| Well, with a week off for Fall Break, October has flown by! We completed our apple studies and moved into a quick unit on Seasons & Community Helpers. October is Fire Safety Month so we touched on that within the framework of community helpers. This is a good opportunity for you to talk about fire safety with your children--come up with a meeting place in case of an emergency, review calling 911, etc. After our Community Helpers, we moved on to th real highlight of October--PUMPKINS!! We have learned so much about them--the parts of a pumpkin, the pumpkin life cycle, words to describe pumpkins, things that start with the same sound as pumpkin, and more! Check out some photos of our pumpkin work: |
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Apples also popped up in other areas of the classroom...math, language, etc. Check out some of the work going on this week at school: We had an exciting Career/College Week at school too! The Fire Dept. was kind enough to come visit and bring 3 engines for the kids to check out (sorry, I forgot to take my camera to this!). We also had some students "dress like a professional" on Friday. Earlier this week, we had a visit from Rescue Rex who taught the children all about 911 and the people that can help you in the case of an emergency. Remember, it's never too early to start teaching your children your phone number and their home address! Check out the slideshow on the front page of this site for more photos from the past few weeks! Next week--more apples & learning about the seasons!
We are fully into the swing of things now in September! The kids are doing great--everyone has had a great transition to school. They are all coming in nicely, putting away their things and coming to our group. Morning meeting is going great and, for the most part, everyone is able to pay attention and follow directions :) So many skills & standards are covered during our Morning Meeting--counting, patterns, letter recognition, graphing & more. It is a great opportunity for the students to learn from each other and participate in a group activity. Take the time to ask your child about these shapes and how to describe them. See this chart to see the vocabulary we used at school:
As my last post mentioned, we start off the school year slowly...learning the routines & procedures are key to a successful year! Doing this with 20 3, 4 & 5 year-olds can prove challenging at times but it is also a beautiful thing to see it all come together. In order to acclimate all the students to the classroom work environment, we typically have the older preK & K students (most of who are returning students) work in the classroom with me for the first few weeks. We review our work habits & expectations for working as well as going over old & new lessons. During this time, our new preschool students are typically working in a contained environment out in the hallway with Mrs. Mikhail. Everyone did great during this introduction/review time & this week, we finally combined everyone into one happy, classroom family! Here are some photos of the great work that took place when we did: (click on the photos to enlarge) Each morning we start off with our morning meeting. This is a time for us to do the calendar while exploring math, literacy, science & social studies standards. We spell the name of the month, sing about the days of the week & talk about yesterday, today & tomorrow. We count the days, check our pattern on the number cards and graph the weather. After the calendar, we begin our morning message. This always begins with completing the following sentences: Today is (day), (month) (date) (year). It is (weather). We explore various language standards by filling in the missing sounds, writing in sight words & putting periods in the right places. After this part of the morning message, there is always another activity. Sometimes it is related to a theme. Sometimes it is a math/language activity. For the the last few weeks, we've been focusing on our sounds. Each morning, we sorted pictures by their intial sound. Here are some examples: Another time we take advantage of is during dismissal. We often spend this time using online resources to incorporate our learning standards. This week, we've also been exploring graphing in order to learn more about ourselves. We graphed our eye color, hair color, if we have brothers/sisters/etc, and how many letters are in our name. Check out our graphs below: Hope you've enjoyed this little peek into our days! Check back soon for more!
Well, we're back to school and everyone is getting into the groove! We've had a great start to the year and I'm so excited about our class this year. We have a lot of new friends this year (12 out of 20 are new to our class!) but everyone is adjusting well. The first couple of weeks of school can be tiring for all--kids and teachers alike! It is a tricky blend of entertaining these little people while helping them learn all of the classroom routines, procedures and rules. At times it may seem a tiny bit boring to the kids as we can't really "let them go" in the classroom until they truly understand the expectations. This is particularly important in a multiage classroom. Since our materials cover a wide range of abilities, it is extremely important that they children understand the expectations for behavior, work habits, etc. before we are able to have our uninterrupted work cycle. One way we accomplish this "orientation" to the Montessori environment is by slowly introduce the grace & courtesy lessons as well as the materials while having our new, youngest students in a more controlled environment (which happens to be the hallway outside our classroom door). In this way, they are able to work with a limited choice of materials while learning the expectations and work habits before they are able to work freely in the full classroom. Here are some examples of the kids working in the hallway: Look at those happy faces of students engaged in their work! Our PK & K students have been having a little "Montessori Boot Camp" where we review lessons from various areas of the classroom/curriculum each day before we have an abbreviated work cycle I take the time to really remind them of our work habits/expectations while they are working--pushing in chairs, not yelling across the room, choosing work you've had a lesson on, completing your work & returning it to the shelf appropriately. Here's a peek at these students at work: I hope you've enjoyed this little peek into our day! I will be updating this blog with photos & information, so please check back often. I'll close this post with a slideshow of some portraits from the first week of school. This year all of Primary decided to celebrate the 100th Day of school by creating a "museum of 100 ____." Each student was asked to bring 100 of something that would fit in a gallon sized bag. It was interesting to see all if the different items & creativity! The kids lived comparing how 100 of one object could be much smaller/bigger/lighter/heavier/etc. than 100 of another object! We also made 100 necklaces using 100 fruit loops. These took us a few days to complete--you'd be surprised how long it takes to thread 100 things onto a piece if string!!! (You may want to file this idea away for summer/spring break/etc. It will keep your child occupied for quite awhile!) We also took the time to count out one child's bag of 100 things. We figured out how many groups of 10 are in 100 by sorting the items into groups. We then matched these groups with 10 bars from our Golden Beadx and used the 10 bars to practice counting by 10s to 100. Later we talked about what we would like 100 of and what we would not like 200 of. The kindergarteners wrote & illustrated their own pieces. We allI enjoyed celebrating the 100th day of school this year! Although we didn't get much snow this January, we definitely had some wintery temperatures! While it was freezing outside, we were heating up the classroom with lots of learning. Here is a taste of our Morning messages from January... What a great start to 2014!!! Wow! I blinked and before I knew it, Thanksgiving had come & gone and Winter Break was only a few short weeks away! We packed in lots of learning during the last few weeks of 2013. Take a look! We had a great end to the year! We learned about Hanukkah, Kwanzaa & Christmas & finished up by listening to a wonderful holiday concert performed by the Elementary Strings & Choir students. I hope you all have had a peaceful break and enjoyed some quiet and rest with family. I look forward to seeing everyone back at Hull-Jackson next week!!!! Ahhhh!!!! Somehow between Fall Break, report cards, etc., I missed writing about all of October! Here's my attempt at a quick recap... After we returned from Fall Break, we revisited our class rules & expectations while beginning to talk about some of the signs of fall. The kids love learning about pumpkins--we talked about the parts of the pumpkin as well as the life cycle of the pumpkin. The kindergarteners also worked on some fall-themed works such as putting fall sentences in order making sure they make sense. PreK students matched beginning sounds to some pumpkin-themed pictures I also created some new sound sorting tubs where the children use the sandpaper letters and sort 2 sets of objects by beginning sounds. These have been a big hit with the PK/PS students who are so excited about learning their sounds! We also practiced counting pumpkin seeds & matching them to Golden Beads. Make sure to read the e-mail I sent home today with updates about November Notes! We spent this week at school learning about our planet--the continents, animals of the world & more. Here are the morning messages from the past week: Each day was paired with a new cultural lesson about our world. We have works about continent three-part cards, making a continent book, matching animals & their continents, World Landmarks & the Continent Box. Here is some World Landmark works in action: Next week, we will focus on the Seasons and characteristics of each season. Don't forget-- this is the last week of school before our two week Fall Break!!' |