Welcome to Your Gifted Learner. My name is Robin Norgren, M.A. and I am here to help make Montessori philosophy more relevant in the classroom.
Diary of a First Year Montessori Kindergarten Teacher - Week 6
Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash
HI Montessori Kindergarten Families,
I
hope you are having a good weekend. I saw the documentary about Mr.
Rogers a few weeks ago and it was a reminder for me just in time for our
classroom discussion on 9/11 that the world’s problems can seem so
overwhelming AND YET we each have a part to play in shining light in the
world. This week we talked about 9/11. I used something that Mr. Rogers
has mentioned his mother saying to him in ‘his day’ when bad things
happened. She said to ‘look for the helpers.’ This aligns so beautifully
with what we are talking about in class about community helpers and how
each one can help one another. It also aligns with this week’s
conversations about emotions and how we can still feel our emotions and
yet find a way to still be kind.
We
talked about the 20 World Peace Bells that have been created in the
world to remind us to strive for peace. The students got to watch a
video of the bell located in Kentucky ringing and then they created
their own peace bells. The peace bells WERE NOT easy to make and that
was intentional because the reality is peace is not easy. But when we
work together each day at it in our choices and in our interactions, the
results are beautiful.
Monday:
Math: Number rods and cards: teen numbers
Math: Introduction to the Decimal System
Art/Fine motor: Complex cutting work — collage art
30 days of kindness: Tell a teacher one thing you learned from her OR help with clean up
Begin Bell project
Tuesday:
What happened on 9/11
Community helpers: bad things happen sometimes, look for the helpers
Song: You are my sunshine
30 days of kindness: Say hello to someone you don’t know OR make a card
Math: discussion about the bead cabinet, what is multiplication
Math: 100 chain, count to 100, skip counting by 10
Continue peace bell project
Language lesson: What is a statement/What is a question
Wednesday:
Start new Grace and Courtesy Conversations: 30 days of emotions
Day 1: mischievous
Science:
Weather write the room — there are real life pictures of different
weather systems on the walls of the room. Students take a clipboard and a
checklist and set out to find AND WRITE the names of the weather
systems.
Finishing peace bells
Weather conversation: lightning
Lunch lesson: setting the table with place mats
Thursday:
Pattern making
Design a house using 2D shapes
30 Days of Emotions: excited
Book: Clara is Left Out
Watch video on the World Peace Bell
Friday:
Sequencing
Introduction to writing informative l texts: 6 steps for how to fly a kite
30 days of emotions: lonely
Game:
what’s wrong with this picture (afternoon only — will present again on
Monday with whole group) Looking at real life pictures with one silly
thing one with them. DO NOT SAY what is wrong until the whole group has
seen the picture (this is SOOOO hard to do!).
Thanks again everyone for coming through with the dishwasher pods and the disinfecting wipes. It is the little things that help us to be inspired to bring our best to the classroom every day for your children.
Warmly,
Mrs. Norgren
Diary of a First Year Montessori Kindergarten Teacher - Week 5
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Hello Montessori Kindergarten Families,
This
week the students began to really take ownership of the school supplies
your families provided for the classroom. They are now responsible for
getting their own handwriting sheets, going to their individual
compartment bin and choosing from 1 of their 3 pencils,completing the
work, date stamping it and putting their items back in the bins. I am
noticing already the increased sense of pride and ownership of the
things they are responsible for and the work they are accomplishing.
This
week, though it was a shortened week due to Labor Day, was still packed
with opportunities to learn, explore and build on the work we began as
early as the first few days of school. We are delving into the science
of weather and have incorporated some art from the lovely Ms. Georgia
O’Keefe that is displayed in the hallways of the school along with our
Rain Clouds in a Jar Experiment.
We
have successfully completed our goals outlined for August so we will
continue to review these concepts and move into the goals set forth for
September. We are going into our final weeks of “30 Days of Kindness”
and will soon begin to talk about over 25 different types of emotions we
are capable of having as humans and the ways in which we can be kind
while recognizing that there are times when we just don’t ‘feel like
it.’ I smile when I type this because I will never forget noticing a
prior student in the midst of a situation where she was not displaying
‘her best self’ and she said to me, “I like being rude!” 🙂
I
hope everyone is having a lovely Grandparents Day. If your kiddos
forgot the name of the flowers they painted for the Grandparents, they
are Forget Me Nots.
Tuesday:
Kindness focus — pick up trash OR help to set the table
This week’s letters: D,d,E,e,F,f
EVERY MONTH the practical life area changes in the classroom — new lessons are given on those works at group time all week
Finish book “I Am Peace: A Book of Mindfulness” by Susan Verde, Illustrations by Peter Reynolds
Practice counting backwards from 20
Handwriting: Write city, state that you live in
Wednesday:
Nouns Game #1
Hearing/Vision Tests Today
Extreme Weather conversations/vocabulary: fog, hurricane, drought, precipitation
Review of colors/0–10
Kindness: tell your dad one thing you love about him OR say ‘good job’ to someone
Review of types of clouds
Grace
and Courtesy Lesson: Bodies and Boundaries -is it okay to hug a friend
without asking? What do you do if someone if trying to hug you or touch
you and you don’t want him/her to?
Thursday:
Art Lesson Georgia O’Keefe “Sky Above Clouds”
Lesson: How to use a ruler/ measurement/ inches and centimeters/horizon line/ above and below
More discussion on drought, precipitation, hurricane, fog
Kindness: Smile at someone
Nouns Game #2
Lesson: what is an antonym?
skip counting by 2’s to 20
Friday:
Grandparents Day project: painting forget me nots/working with a ruler/measurement/vertical lines/parallel lines
Beginning sounds: 3 letter phonetic blending
Noun Game #3
Noun sorts: person/place/animal/thing
Grace
and Courtesy Lesson: Appropriate vs. Inappropriate Conversation — What
words can we use to describe a friend or to give a friend a compliment?
Extending the learning:
I
remember when Josey was in kindergarten and one day she came home to
tell me she got married. Uh really? At the time I was not a teacher. We
were stationed in Colorado and I ran an at home business. So the
thoughts I had then are way different now that I am a teacher in a
classroom. I asked, “tell me about your wedding.” She and her friends
and had planned it because she liked a boy and a boy liked her and she
said they kissed. Yep this really happened. I said to her, “Josey, you
are only 5 years old, you are not old enough to get married and kiss a
boy.” Her response? “What? Nobody told me that!!!”
Perhaps
many of you are way ahead of the game and are already talking about
this with your kiddos and to you I say BRAVO! But maybe you are like me
(and I am talking 7 years ago!) and you think this is not a conversation
that your child needs to have yet. I trust your judgement in these
situations.
This
week we has a situation when a student told another student that the
student was ‘hot’ and then later told the student that the student ‘had
to always be next to her/him because he/she ‘thought she/he was hot.” I
try my best to make sure that we are mindful of conversations going on
in the classroom. And I am thankful that I did hear this conversation so
that I could address it at group time. But the reality is, I do not
hear every conversation. And I am not outside all the time on duty to
witness conversations with other students in other classrooms. I just
want to keep it on your radar that our children our hearing things ALL
THE TIME that may not be what we consider ‘age appropriate’ and I take
it seriously that I have the privilege to partner with you to raise
healthy and not only physically but emotionally strong and competent
people.
Thanks for all you do to raise the future generation who each have light to shine in the world.
Warm regards,
Mrs. Norgren
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