Greetings from LEW!

A successful journey to the Bell Museum!

We successfully took public transit and we made it to the Bell for tours of bird and mammal dioramas and got to touch and feel all sorts of interesting specimens in the Discovery Room.

Thank you SO much to the following chaperones that helped us on our journey:

Amy Goetzman

Ruthann Ryberg

Susan Sochacki 

Heather Thomas

Carolyn Williamsen

What we're doing

First years are classifying and describing the 5 different vertebrates.  They're exploring how each is covered, how they move and how they give birth. The students are creating elaborate pop up books to go with the research.  First graders are also expanding on their study of the bead chains. Some are creating the Tower of Squares which is a huge work that involves a lot of concentration and multiplication. They are very proud of this work.  This week we'll also be learning more about the adjective and it's function along with their spelling and cursive practice. 

Second years are finishing up their study of the porifera - the first of many invertebrates they will be exploring.  We begin with the simplest invertebrates and the porifera was one of the first animals to be made of more than one single cell.  Ask your child if they have an idea of what the next invertebrate might be.  Second years are also practicing adding fractions and continuing their work with addition, multiplication and subtraction with the stamp game.  Today we learned about the role of the preposition - prepositions tell us the position of the noun.  They busily went to work on diagraming simple sentences like, "Lay the pencil beside the pen" and they were all able to identify the function of each word. Along with grammar work, the second graders are focusing on tr- blends in spelling as well as practicing their cursive.  

Third years are finishing up the study of different leaf shapes and moving in to large cultural work.  To wrap up our study of North America, the third graders are each choosing a native american culture to explore.  We just learned about the Fundamental Needs of humans today and we'll be applying that to our research.  This lesson is the essence of Montessori - it allows to apply all that we learn to life and the world around us  - it teaches us that we all have basic needs (i.e. food, shelter, clothing, etc.) we just fulfill them in different ways.  After the students complete all of their research and write about at least four needs and how their tribe fulfilled them, they can then choose to extend their study and recreate clothing, shelter, or food based on how their tribe would have fulfilled that need.  Students are also working diligently on the checkerboard, learning how to exchange and regroup in long multiplication. Some students are ready for double digit divisors on the test tube division! Exciting material.  Third years are also focusing on all of the ways we can spell the sound /ai/ - so far we've reviewed that ai, ei, ay, and a_e can all spell that sound, and we're not even finished yet! 

Coming soon

Conferences November 3rd & 4th.  Look out for an email to choose a time to come in.

Thanks 

Thanks to all of you for getting your Thursday folders in each week. We can tell that a lot of reading is happening and we're loving to see what kind of books your child is interested in.  

Another big thank you to Susan Sochacki and Amy Goetzman for organizing monthly cleaning parties and to all of you for signing up to help out. Our classroom is forever grateful. 

Stay warm and cozy.

Jessy