another child will see and say “Hey, that looks fun can I do it next?” That occurred this week with our pin maps! Pin Maps are maps in our classroom that have flags, country names & capital names for the continents. Children work at their own level (flags only for the youngest child and all three for the older or more advanced learners) with the maps and follow ups (a follow up might be to research a flag or a country or a capital they find interesting or to make their own map by drawing flags & labeling countries/capitals).

During last month we focused on our continents and oceans and this month North America so all children have some sort of activity they are required to complete with these maps, however many have chosen to do other continents as well!

This week we talked about Broccoli, cutting & serving during the week, then making a dip and reading to the primary room on Friday. The children were invited to bring in a recipe idea to share (if your child hasn’t done this feel free to send it next week).  We heart broccoli!

In group lessons this week we enjoyed some BIG lessons/ideas! The birth and death of a star lesson this week has provided a launching pad to studies of atoms and elements. We also began the presentation of the time line of life this week and were excited to learn about the many animals and plants that we have today that were also alive 450 million years ago! WOW!

Thank you Ms. Dana for coming in on Friday to walk with us to the library, we hope for her face to become a regular Friday occurrence for us!

In the next few weeks lessons & activities will turn to fall! Watch for nocturnal animal lessons, creepy crawly insect lessons, and parts of a leaf, gourd lessons, continued recipe sharing & cooking.

Elementary Happenings

Work plans, spelling tests, lessons, end of the day jobs, presentations and homework, oh my!

The year started off with a “Bang”. We began our school year preparing a classroom puzzle, our clipboards, our binders, our placemats, learning about manners and classroom culture and navigating this world of work plans! Then quickly on to creation stories & the big bang, planet studies, the “dance of the planets”, maybe a song or two from Ms. Kristen & Ms. Melissa (think…our whole universe was in a hot dense state, then nearly 14 billion years ago expansion started…WAIT!..Who knows this song?).   The children researched planets, researched animals and researched plants, all while receiving lessons on math operations, materials, grammar & handwriting, spanning across so many different levels. We really feel during this time we have gotten to know where your child is and have a good plan for where they will go.

Each level or year has their own one month work-plan (reduced to a day or week for some) that helps them know what their level will be working on. However we alter these to suit each child, so if a child isn’t ready for a lesson we move it to next month, if they are ready for more advanced lessons, we pencil that in. The children are just now getting used to the flow of their work plans and spelling tests and are coming along nicely.

I’m sure you have been welcoming home exhausted children and our families have been welcoming home exhausted guides, who still need to prepare things for the next day, week or month! Please forgive me in my slowness to blog! But I MUST tell you of all the fun we are having!

Last week we were all fruity for apples! We learned to cut an apple (following detailed instructions!), life cycle of an apple, explored apple seeds and made applesauce.  We also had the pleasure of experiencing “Glow Germ”, when Ms. Erica and her nursing student friends (I named them the Germ Squad) came in and let us experience a lesson on how germs spread and travel. Thanks Ms. Erica!

This week we made play dough and learned about the layers of the earth, hemispheres & continents! A special “thank you” to Ms. Toni for coming in to teach us finger crocheting, next week we will start crocheting with needles. We also helped to set a world record! Ask your child about “Read for the Record” with Ladybug Girl and working in a blanket fort. We also wrapped things up with a “five kingdoms brought to life” presentation and a five kingdom salad.

Not to mention PE, music (with Mr. Adam), art (with Ms. Jama), Yoga (with Ms. Hansa), Sign language (with Ms. Taunya) and library time!

This week you will notice we are finally in the swing of things and everyone’s work should’ve came home today, including a practice sheet for next week’s spelling words. We reserve Fridays for spelling tests, but if the children feel ready earlier we can test them at any time during the week. What we have found is that currently the children are so busy during the school day that they aren’t having time to study their words as much as they’d like, so we will send them home on Fridays for the following weeks words so they can enjoy some extra practice time at home. We are also sending home special projects and homework that the children need or want to do but ran out of time to finish during the school day, feel free to ask about any of this special work that comes home.

We are entertaining the idea of letting some of the older children bring home their reading books as well, so you may see them come home one night a week in the near future to read out loud to our parents.

Parent teacher conferences are coming up, October 24^th. See Ms. Brenda to sign up for a time slot or if you have a special circumstance where you can’t make it that day. We look forward to sharing our observation of your child in the Montessori classroom with you.

Check Facebook for some pictures of the crazy times in Elementary!

** Did you receive information about the Bubble maker’s class? If not please see Ms. Jama or Ms. Melissa for more information or to express your interest. Bubble makers is a Scuba class for 8 & up. We are trying to put together a group so we could have our own weekend class.