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. 

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.

We had a very productive week!

The first years have been loving their lessons. They heard the “love story of lines” during geometry this week, where they learned about convergent, divergent, and parallel lines. They used the box of sticks to explore these concepts. In grammar, first years learned about adjectives and had a fun time coming up with silly adjectives to describe nouns. As an extension, they were introduced to a work called the grammar box, where the children practice the parts of speech they have learned so far this year.

The second year group enjoyed learning how to subtract fraction insets using the Montessori protractor; a concept that can be challenging for some, they grasped so quickly! I was impressed. They also had a blast learning about pronouns. The students and I put our heads together to create a short story using no pronouns. The children realized that this was challenging because it sounded ridiculous and very repetitive. However, afterwards we came to the conclusion that pronouns are necessary for every day language!

Last but not least, the third years have been enjoying their hands-on geometry follow-up. They have been using the box of sticks to make equilateral, isosceles and scalene triangles. One student told me that, “This is the most fun geometry I’ve done in lower elementary!” How incredible is that? As for language, the third year group received another sentence analysis lesson. They learned that there can be more than one subject in a sentence and they started using the term predicate in place of action when describing a sentence.

We have an upcoming field trip to the Discovery Museum on Thursday, April 23rd. The bus will leave FWM at 9:30 and will return around 2:00. Children need to pack a bagged lunch that day and should not bring anything that needs to be heated up. We can take three parent volunteers. Please contact us if you are interested!

We are all getting very excited for our upcoming production of Moana Jr. in May. The children will be learning their parts next week and we have already begun singing the songs together in class. If you would like to access the songs for your child to practice, please click on this link.

This week we had the opportunity to explore weather and climate expressed through art at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT. The children had guided tours in small groups and learned about many of the pieces of art in the weather exhibit. In addition to learning how the pieces were made, they also learned each piece’s connection with climate and weather. We saw a large oil painting of the Florida Everglades and Miami. We also experienced a depiction of the night sky with the big dipper, an interpretation of Chicago snow, a moving piece of art showing a tree in each season of the year, storm clouds, a giant print of a tree trunk, and a piece which was an interpretation of doppler radar images combined with brain scans, among others. We also made a happy discovery while at the museum. One of the pieces we looked at and discussed was a room filled with colorful nylon strips, hung vertically, created by Eva LeWitt who happens to be the daughter of an artist the children studied earlier in the school year, Sol LeWitt.

We have also been busy learning this week in school. The third year students started some geometry lessons on the analysis of a triangle. They explored making equilateral, isosceles, and scalene triangles with the box of sticks material. Second year students learned about pronouns, and individual lessons in math and language took place throughout the work cycles this week for students at each grade level. In Readers and Writers Workshop, we are diving into lessons in our units on reading and writing non-fiction. The children are enjoying learning about writing in this new genre while teaching their peers all about something they are experts in.

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, “The children are now working as if I did not exist.”  ~Maria Montessori

This is one of our favorite quotes from Maria Montessori and this week we saw it come to life. Having been out several days, our first concern was, of course, for the children. We received feedback daily regarding how well the children maintained their work cycle completing meaningful work throughout the week. We could not be more proud of their embodiment of this famous quote.  Enjoy the long weekend!

If you walk into our Lower Elementary classroom you will find children working on independent/group research throughout the year. The children absolutely love researching topics of their choice as one of their work options during our work cycle. Although research is a frequent, day to day occurrence, this time of year is special because the entire class is focused on one common goal, completing their research projects. This common focus connects us as a class and allows opportunities for the older children to take a mentoring roll and help the younger children who are new to research.

The children were so excited all week as the anticipation of Research Night crept up. They were thrilled to be sharing their projects with people who they love so deeply. The third-year students had their first public speaking experience, presenting before classmates and families. They were amazing! All of the children worked diligently and should be very proud of their work, as are we.

We can still take one more parent volunteer on our upcoming field trip to the Aldrich Museum on February 19th. The bus will be leaving school at 11:30, so if you can make it and are interested, please email Karen or me.