Blog

Ms. Handibode: Young Entomologists at Work

Posted on by Michelle Handibode

Last week, our classroom became a hub of scientific inquiry as the children dove into one of their favorite topics: entomology, the study of insects. We began by gathering everything the children already knew — and they had plenty to say. Insects are slimy, little, soft, hard, and sometimes gross. They can crawl, sting, bite, fly, walk upside down, and jump. From there, we built on that foundation, learning that insects lay eggs, have antennae, and share three main body parts: a head, thorax, and abdomen. They also have six legs, an exoskeleton, are cold-blooded, and many have wings.

One of the week’s highlights was discovering why a spider is not an insect — ask your child, they may just know the answer!

We were also delighted to welcome Veda’s mom as our guest reader, who shared the wonderful book The Rabbit Listened — a beautiful story that sparked warm conversation about empathy and community.

And then there were the chicks. Five baby chicks hatched in our classroom this week, and they have already been named: Rosie, Sunny, Biddy, Pumpkin, and Blueberry. The joy in the room when they arrived was truly something special.

Go on an insect hunt in your backyard or at a local park. Encourage your child to look closely at what they find and try to identify the three main body parts. Can they tell if it’s truly an insect — or something else? A magnifying glass makes this even more fun!

 

UPCOMING EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

This Week

  • Monday, May 4 — Sharing Box and Flowers: Adeline G.
  • Tuesday, May 5 — Playground Volunteer: Megan H.
  • Wednesday, May 6 — Guest Reader: Casey W.
  • Thursday, May 7 — Birthday Celebration: Adeline G.

Next Week

  • Monday, May 11 — Sharing Box and Flowers: Mila M.
  • Tuesday, May 12 — Playground Volunteer: Casey W.
  • Wednesday, May 13 — Guest Reader: Nick L.
  • Friday, May 15 — Birthday Celebration: Mila M.

This Week in Upper El

Posted on by Karen Sankey

“We have come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. But if we are to continue to exist, we will require more than intelligence. We will require wisdom.” -David Attenborough

We’ve had a busy two weeks in Upper El, preparing for end-of-the-year traditions and beginning to wrap up a year’s worth of lessons.

Writing lessons and work focused on expanding on a paragraph by adding detail, description, and interest, with the ultimate goal of making it more engaging and informative. Students also learned the importance of revising their writing before editing and to practice using transitions and varying sentence structure in their own writing. While completing their follow-up work in revising paragraphs, students used analytical and abstract thinking.

In fourth-grade grammar work, we worked with adverbs of time, place, and manner. Fifth graders learned that complements of specification are used to add clarity to a sentence by adding meaning to a noun. They worked with infinitives, prepositional, and participial phrases. Fifths also learned about the differences between phrases and clauses and practiced identifying each, as well as finding the predicate and subject in clauses.

In geometry work, fourth graders learned to find the area of parallelograms and acute triangles, and fifth graders began work on finding the area of a sector of a circle. Each of these lessons involved working with hands-on materials to determine the formula for finding the area before students practiced drawing figures and applying the formulas.

In biology, we wrapped up our vital functions lessons by examining the matrix of all six vital functions across 14 different phyla and classes of animals. The next few weeks will involve student research on the vital functions of a student-chosen animal, including a written report and an optional oral presentation to the class.

In our history lessons, we learned about Neanderthals, fossil humans who lived in Europe and Central/Northern Asia before and during the last ice age, between 400,000 and 40,000 years ago. We also learned about Homo sapiens, the only surviving species of the Homo genus, who, by about 30,000 years ago, had spread to nearly all parts of the world. We took a closer look at the Cro-Magnon people, whose fossils were the first of the early modern humans to be identified.

We wrapped up our week with a beautiful day spent with grandparents and special friends, followed by an amazing concert performed for our community. Bravo to all of the children for your hard work! I am in awe of you!

Upcoming Dates

  • Thursday, May 7: Sandwich Making for St. Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen
  • Wednesday, May 13: May and Summer Months Birthday Breakfast at 8:30
  • Thursday, May 21: Wonka! Spring Musical for UE and MS at 7:00
  • Monday, May 25: No School – Memorial Day
  • Tuesday, May 26 – Thursday, May 28 – Nature’s Classroom Trip
    • If you have not turned in your Nature’s Classroom forms, please do so this week.

Ms. Vicki’s Weekly Update

Posted on by Vicki Downs

The last two weeks have been busy, busy, busy in our classroom! The children have been exploring nature, celebrating special moments, and engaging in so many hands-on learning experiences.

We celebrated Earth Day by reading stories about our planet and talking about how to care for it. The children created different Earth-inspired crafts, using a variety of materials to represent the world in their own creative ways.

We’ve been learning how spring brings the Earth back to life with baby animals being born, insects emerging, and nature becoming more colorful. The children explored this through art, using stickers, paint, and tissue paper to create different creatures and spring scenes.

One very exciting highlight was visiting the Primary classroom’s baby chicks. We were able to watch them hatch and, once they were ready, gently touch and hold the chicks. This was such a special and memorable experience for everyone!

Food tasting has been a big hit! Last week, we tried asparagus, which was surprisingly loved by many of the children. This week, we explored blueberries, cutting them open to observe the difference between the inside and outside. The children practiced mindful tasting, eating them one at a time and noticing how some were sweet while others were a little sour.

A favorite moment was making fresh-squeezed lemonade. The children helped press and turn the lemons on the juicer and add sugar. Hearing their excited slurps and gulps as they tasted their hard work was so much fun!

We also celebrated a second birthday in our classroom! Our birthday friend took two trips around the sun and enjoyed blowing out candles with all of their classmates cheering them on.

We ended the week with Grandparents Day and invited special guests into our room to work with the children and explore their favorite things. They loved showing off everything they could do, and the Grandparents were filled with pride and love watching them. It was a very sweet event.

It has been a joyful couple of weeks filled with discovery, creativity, and celebration.

Mrs. Wilson: Food Prep

Posted on by Cynthia Wilson

Over the past two weeks, the children have had wonderful hands-on experiences with food preparation. Last week, they explored avocados—tasting them on their own before mashing them into guacamole. They enjoyed sampling both the plain avocado and the finished guacamole with chips, experiencing how one ingredient can be transformed.

This week, we approached food tasting a little differently by working “backward.” On Wednesday, the children helped prepare their food, and the following day they tasted it. After exploring corn on the cob, we brought our work outdoors. Each child was given their own ear of corn to shuck, carefully removing the husk and silk. We then brought the husks to our school compost pile, where each child contributed. We discussed how food scraps break down and help create nutrient-rich soil for our gardens.

The next morning, Ms. Sara and a small group of children cooked the corn. Once it had cooled, we gathered together to taste it—many of the children truly enjoyed the fruits of their labor.

Grandparents and Special Friends Day was a meaningful highlight. The children were so proud to welcome their guests and share their classroom. They spent the morning guiding their visitors through some of their favorite activities, showing a growing sense of confidence and independence.

Ms. Marissa: Weekly Update

Posted on by Marissa Frisk

 

Spring has brought a lot of excitement into our classroom lately. We’ve been watching our baby chicks hatch, and it’s been such a cool experience for the kids. They’ve been checking on the eggs throughout the day, noticing the small cracks, and listening for those first little peeps. Once the chicks started hatching, there was a lot of quiet focus as everyone gathered around to watch. Now we’re helping care for them and learning what they need to stay safe and healthy.

At the same time, we’ve also welcomed caterpillars into the classroom so the children can observe another life cycle up close. They’ve already started noticing how much the caterpillars eat and how quickly they grow. Having both the chicks and caterpillars in the room has been a great way to talk about how living things grow and change in different ways. It’s been a simple, hands-on way for the kids to learn by watching, asking questions, and being part of the process.

Middle School: Celebrating 8th Grade Experts & Week in Review

Posted on by Michelle Lamb

On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Middle School Community came together to support our graduating 8th graders as they presented their Expert Projects. These 10-15-minute presentations were a wonderful representation of the research they have been doing since early January. Additionally, students wrote a research essay using interviews they completed with experts in the field as a resource. The 8th-grade students should be proud of their hard work and dedication to their projects. Bravo!

They presented the following topics:

  • Camden: Blitzkrieg: The Tactic that Reinvented Warfare
  • Aryan: The Memory-Decision Loop
  • Bennett: CrossFit: Redefining Fitness
  • Tristan: Organized Crime: Underground Groups and Markets
  • Allie: Understanding the Criminal Mind

Coming Up:

  • MS Trip: Complete the required medical form and submit medical authorizations for medication distribution ASAP.
  • Please submit the initial $500 deposit for the MS Trip that was due Monday, 4/20
  • MS Musical: Willy Wonka, Jr., May 21st @ 7 pm.
  • SAVE THE DATE! FAREWELL TO THE CLASS OF 2026 on Friday, May 15 @ 4:30 pm
  • SAVE THE DATE! Middle School Dance on Friday, May 22nd 
  • MS ARRIVAL BEGINS AT 8 am

Humanities

6th and 7th-grade Humanities classes are wrapping up their studies of Animal Farm. Much like the animals from Manor Farm, they staged a Humanities Rebellion and overthrew Mrs. Lamb, taking control of Humanities classes. With Mrs. Lamb out of the picture, the classes had to move forward with making plans for the future of Humanities class. With those plans, they were allowed to run a class period. Mrs. Lamb enjoyed being the student and having both of the 6/7 sections as the guides. Currently, the groups are drafting literary analysis essays. Students chose from three prompts and will use examples from the novel to support their focus. The 7th-grade students will find and use direct quotations from the novel as well.

After wrapping up expert projects last week, this week was spent immersed in history. The class began reading the Constitution and learning more about its development. Using resources from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and segments from the PBS Series “Constitution USA with Peter Segal”, they are having a deeper understanding of the text and its current use. Additionally, the class began reading the biography, She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman by Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

Math

Pre-Transition: This week, students focused on the short division algorithm, strengthening their ability to divide multi-digit numbers efficiently. They practiced breaking down division problems into manageable steps. Students worked on both independent problems and guided examples to build confidence.

Transition: This week, students continued practicing solving one- and two-step equations to find the value of a variable. They focused on using inverse operations and checking their answers to make sure they were correct. Later in the week, students were introduced to graphing linear equations by creating a table of values. They learned how to choose input values, find the corresponding outputs, and plot the points on a coordinate plane to see the line’s pattern.

Algebra: This week, students wrapped up Chapter 6 by reviewing and taking the Chapter 6 assessment, which demonstrated their understanding of all concepts related to slope. They worked with concepts like finding slope from graphs, tables, and equations, and interpreting what slope means in real-world situations. At the end of the week, students began previewing Chapter 8, which covers exponent properties and how to simplify expressions using exponents.

Geometry: This week, students learned about reflection and rotation of symmetric figures. They explored how shapes can be flipped over a line (reflection) or turned around a point (rotation) while still maintaining their size and shape. Students practiced identifying lines of symmetry and determining how many times a figure can be rotated onto itself. They worked with a variety of shapes to better understand how symmetry appears in different figures.

 Algebra II: This week, students reviewed key concepts from Chapter 5 and then took the Chapter 5 assessment to show their understanding. After completing the test, they began Chapter 6, where they were introduced to quadratic equations. Students began exploring what makes an equation quadratic and examined the basic form, beginning to understand how these equations create parabolas when graphed.

Science
Middle School students continued working on lessons from the Discovery Education e-book. This week, 6th and 7th-graders started learning about atoms, their structure, and their subatomic particles. Students learned that an atom is composed of a nucleus and energy levels around it. They learned that the subatomic particles in the nucleus are protons (positively charged) and neutrons (uncharged). Also, they understood that electrons (negative charge) are in the outer shells or energy levels. In addition, they learned the concept of atomic numbers (number of protons) and atomic mass (protons + neutrons). They had a general introductory class on the Periodic Table, with 118 elements and their organization. They also learned how to look for the atomic number and atomic mass for each element using the periodic table.
8th graders finished working on their hands-on project about Fermentation, analyzing its results and comparing them with the Fermentation virtual laboratory. With the use of a tool in Google Sheets, they were able to record their data in charts and do the graphs for better analysis. They worked on their analysis and their conclusion. Summarizing, they also learned the importance of being organized and focused when it is time to record data in a laboratory experiment. All these lessons and new concepts are supported by classwork, videos, readings, and explanations in class, followed by weekly science articles where students can practice their critical thinking to answer the questions.
It is also important to mention that Middle school students celebrated Earth Day on April 23. After an explanation about it and its origin that supports the environmental protection of our planet, all middle school students participated in an outdoor scavenger hunt with environmental science topics.

Finding Our Voices Through Poetry in LE

Posted on by Carlie Taveras

Poetry has quietly found its way into our classroom over the past few weeks, weaving itself naturally into the work the children are already doing. Rather than treating poetry as something separate or abstract, we have introduced it as another way to play with language, notice patterns, and express ideas. It has paired especially well with our grammar work, giving children a meaningful and creative way to explore parts of speech and sentence structure.

Our first-year students have been stepping into poetry through sound and rhythm. They have been working with rhyming words, listening closely to how language fits together, and beginning to notice patterns in words. Alongside this, they have been exploring pattern writing. In these lessons, children are given a prompt that is started for them and invited to complete it with their own thoughts, ideas, and feelings. This work supports them in finding their written voice. It helps them generate ideas, express themselves, and explore, in a very concrete way, how sentences are built. These early experiences with language are laying the foundation for children to discover their own literary and poetic voice eventually.

Second-year students have begun to look more closely at how poems are structured. They have been identifying parts of speech within poems and thinking about how words work together to create meaning. They have also worked with logical sequence, taking lines of poetry and arranging them in an order that makes sense. Rhyming continues to be explored at this level, and students have been introduced to cinquain poems, which give them a simple structure to follow while still allowing for creativity. The cinquain is a patterned poem that complements their grammar work, as it requires them to follow a clear structure while thoughtfully choosing specific parts of speech to build meaning.

In the third year, poetry has become a space for deeper self-expression and analysis. The children began with “I Am” poems, which allow students to reflect on who they are, what they feel, and what they experience, supporting both self-awareness and confidence in writing. They have also been introduced to alliteration, first by creating sentences, then by building alliteration pyramid poems. In addition, students have been analyzing poems written by famous poets, identifying parts of speech and representing them using Montessori grammar symbols. This work brings together their knowledge of grammar and their growing understanding of how language can be used intentionally and creatively.

As we move forward, the children will continue to explore poetry in a variety of ways. They will have opportunities for free writing, where they can experiment and express themselves openly, as well as structured experiences where they follow specific patterns and learn new types of poems. It has been enjoyable to watch the children engage with this work, noticing patterns, playing with words, and beginning to see language as a tool for creativity and self-expression.

This Week in Upper El

Posted on by Karen Sankey

“The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.” -David Attenborough

As the weather gets warmer, we will spend more time outdoors, including time in the woods on our beautiful land. Please send insect repellent and sunblock for your student to use as needed before we go outdoors. They will label the bottles with their name and keep them at school. Children should also get into the habit of checking for ticks each night.

In language work this week, our writing lesson focused on fact vs. opinion, and students worked on transforming sentences as follow-up work. I gave them sentences, and they identified which were facts and which were opinions, and then they transformed each sentence. If it was a fact, they turned it into an opinion, and if it was an opinion, they turned it into a fact. For the novel study, students worked in small groups to review the reading assignment. They discussed the chapters and their answers to the novel study questions. In grammar, fourth graders learned about verbs and verb phrases. They identified actions in sentences, learned about “helping” or “auxiliary” verbs, and identified the complete verb in a sentence. Fifth graders learned about the differences between attributive adjectives, appositive adjectives, linking verbs, and predicate words.

Fourth-grade geometry focused on deriving the formula for finding the area of a square, which is a specific kind of rectangle, from the experience of finding the area of a rectangle last week. Fifth graders compared the nomenclature of a regular polygon with that of a circle. They used that information, along with what they knew about finding the area of a polygon, to derive the formula for the area of a circle. To celebrate using Pi to find the area of circles, the fifth graders enjoyed some apple and cherry pies before our lesson.

In biology this week, we looked at the vital function of reproduction in animals. We learned about asexual vs. sexual reproduction and the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of each. Some types of asexual reproduction discussed were budding and regeneration. In our discussion of sexual reproduction, we covered the differences between male and female sex cells, the nomenclature of male and female reproductive organs, fertilization, oviparous, viviparous, and ovoviviparous animals, and breeding.

Our history lesson this week focused on Neanderthals, and we viewed a portion of the 2024 BBC documentary, Secrets of the Neanderthals. We will learn more details about Neanderthals next week, along with taking a look at Cro-Magnons and comparing the two.

Upcoming Dates:

  • Wednesday, April 22
    • 8:30 – April Birthday Breakfast
    • 6:00 – 8th Grade Expert Presentations
      • Come see these amazing projects and what lies ahead for your child when they are in their 8th grade year!
  • Friday, April 24
    • No School – Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences
    • 9:30-12:30 – Spring Musical Rehearsal
  • Friday, May 1
    • Grandparents and Special Friends Day
    • 11:30 – Early Dismissal
    • 5:00 – Spring Concert
  • Saturday, May 2
    • 6:00 – Springfest