We are diving right into our Writer’s Workshop lessons and the children are loving it! Our first unit focuses on writing true stories about our own lives; “small moment” stories. The children participate in a mini lesson and then spend some quiet time writing and practicing the new skills they are learning. This week the children have learned about how to stretch out their memories by magnifying a small moment and adding details. To help solidify this objective, we have been dissecting the book Owl Moon by Jane Yolen. We did this by finding a powerful part in the story, deciding what made the part powerful, and finding details and examples in the passage that proved it. After our mini lessons, Ms. Mary and I move around the room and conference with individual students, giving help and instruction where needed.

We periodically get together as a whole group and share our writing with each other; this is a favorite part of Writers Workshop for many. This year, our author’s circle looks a bit different in order to facilitate the social distancing guidelines, but that is okay! Some children shared from their work spots, and others wanted to come up to the front of the classroom to read. How incredibly wonderful is it that the children feel safe and respected, and as a result, want to share their writing with their peers!

This week the third year students told the first of Maria Montessori’s Five Great Lessons, the Creation of the Universe. The third years have been working so hard for the past few weeks, preparing and practicing, to give this lesson to the younger students. Even though the third years told me they were nervous about being the “teachers” and presenting this lesson to the class, they leaned into the discomfort and did an outstanding job. What an amazing thing to witness! They should all be so proud of themselves.

The children also enjoyed their first classification lesson, learning about living vs. non living. This was a group discussion which introduced the concept of life by contrasting living organisms with non-living matter. We used our class pet, Rocky, and a rock from outdoors to facilitate the discussion. The children were thrilled to observe and touch our leopard gecko! The objective of this lesson was to distinguish living organisms by these functions: metabolism, growth, reproduction, response to stimuli and adaption to the environment.

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.

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.

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.