My name is Robin Norgren, M.A. and I am here to help make Montessori philosophy more relevant in the classroom. My projects include: Josey's Art School, The Gifted Learner, Creativity and Wonder and A Montessori Way of Seeing. I found my way into educational spaces as a mother of Creative children yet I am not an art teacher. This information is important because my style empowers teachers who are shy about teaching art but looking for products that promote expression over technical perfection.
Happy Armistice Day! I want to take a moment to thank everyone that has served and those who have supported and encouraged and stood by service members. It is call that has a heavy price tag attached to it and you should never be forgotten for the sacrifices that have been and continue to be made.
We started our physical science unit this week discussing matter in all sorts of creative ways as you will see in the daily notes. We continue on with our conversations about North America and invite any new projects that have been created to be dropped of at school once they are complete. Our working meetings has been a lovely addition to our classroom time. We had our first Art Masterpiece lesson with Mrs. M on Monday. Finally we created a mural to celebrate the Veterans we know of in our class. If you did not get a chance to send me the name of one you know, you can still do so and we will add the name to the mural.
The class is SO EXCITED for our Learning Celebration this week. I hope that you are all able to attend.
Monday:
Art Masterpiece with Mrs. M: Thankfulness project “3 Poplar Trees in Autumn” by Claude Monet (Impressionism)
Introduce new sight words
Handwriting: lowercase a,d
Physical Science: Matter Defined: something that takes up space
Dimension #1: Size: small, big, little, tiny, huge, medium
Observation Table: Textiles from Native Americans/Language cards of various Native American textiles
King penguins are large, colorful seabirds that stand about 3 feet tall. They do not build nests for their eggs; instead, parents balance the egg on their feet. Baby chicks are so fluffy and brown that people once thought they were a completely different kind of animal called a "woolly penguin". [1, 2, 3, 4]
Fun Facts About King Penguins
No Nests Allowed: King penguins do not make nests out of sticks or stones. Parents keep their single egg safe by resting it right on top of their feet and covering it with a warm fold of tummy skin. [1, 2, 3]
Deep Sea Divers: These birds are amazing swimmers. They can dive down as deep as 1,000 feet into the ocean and hold their breath for nearly 10 minutes to catch fish and squid. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Fluffy "Woolly" Babies: Baby king penguin chicks look totally different from their parents. They are covered in a thick, brown coat of fuzzy down feathers, which made early explorers think they were a separate species.
It is been 12 weeks of working, growing and sharing together as a community. I truly hope this has been a beautiful experience for your families. I marvel at the opportunity to witness the changes in your children as they are introduced to new concepts and then delight and thrive in the processes that a Montessori classroom offers. This month we are moving into becoming more independent in the classroom as each one becomes more comfortable with what a work cycle entails. Specifically, this means that every day each student has an opportunity to work on language, math, handwriting and cultural studies with practical life and sensorial activities rounding out the day.
This week we began having working meetings when we sit together and bring our folders which contain some of our long tern activities like creating and publishing a book, writers workshop activities and our maps of North America and we discuss how we can help each other to complete the tasks and discuss anything new we may be learning in the creation process.
The building projects that have come in based on the theme North America have been incredible! You would be so proud to see how each one has been able to stand in front of their peers with minimal prompting and give us his/her three interesting facts. The bonus is how I have witnessed spontaneous encouragement like “great job!” or “that is so good” and to hear from students who may not necessarily speak up in group time share with confidence.
Sorting/Language: seeds/planting,bats, spiders, life cycles
Tuesday:
Morning Handwriting: uppercase J
Smelling jars: pumpkin spice seasonings
Make cover of book “A Noun Is a…”
Life cycle of a bat
Bat gestation vs. human gestation
60 days vs 270 days In tens/more/less/larger/smaller
Begin community work meetings:working on publishing our books together
Math review: skip counting by 5’s/5s cubed bead chain
Character trait: industrious
ABC’s of North America: lobster
Wednesday:
Early Dismissal: 11:00AM
Language work in groups: lesson on alphabetizing
Art: draw a scarecrow/lesson on the purpose of scarecrows
Continued conversation: life cycle of a bat
Sequencing: how to roast pumpkin seeds
Shared snack/food tasting: pumpkin seeds
ABCs of North America: Maple
Thursday:
CHANGES IN THE CLASSROOM WITH NEW MONTH
· Choose handwriting option from your cubby
· Choose math option from your packet
· Practical life decreased to 2 bookshelves
· Working meetings
Goal: more independence
Student presentations:
· Redwood forest — (use of nonstandard measurement to figure out width of trees), Looked up bark in the dictionary
· Niagara Falls — watched a video of what Niagara Falls sounds like
· Big Ben — Video: sound of Big Ben
Narrative writing lesson: talked about beginning, middle and end of a story
H.W.T: START LOWERCASE: t,o,c,w,s to make cvc words
Working meeting: construct our maps of North America
Friday:
Morning work: choose your math
Working meeting: Continue book making — A Noun is a ____
Small Group lesson on adjectives
Finish reading Stelluluna — look at the skeleton of a bat wing vs human arm
Student presentations:
· Golden Gate Bridge
· Chicago Water Tower
Character trait: loyal
ABCs of North America: Niagara Falls
Next week, we will start a weaving project to accompany our study of Native Americans. If anyone has any weaving/baskets/etc. that you wouldn’t mind allowing us to have in our class next week, we would be so appreciative.
I can’t believe how quickly this month has gone. To say that your child is learning and growing at a rapid pace seems like an understatement. These last few weeks have been full of discovery and interest in the life cycles we have been exploring and in our book making skills. Plus we have extended our learning on measurement because so many are fascinated by measuring everything in our room! A few have created their own charts to document their data. It is an honor to see each one take ownership of his/her education.
We began to create our individual maps of the main countries found in North America and I anticipate we should have them created and labeled by mid November, just in time for our Learning Celebration on November 15. We finished our 4 day project of making individual dream catchers which you can now see displayed outside of our classroom. And we explored symmetry by creating individual spiders; those can be found hung in the classroom. And we did a cool experiment to discover why spiders do not stick to their webs.
We finished up our 30 days of emotions this week. Next conversations will center around character. So the progression is Peace — kindness — emotions — character and then we go back and review as needed tying all four concepts together.
Monday:
Writers Workshop: sentence/question/exclamation
Introducing: mini reader stories/comprehension questions
Art Lesson: spiders/Native American/North America tie in — dream catchers
Math Lesson: subtraction
Emotion of the Day: Calm
ABC’s of North America: Finger Lakes
Afternoon Lesson: Land and Water globe/Land, Water, Air Lesson
Sorting/Language: land, water, air/autumn/living or nonliving/plant or animal
Handwriting: I, T
Tuesday:
Morning Handwriting: C,O
Art walk: Native American Homes
Science Experiment/Spiders: Why don’t spiders stick to their webs?
Symmetry/line: complete the drawing of a spider
Morning Lesson: what is a line?
Math: fill in the missing number/sequential numbers
Math: what is the difference between 1,10,100,1000
Day 2: Dreamcatcher project
Video: Why don’t spiders stick to their webs?
ABCs of North America: Grand Canyon
Wednesday:
Morning Handwriting: J
Continue dream catchers
Morning Lesson: Math — addend + addend + addend
Continue lesson on Lines: making lines with our bodies
I apologize for being in your inbox so much this week — feels like the first week of school, eh? I have a ton to communicate with you and want to make sure you are part of the process in your child’s education. I am trying my best to create an appropriate subject line just in case you need to find something quickly. That said, be on the lookout for a Signup Genius link for our Autumn cooking project Pumpkin smoothies! BIG THANK YOU to Lincoln’s mom for sharing a recipe that covers all allergies in our classroom. I hope to have the class creating the smoothies this Thursday.
OKAY so on to what we did this week 🙂
Monday:
Morning Handwriting: Uppercase A-Z worksheet, 1–20 fill in the missing numbers
Book making: parts of a pumpkin, parts of the spider, continents, sight words
Morning Lesson: subtraction
Emotion of the Day: Nervous
ABC’s of North America begins: alligator
Observation Table: Autumn leaves from Michigan
Afternoon Lesson: Trinomial cube
9:31am — 9:56am: P.E./10:00–10:30am: Farmer Sean
Tuesday:
Morning Handwriting: Writers Workshop Lesson 1
H.W.T: C,O
Morning Lesson: measuring with a tape measure
Lesson: What are 3 part cards/the language of Autumn cards
What number comes before____
What number comes after ____
Emotion of the Day:
ABC’s of North America begins: bison
Afternoon Lesson: rhyming words using sight words
9:31am — 9:56am: P.E./12:47–1:12pm: STREAMS
Wednesday:
Morning Handwriting: Draw AND write a story about a spider
Moby Max testing
H.W.T:
Morning Lesson: types of Native American Homes/create a structure out of clay
