Mindfulness in the Classroom

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

Each morning we start off our day with mindful meditation. Mindfulness meditation is something I love to do with the children because it teaches them to slow down, notice how their bodies are feeling at that exact moment, and to focus on their breathing. We often assume breathing is just a natural skill; everyone knows how to inhale and exhale. But breathing is more than that. Being aware of our breath not only helps us manage the difficulties of everyday life, it also helps develop compassion, empathy, and concentration. This is an exercise where children practice focusing on the present, instead of worrying about the past and uncertainties of the future. It helps us become aware of how we feel at a given moment.

Our Lower Elementary classroom consists of students who love to work collaboratively and individually. There are many benefits to collaborative work. Working with a friend teaches children patience, respect for another’s strengths and challenges, and the give and take while compromising during collaboration. One of the beauties of work cycle is that different types of work go on simultaneously. Children can be working on a variety of language, math, geometry, cultural, and spelling work. This is a supportive classroom community of learners!

A Peaceful Week

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

What an eventful week Lower Elementary had! We kicked this week off by celebrating the International Day of Peace. This year, Ms. Ulacco organized such a beautiful way to recognize this special day, meanwhile keeping us safe. Instead of gathering as a school community and singing out on the field, the Lower Elementary gathered as a smaller community and learned the corresponding sign language to Light a Candle for Peace. This was such a special and intimate celebration in the class. The children were engaged and intrigued learning the new signs for the familiar song.

This year, we have started to incorporate journal writing every day at the start of the work cycle. In their journals the children can write about their feelings, thoughts, things that make them happy or sad, a story, song, or poem. This is a safe place for students to express themselves. Studies have show that journaling about our experiences, thoughts, and feelings can help lower stress levels and boost problem solving abilities. The act of reflecting and expressing feelings privately can help children recognize their emotions and regulate them. Sometimes I provide prompts for the students to encourage them to self-reflect. This week we wrote about what we were grateful for, something we are proud of, and made positive “I am” statements.

Busy Week

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

This week we started preparing for our creation story with some science demonstrations. The purpose of these demonstrations is to illustrate concepts explored through the story of the creation of the universe. The creation story provides an impressionistic demonstration of the origins of life. The story is designed to impart a sense of wonder and awe, to instill respect for all that has happened, and to ignite interest in scientific investigation.

We have been lucky to have such beautiful weather this week! It’s beginning to feel like fall, and we are loving it. Each morning, when the weather permits, we start with recess on the field. Some activities the children enjoy partaking in during the morning movement are soccer, jumping rope, walking laps, and playing make believe. This is a vital part of the day, to get the body moving before a busy day of work ahead.

Please remind your child to wear something BLUE on Monday, September 21 to recognize and celebrate the International Day of Peace.  Blue is the universal color of peace.

Who Am I?

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

This week’s art project was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings. After looking at images of Van Gogh’s work, each child took time to closely examine real sunflowers with their eyes and sense of touch. Students noticed the range of textures, vibrant colors, and shapes of the sunflowers. Then, they carefully drew their own using pencil and oil pastels. Each sunflower was then cut out and arranged to create one collaborative art piece that visually represents the bright, beautiful Lower Elementary community. Thank you so much Mrs. Reid for organizing such a thoughtful project.

Another exciting part of our week was creating the class “Who Am I” material together. “Who Am I” is a collection of Montessori biology materials used to learn about the different kingdoms of life; specifically, animals, plants, fungi, protists, and prokaryotes. As a fun beginning of the year activity, we made this material with a focus on the children in the classroom. This process started with the children answering questions about themselves. Next, it was typed up, and turned into a material the students can use during work cycle. Not only is the “Who Am I” material a fabulous and popular classification work, it also provides work in comprehension and fluency while helping the children get to know each other!

If you would like to access your child’s weekly schedule, including enrichment classes, you can do so on myfwm.org. Go to the Parents module and select Student Schedules. If you have more than one child at FWM, you can access all from this one location using the drop down menu.

Building Community

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

Another week of pure joy! Our third year group has been such an asset to our class by mentoring and guiding the younger and new students through this transition period. I am so grateful to have such a helpful group of students. It’s heartwarming to see the connections being made across age groups. If this is any indication for the year to come, we are all in for a spectacular school year!

It is important to intentionally build community at the beginning of the school year. One of our community building activities this week was reading a book about peace, discussing as a class what makes each of us feel peaceful, and then the children represented those ideas on doves. It was so beautiful watching them come up with unique items that brought happiness and tranquility to one another. They will hang in our classroom for the rest of the year to help set a peaceful tone in our classroom. 

It’s Great To Be Back!

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

What a successful week we had! Everyone was thrilled to be back together. The children came energized and enthusiastic, ready to kick off a great school year. We spent an ample amount of time enjoying the outdoors eating lunch, exploring the outdoor classroom, learning new classroom procedures and building community. Everyone did a great job remembering to keep their mask on when inside and also when within six feet of friends outside. It was such a pleasure to watch our new friends become acclimated to the Lower Elementary environment with the help of the second and third years. We are so fortunate to have such a diverse and kind group of children. Thank you to an amazing start to the year and I cannot wait for more learning and exploring to come!

This year we will not have a snack and linen calendar, but we do have a flower and pet calendar. Keeping the classroom beautiful is a big part of the Montessori philosophy. One element of this is fresh flowers in the indoor learning environment. Each family will be asked to contribute flowers and crickets twice during the school year. When it is your child’s turn, please send two bouquets of fresh flowers and a dozen large crickets for Rocky. Your child will cut and arrange the flowers for display in our classroom. You can access the flower and pet calendar here or anytime by visiting myfwm.org under the Lower Elementary Resources.

Lower Elementary – A Week in Review

Posted on by Ashley O'Connell

The children have been loving our science lessons! Continuing our light lessons from last week, the children explored the concepts that light travels in waves and straight lines. We also had some fun delving into shadow experiments. They learned that shadows are formed when light cannot pass through an opaque body in its path. This was demonstrated by holding an object close to a beam of light from a flashlight. We then held the object further away and turned to its side. The children came to the conclusion that if the object is closer to the light, the shadow is bigger, and if it’s farther away from the light, the shadow gets smaller.

Adding on to our science demonstrations, the children enjoyed learning about the movement of Earth around the Sun. In this demonstration, the gravitational attraction is represented by a bucket, the Earth is represented by the water in the bucket, and Mrs. Sankey represented the Sun. She then swung the bucket in a wide circle around and over her head. The purpose of this was to express that the same force that pushes out on the water and holds it against the bottom of the bucket, is what keeps our world from falling into the Sun. The Earth gets this force as it propels itself through space. What keeps our planet on a steady path around the Sun is the balance between the gravitational attraction of the Earth and Sun and the forward motion of the Earth.

Luminous Lower Elementary

Posted on by Karen Sankey

We have had a wonderfully busy and productive week in Lower Elementary. We are enjoying our physical science lessons on light. We discussed the difference between natural light and artificial light and then we went on a walk through the school and took a light survey, seeing how many sources we could find that produce light. Next, we learned that atoms get excited when energy is added in the form of heat or a chemical reaction and light is produced when the excited atoms release their energy in bundles of photons. The children had fun acting out the roles of the atoms and photons as Ms. Beckett verbally added energy. We also discussed what role light plays in the survival of plants. We learned about photosynthesis and chlorophyll and why we see plants as green. We covered a small patch of grass and a leaf on our playground to see what will happen when they aren’t able to collect sunlight. We will be checking on them next week. Finally, we went into a dark room and turned on a flashlight. We noticed that we could see the light at its source and at the point where it bounced off the wall but we could not see its beam. Then we shook a dusty pillow. We noticed that we could then see the beam of light reflecting off the dust particles. We will continue with light lessons over the next few weeks and we will be learning more about light when we go on our April field trip.

In addition to our physical science lessons on light, we had many other small group lessons this week. First year students learned about external parts of amphibians in biology, land and water forms in geography, and oblique and perpendicular lines in geometry. Second year students learned about the body functions of amphibians in biology, advanced land and water forms in geography, and subtracting angles with the Montessori protractor in geometry. Third year students collected moss and examined it under a microscope. They are learning about the external parts and body functions of moss in biology and about constructing right-angled, obtuse-angled, and acute-angled triangles with the box of sticks in geometry.

The children have received their parts for our May musical, Moana Jr. They are working hard already and have been enjoying coming together with Upper Elementary to sing songs from Moana in the mornings before we start our day. The children should bring their scripts to school every day since we will be doing a lot of practicing in the coming weeks. Be on the lookout next week for an email with more information about costumes, props, and parts.