Welcome !!!
See our bi-weekly update WAY below... after all these shining faces!
Hello Families,
We are so thrilled to finally have the blog up and running
for you. We hope in the future to make it a little more aesthetic but for now,
we are just getting you lots of pictures and an update. Normally, we will not have
so many pictures on one blog entry; we just wanted to give you all we had thus
far of your children’s memorable start at Great River School in their Lower
Elementary Montessori classroom.
First, a great big thank you to Rachael McGraw who came in
on Friday afternoon to set up our classroom aquarium. Soon, we will have fish
and begin the responsibility and the privilege of pet care. J Next, a reminder that we have a field trip on
Friday to Buttermilk Farms. We have two parents who have already volunteered to
chaperone this trip. Lastly, a great thanks to the families for delicious and
wholesome snacks and your library turn.
October is off to a great start! We continue to be busy,
learn about the world around us and how we function in it. We call Montessori
Elementary Education “Cosmic Education.” It is a whole curriculum about our
world and our place in it: how we got here, what we do to live well here and
what our Cosmic task in life might be. This curriculum integrates all the areas
of the classroom: Practical Life, Art and Peace Education (which each teach how
we interact with the world around us) and Math, Language, Science, Geography
and History (which teach us to understand our place within this world). Many of
our Math and Language (reading, word study, grammar etc.) are rooted in Cosmic
education. For example, last week, one student wrote with the moveable alphabet
“The sun is 93,000,000 miles from the Earth” as a language lesson but it
reflected our discussions and lessons in Science. Cosmic Education is really
the integration of all the areas of the classroom so we can better negotiate
our everyday life and be a contributing member for the betterment of society
and the world at large.
We are continuing our lessons on Peace Education: appropriate
ways to interrupt, maintain self-control and other social skills lessons that
make our days politer and respectful. We talked to the students about being
flexible: flexible in our bodies, flexible in our person (accepting change) and
flexible in our minds (accepting new truths/facts). We have had lessons on
peaceful, beautiful work such as the Zen Garden work and coloring mandalas.
These works help us to relax after a hard work or when we are frustrated and
need alone time. We have shared that all learning starts with our bodies;
control of words and thoughts follow control of our bodies. Yoga will come at some point in the next few
months. J
Before we share about the topics and lessons we have given,
we want to share some general information. The students are building the habit
of using their learning journal. This is not designed to be fully accurate of
exactly what they did each work cycle (we keep our own internal records of
lessons given and practiced with an online record keeping system) but rather,
these learning journals are for building the habits of time management and accountability.
By recording how they spend thier work cycle, they develop a sense of personal
responsibility in the learning process and a sense of accomplishment as they
slowly take control of their own learning over the next three years in this
classroom. The students have made new friendships as they sit with different
lunch partners and walk to the park pairs with a different friend than
previously. We celebrated Syris’ birthday last week and had fruit kabobs. We
have our tradition of cleaning our hands beforehand with warm, rolled towels that
they now can tong to each other as they practice patience sitting with their
hands open and waiting. If it sounds like First Class, we told them that we are
First graders after all, and we can never practice too much respect in this
world; it only makes it an even better place to be. Finally, most days we read
a quote and a see a beautiful picture from our Daily Book of Joy. We discuss
the quote briefly and how it pertains to our everyday life. As the students get
older, this book will serve as one of the choices in their daily writing prompts
in their journals.
Here is an overview of the lessons we have given in the past
two weeks. No one student has had all of these lessons or even half, but every
student has had some lessons from the following list:
Language
Chapter Book Read Aloud: The
Wind in the Willows
Past, present future
Noun: common
Short vowel work
Phonogram work
New vocabulary: congratulatory/ gingerly
Handwriting ( cursive)
Mapping print to cursive
Arts/ Peace Edu:
Gustav Holst composition “Jupiter” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu77Vtja30c
Gustav Holst Composition “ Saturn” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO5sB56rfzA
Clean up song link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fahr069-fzE
Zen Garden: what is mindful work that relaxes us
Practical Life:
Clean up music everyday:
Sewing- LOVE!
Line walking
Snack prep
Zipping/ folding/ tying
Math & Geometry
Geometry lessons on 3D shapes ( cones; cylinders etc)
Calendar work
Golden bead
Number composition; expanded notation
Math facts
Commutative Property of addition and multiplication
Writing numbers
Cosmic Education:
North America map work
Mapping with a key/ legend
Mapping with a grid
Names of the Earth’s oceans
Land and water forms of island/ lake and cape/ bay
Latitude and longitude: Equator Prime Meridian
The Solar system
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