Great River Lower Elementary West: April 2015

Dear Lower Elementary West Families,

GRS Occupational Therapist, Christine Spray, doing mindfulness activities. She'll be coming in every Friday to work with small groups of students. We're all really enjoying her presence already :)

What we’re doing in the classroom

First years have started gardening in and outside of the classroom. Courtney Tchida, a mother of our first year students, has come in to share her expertise of gardening and agriculture with the students and we feel so fortunate. Students have also continued practicing using materials like the stamp game and the golden mat to practice addition and multiplication. On Friday, first years learned about a research material that they can use to study animals. They’ll answer questions like: What does your animal eat? How do they move? How do they protect themselves? It’s a simple material that helps the students learn how to do more in depth research of animals.

Second years are continuing their work with bead bar multiplication and taking that knowledge to the checkerboard work we’ll be exploring. They are also creating beautiful posters, books and cards based on the parts of the mollusk. The mollusk was the first animal to have a shell made of calcium. Yay for the building blocks of the bones in vertebrates! With everything coming to life outside, the second years will also get the chance to explore and identify different types of flowers as well as get the chance to get their hands dirty in the garden.

Third years have finished up their work with the study of a nation and their collections of maps are quite the feat! We’ll be exploring a very important water form that they identified in the U.S. Don’t want to give too much away, but we’re hoping to study this water form and then hopefully take the third years on a trip to the science museum to study this water form with the experts. I’ll keep you posted if we can make this happen. We’ll definitely need some chaperones. Third years have also been fine-tuning their long division skills with the test tubes, getting closer and closer to learning how to divide abstractly.

Important dates to mark on your calendar

Spring Festival ~ Saturday, May 2nd 4:00

Come and celebrate Spring with us at GRS. There will be games, activities, food, and sunshine!

Museum Project Day ~ Friday, May 29^th 1:45-2:55

This is a day when all of the lower elementary combines and shares their projects and exhibits with families. It’s a fantastic experience for both classrooms since teachers and students get the chance to work in each other’s classrooms and learn and build their exhibits together. You won’t want to miss this event!

Work Share Day ~ Friday, June 5^th 1:30-3:00

Come in and work with the some of our favorite classroom materials with your child. It’s a great way to see how the Montessori material works. The students love giving presentations to the families.

Parent appreciation ~ Monday, June 8^th 1:30-3:00

It’s time to celebrate you! Please come and experience an event completely organized by the students to show their appreciation to you. Thank you for all of your love and support.

Upcoming Field Trips

Como pool ~ Thursday, June 4^th

We had a fantastic time at the pool last year. The entire GRS elementary had the whole pool to ourselves. It was a great way to end the year. If you are interested in chaperoning, please let me know.

U of M Agricultural Fields ~ Date TBD/mid-May

We’re hoping to send the first and second graders to check out the agricultural department at the U of M. Courtney Tchida works in this department, so we’re hoping we can take advantage of her connections and go and visit sometime in mid-May. Will need chaperones.

Science Museum ~ Date TBD/mid-May

Third years will get the chance to explore a specific exhibit in the museum. Will need chaperones.

That's all for now.

I hope you all have a beautiful, last week of April.

Kind regards,

Jessy

Hello LEW Families!

What we're doing

First years are classifying and reading about vertebrates and invertebrates. They're also charting growth of pinto beans and corn seeds. We learned about germination through reading From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons and the students are measuring the growth of their seeds from day to day. They're also practicing dynamic addition and multiplication problems, using the stamp game and the golden mat for larger multiplication problem.

Second years are reviewing types of polygons and combining geometry with arithmetic. They are practicing multiplication by creating rectangles - for instance 5x6 would by a 5x6 rectangle. Second years have also just learned about the parts of a mollusk. We got to feel and learn about why mollusks are important to the evolution of animals! They've just finished up dissecting and writing about the parts of flowers as well. Ask them about the purpose of the corolla or the stamen.

Third years just finished up MCA testing and they were troopers and patient with finicky technology. They are also currently working on the study of a nation, using the U.S. as an example. We talked about what a nation is--it's not just a random place on a map. A nation is a place filled with different languages, foods, mountains, rivers, symbolic flags, national birds and flowers. It's a place people feel proud enough to defend and maintain. By the end of this work, students will have a collection of U.S. maps, each depicting a different aspect of the nation. Third years are also collecting data through line plots. Some plotted the number of pets each student has or the number of electronics in each household. Ask your child what they plotted.

GRS Garden Time

Courtney Tchida, one of our first year parents, has a graciously agreed to work with the students in the garden. They are going to help each other make the elementary plot into a salad garden. Big thanks to Courtney for sharing her agricultural expertise with us!