Happy almost February!
I had the pleasure of a having a short respite from technology up in the beautiful north woods of Minnesota for the past two days and it was wonderful. Hope all of you get a chance to get some downtime this weekend as well.
We enjoyed another great week - a 5 day week which will be somewhat few and far between in this coming month. Coming up this month we have one more week of movement before we switch to our weaving & felting specialist for this next "quarter." We will also get to look forward to guest speakers and a couple of field trips! Check the dates below.
What we've been working on
This week, Erik and I told impressionistic and historical stories about the beginnings of written language. I told the story of "The Paper that Sees and Speaks" and Erik told the "History of Written Language." These stories are apart of the Great Lessons that Montessori found students to be incredibly drawn and inspired by. This might be a fun topic for discussion at home if you have time.
All of us have been continuing our work with phonics and spelling as well as daily math practice, but in addition...
First years have been having fun classifying things like animals, habitats, star wars characters... and producing an incredible amount of writing! They have also learned about the three ways in which to classify triangles by sides - equilateral, isosceles, and scalene - see if they can remember what these words mean. They are also practicing more with clocks and they have begun creating dioramas and biome boxes based on the temperate forest of North America.
Second years have learned the meanings behind the names of polygons such as triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons...all the way to decagons. They are continuing to work with art of language and understanding how to use affixes. Second years are also learning about the meanings of the colors and symbols on flags, specifically flags in North America.
In geometry, third years are learning to find the perimeter of more advanced shapes. Some are even creating blue prints for a pool that they will then need to find the distance around. We are also beginning a huge project called "Study of a Nation" or S.O.A.N for short. We learned that a nation isn't just a random country on a map - a nation is made up physical features like rivers, mountains, canyons. A nation has railway, highway systems and airports. Our nation is made of up 50 states each with their own name, capital, state flag, state bird, and state flower. By the end of this work, each of the students will have a collection of maps that demonstrate how dynamic our nation is. We ended the week by celebrating 5 ancient civilizations that the students chose. There were Native American plays, medieval outfits, Roman "wine" and artichokes, viking goddesses and traditional oat cakes - it was a blast! Check the photos.
Upcoming Events
February 8th – Guest speaker, Thomas Fabel, will be coming in to do an Abraham Lincoln impersonation and discussion with the students
February 10th – Field trip to Dodge Nature Center to explore animal tracks outdoors and to learn more about reptiles and amphibians.
February 11th, 12th, & 15th – No School – All Faculty Retreat and President's Day
February 26th – Field trip to the Ordway for a dance performance
