“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” -A.A. Milne

What an amazing year and group of children! We had so much fun during the last days of school. A fantastic field day kicked off our week on Monday. In the morning, we cheered for the primary students during their games before enjoying our own elementary and middle school activities. Other highlights included pajama/spa day, beach day, unconventional container day, and FWM colors and merch day. We enjoyed every moment together as the year came to an end, celebrating our hard work and cheering classmates on as they moved on to middle school.

Thank you all, especially Maddie and Beau, for the beautiful goodbye video! I will cherish it. Thank you for a wonderful year and for sharing your children with me. Have a wonderful summer, and I look forward to seeing you in the fall as we begin a new school year.

Look for an email in the next few weeks with information about summer work.

With so much love,
Karen

“There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them, in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum is capable of giving.” -Maria Montessori

This week’s blog post has some fantastic contributors! Our guest photographer, Noya, took photos of the pond study, and each student wrote about their experience at Nature’s Classroom. They teamed up with classmates to write short descriptions of some of our activities while we were there. I hope you enjoy hearing directly from the children! 🙂

It’s Electric

The lights, the plasma balls, the dueling vandigraphs get ready, it’s electric! Our upper el class just got back from our overnight Nature’s Classroom field trip. During this class, everyone loved it! We used plasma balls and shorted them out with our hands, cheeks, and hair. James, Luke, and Lily, Kaliegh, and Dante together made a human battery, and Aya, Violet, and Nina made one too. We also used the plasma balls to make a light bulb light up.

It’s Electric II

It’s Electric is a class where we learned about electricity. We grounded (drained energy from) plasma balls by touching them with our hands until they turned off. When we removed our hands, they turned back on. We were also able to turn on light bulbs just by holding them close to the plasma ball. I had a really fun time!

Ort Report

The Ort report is where we make up a dance, it could be the Macarena, doing the scuba, etc. Sometimes it can be VERY embarrassing. We all get to make it up, and Mrs. Sankey usually videos it unless we don’t want her to. The song goes: Ooh, ahh, the ort report, I said, ooh, ahh, ort report! Shakey, shakey, shakey! Ooh, ahh, the ort report! I said, ooh, ahh, ort report! Yeah! (*Jazz hands.*)

Mealtime

During each meal, we had a positive share and a silly question. One of the Nature’s Classroom staff members chooses three children to go up and share a positive experience and answer a silly question that the staff member comes up with. For example, a silly question could be, “If you could fill the lake up with anything, what would it be?” Answering the silly questions and saying your positive share is very fun!

One Way System

The one way system is a rule we follow at Nature’s Classroom! If you are sitting at your table and you want to get something from the salad bar or cereal bar, you get up and walk all the way around all of the tables to get there! On the salad/cereal bar, it says, “ONE WAY SYSTEM,” so people follow the rules. On the way back, you don’t go the way you came; you keep walking the circle until you get to your table.

Waitrons

A waitron is a person who sets the table 15 minutes before a meal. Once everyone is inside the dining hall, the waitron brings the food on a platter to their table for family-style sharing with their friends.

Whale Watch

The Whale Watch is a team-building exercise that involves keeping your balance using teamwork. You use a wooden board with a fulcrum under it. You try to keep it steady by balancing it with the whole class’s weight. We did it with an even number of people on the board and an even number of people on the sides, and it was steady at the end.

Nature’s Classroom was an unforgettable experience. It is always the best part of the school year. Students realize their strengths, make connections, strengthen their friendships, and learn real-life lessons. Getting away from technology and back to nature is so valuable for all of us. What a pleasure to spend three days in the woods with these amazing humans!

Upcoming Dates & Spirit Week Details!

• Monday:
  • Field Day – Students have school-issued t-shirts at school to wear
  • 4:00 – Variety Show!
• Tuesday:
  • Pajama Day & Spa Day  – Wear PJs, bring your pillow and a stuffed animal. We will also make face masks, paint nails (optional of course), and pamper ourselves.
• Wednesday:
  • Beach Day – Wear your favorite beachy attire and accessories.
• Thursday:
  • Unconventional Container Day – Bring your stuff in something else! (For example, a suitcase instead of a backpack or Tupperware instead of a water bottle.) Be creative!
• Friday:
  • Moving Up Day – Wear Fraser Woods colors or merch!
  • 10:00 – Moving up ceremony for families of students moving to the next level.
  • 11:30 – Early dismissal

If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it. 

Upcoming Dates

• Tuesday, May 26 – Thursday, May 28: Nature’s Classroom Big Trip
• Friday, May 29: May and Summer Birthday Breakfast @8:30
• Monday, June 1: Field Day @9:00 & Variety Show @4:00
• Friday, June 5: Moving Up Ceremony @10:00 and Early Dismissal

“Don’t you sometimes feel bewildered when you think of the millions of things that put life together?’ … ‘I’m not bewildered. I’m filled with the deepest awe and wonder. The miracle is that in its complexity it all works.” -Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

We spent most of last week testing, and everyone handled the schedule like pros! Students spent their early mornings rehearsing for the spring musical, followed by our class chapter-book read-aloud, and then testing. After following this schedule Monday through Thursday, we were glad to get back to a more typical routine on Friday with student-led yoga after our read-aloud and some work cycle time before lunch. Students are hard at work on an end-of-the-year biology project, researching and writing reports about the vital functions of animals. Their options for completing the project are either to prepare a presentation with a slideshow about their animal or to write an informational booklet.

This coming week is our last week before we head off to Massachusetts for Nature’s Classroom. We are getting very excited, and students will choose their activities in the next couple of days. If you haven’t turned in your medical forms yet, please do that by Tuesday at the latest. I will be inviting you to join a WhatsApp text group for communication while we are away. I’ll use this group to share photos, in real time when possible, and communicate information about our trip while we are away.

Coming Up!

• Monday, May 18 – DEADLINE to Order Pilot Lunch Program
• Thursday, May 21 @ 7:00 – Spring Musical
• Friday, May 22 – DEADLINE to Order a Yearbook
• Monday, May 25 – No School: Memorial Day
• Tuesday, May 26 – Thursday, May 28  – Nature’s Classroom Trip
• Friday, May 29 – May and Summer Birthday Breakfast

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety-

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light-
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Mary Oliver

Wishing the happiest of Mother’s Days to all of our Upper El mamas! 

Thank you for a very special Teacher Appreciation Week! Sara and I feel so loved and appreciated with all of your and your children’s heartfelt messages and gifts last week.

Upper el students are hard at work researching the vital functions of an animal of their choice. The process began with using our classroom materials to gather some initial facts. From there, students are weaving in what they learned in this week’s writing lesson on multi-paragraph reports, taking notes, and building outlines for their final papers. They are focusing on crafting strong topic sentences for each paragraph, then developing supporting and concluding sentences. After writing everything by hand, revising, and editing, they will type their final drafts, transforming their research into books about their chosen animals to share with the class. Their enthusiasm is clear – they’re dedicating a great deal of time and attention to this project. We love seeing them share information with each other as they learn more about their animals.

This week, we had our last sandwich-making morning of the year. We made 208 sandwiches for the soup kitchen! Thank you very much to all who contributed ingredients this month. A very special thank you to Teresa and Brandon for helping us make the sandwiches and dropping them off at St. Vincent DePaul! We appreciate all of you!

Next week, we will take the ERB-CTP5 standardized test. We will do a little each morning and keep the testing as low-key as possible. As a Montessori school, we take this test only as a practical life experience. We know that children will need to take tests in the future, as they enter high school and beyond, and we want to help prepare them for that. At the upper elementary level, we don’t report scores. This is because I use this opportunity to guide them through the test and explain things as questions come up. While I do not provide them with answers, I do give more guidance than the test allows if it is being scored. When students reach the middle school level, their tests are scored, and you will receive those scores.

Because we are in rehearsals for the musical until 10:00 each morning next week, the May and summer birthday breakfast will be on May 29, the day after we return from Nature’s Classroom.

If you have not yet turned in your child’s medical forms for our trip, please do so as soon as possible. 

Upcoming Dates

• Thursday, May 21
  • Spring Musical @7:00
• Friday, May 22
  • Yearbook Orders Due
• Monday, May 25
  • No School – Memorial Day
• Tuesday, May 26 – Thursday, May 28
  • Big Trip to Nature’s Classroom!
• Friday, May 29
  • May and Summer Birthday Breakfast @8:30
• Monday, June 1
  • First Annual Variety Show @4:00

“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.

“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

“There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.” -Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder 

As I look over the images from last week, I am struck by the children’s joy. They are playful, innocent, and full of enthusiasm about learning and their friendships. They generously give their time to help others and are passionate about justice both in the world and in our classroom. During their lessons and independent work, they are focused learners. Over the past seven months, they have honed these skills and qualities, and as we enter the final weeks of the school year, they will reap the benefits of their hard work as they wrap up lessons across the curriculum. Go Upper El!

We began the week with a writing lesson on paragraph outlines for narrative writing. The students worked on this writing assignment alongside their daily writing prompts, which they created themselves. Each child has written a prompt for their classmates to respond to. We will work through the prompts one at a time each day until we have completed all 19. The children are enjoying seeing their prompts displayed on the board and are excited to discover how their friends respond.

In our geometry lessons this week, both groups focused on finding area. Fourths learned the formula for finding the area of a rectangle. I introduced this concept using Montessori area materials, allowing the children to discover the formula and then apply it to their own drawn rectangles. Fifth graders listened to the story of Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi – Radius and the Number Pi by Cindy Neuschwander.

In grammar, the fourth graders learned about reciprocal and reflexive/intensive compound pronouns, while the fifth graders studied nouns of direct address.

Our biology lesson this week centered on the vital functions of support and movement. We examined the differences between exoskeletons and endoskeletons and learned about the animals that fall into each category. We also explored the muscular structures of animals with both types of skeletons and how those muscles aid in movement. In the coming week, students will examine in greater detail the vital functions of support and movement for each animal on the evolutionary strip.

We wrapped up our week with a focus on serving others. On Thursday, we made over 200 sandwiches for St. Vincent DePaul soup kitchen in Waterbury. Thank you to everyone who contributed sandwich ingredients, and a special thank you to Moira and Jeannine for your help in making the sandwiches, as well as to Teresa for delivering them to the soup kitchen! On Friday, Upper El students enjoyed buddy reading with their kindergarten book buddies.

Upcoming Dates:

• Friday, April 24
  • No school – Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences
• Friday, May 1
  • Grandparents & Special Friends Day
  • Spring Concert
• Saturday, May 2
  • Springfest