Ms. Jen's Blog

Parents,

I apologize for the late post this week but the blog was down over the weekend.  Here is what we have going on this week:

We will be learning about the circles of self-awareness this week. They are body, mind, emotions, and inner-self (spirit).  We will start with the body and move through the different circles exploring how taking care of each one can keep us happy.

We will be identifying different types of mammals this week. Last week we learned about the characteristics of mammals and had Rupert the guinea pig come for a visit.

We will be learning about animals and plants that live in the North American grasslands this week.

In art we will be tinting colors by adding white to paint. I love to blow their minds by proving that pink is really just light red.

We will be reading another native American folk tale this week.  There are so many good ones – I haven’t decided which one we will read yet.

We will be learning two songs this month.  One is America the Beautiful and the other is I’m Lucky.  We will be performing these songs during our class feast. We will be joining Ms. Joy’s class and making a relish tray, butter, and corn bread.  Parents are invited and encouraged to come to this event.  It will be Friday the 18th.  You can sign up to bring items for the feast.  The items need to come unprepared the day of the feast as the children will be preparing them.  We could also use two parent volunteers to help the entire time so if you are interested send me an email.

Morning Class: https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/okdgj

Afternoon Class: https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/avrup

Have a great week.

Ms. Jen & Ms. Martha

Parents,

It was so great to be able to sit down and talk with you during parent teacher conferences.  Thank you for your efforts to support your child’s education!!  I hope all of you enjoyed fall break, I know I did.

This week we will finish our study of arachnids by looking at scorpions.  We will also be catching up on some grace and courtesy lessons that we missed or that need to be repeated like walking (not running) in the classroom, how to observe someone who is working (observing is watching only – no talking and no touching their work.  You also have to ask permission to observe).  We will have a chance to do a group art project like Jackson Pollock.  We will have paint shirts for everyone who participates 😉

At conferences many of you asked what their child does while they are in class.  This brings up one of Montessori’s core principles.  The concept of choice.  In a Montessori classroom children are free to choose what they would like to work on – within limits.  There are two basic ground rules: you have to have had a lesson and the material has to be available.  Maria Montessori said “These children have free choice all day long.  Life is based on choice, so they learn to make their own decisions.  They must decide and choose for themselves all the time . . . they cannot learn through obedience to the commands of another”.  In Angeline Stoll Lillard’s book Montessori: the science behind the genius she talks about the many studies that have been done that support the idea that having choice is a great benefit to education.  Let me share just one with you.  A study was done where children were asked to play a computer math game.  Half of the children were able to choose the name of their space ship that took them through the game and half were not.  The children who were able to choose the name of their space ship liked the game better and played it more than the children who did not name their space ship.  They also choose more challenging games and asked for fewer hints.  They showed greater improvement from pre-test to post-test.  “Having a sense of control over one’s environment is associated with better learning and better performance in children.  A wide range of positive outcomes stemmed from a very simple choice manipulation” (Lillard, p. 84).

Many parents often confuse “choice” with “no limits”.  These two could not be more different.  The choices we offer to children need to be appropriate, direct and  simple.  One example might be “Sally which shoes do you want to wear today? Your tennis shoes or your sandals?”  Note that not wearing shoes was not one of the options given.  We empower our children when we offer them appropriate choices.

We would also like to have parents begin to come into the classroom to help with reading.  If you are interested in volunteering please sign up on the following link https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/faavq  I will post a new link each week.  Thank you so much for all of your support!!

We hope you have a great week!

Ms. Jen & Ms. Martha

Parents

This week is parent teacher conferences.  Ms. Martha and I really look forward to meeting with all  of you. Helen Keller said “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.  This statement is so true when it comes to the education of our children.  Please take the time to sign up.  If none of the times work for you please email me.  Here is the link to parent teacher conferences sign up again if you missed it the first time https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/vsdwy

This week is also early out every day.  This means that AM kindergarten begins at 8:30 and is finished at 10:30.  PM kindergarten begins at 11:00 am and is finished at 1:00 pm.  There will not be school on Thursday and Friday Oct 20th and 21st for fall break.

In class we will get to have a visit from some of our junior high friends.  They will be reading some of their favorite books to us.  We will continue our study of spiders and introduce the art of Jackson Pollock.  If the weather cooperates we will be planting bulbs this week as well.

Have a great week.

Ms. Jen and Ms. Martha

Hello MMA Families,We are in need of volunteers for two big events at MMA in the coming weeks.   This Friday is our annual Fall Festival.  Please be sure to check your teacher’s blog to sign up to volunteer at the Fall Festival.  Also, please visit this signup – https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/hkpca to volunteer at our first Book Fair of the year on October 17-19th.
We need your help to make this events successful and it is an easy to way to fulfill your 40 hour volunteer hour expectation.
Thank you and I look forward to seeing you at the Fall Festival on Friday and at Parent Teacher Conferences/Book Fair next week.
Ms. Stephanie

Parents,

A big thanks to all of those who helped out with our field trip on Friday.  We had a GREAT time.  We love going on these fun excursions with your amazing kids.

Monday is picture day.  Your child should have brought home picture order forms last week.  Contact the main office if you need another one.

This week we will continue our study of invertebrates by taking a closer look at spiders.  We will continue our study of secondary colors by introducing some additional color mixing activities and we will kick off our botany studies by looking at leaves.  We will be making leaf collages, raking leaves and eating a few leaves.

Maria Montessori used the term “normalized” often when she spoke of children and classrooms.  The essence of this term means that the children feel comfortable and confident enough to work as if the teacher were not present.  The children are not strong armed into following the rules of the classroom/school.  They follow the rules because they have gained that control over themselves.  Typically the normalization process takes about 6 weeks, but sometimes it takes longer.  Over the next little while we will be focusing on a few components of this normalization process in our classroom that we want improve.  They are: cleaning up after you finish a work and choosing to work rather than goofing off.  Our goal is for the children to be able to monitor them selves.  We want the children to be aware of the choices they are making and be able to evaluate those choices.  One way you can help with  this at home is to hold them accountable for their responsibilities.  If they are supposed to clean up their plate after dinner then have them clean up their plate after dinner.  Often it is easier and faster for the adult to just do what ever it is that we want our children to do but this does them a great disservice.  We want to teach them how to be successful in society and that almost never involves waiting for someone else to do your job for you.  I know that there are those of you who are thinking that this will start a civil war at your house.  No one wants to engage in constant battles with their child.  Sometimes this can be diffused if you involve them in the decision of what responsibilities they want to have.  Even if you start small it is a start.

Thank you for all of your support and for sharing your amazing children with us!  We love them!

Have a  great week

Ms. Jen & Ms. Martha

Parent Teacher conferences are coming up October 17 – 19.   We will have half day schedule those days. This conference will be for parents and teachers only.  Please click on the link and sign up for a time.  It is important that you arrive for your conference a few minutes early.  Our conference times are only 15 minutes and we will be scheduled back to back. We look forward to seeing you then.

https://www.wejoinin.com/sheets/vsdwy

Dear Parents,

October is finally here.   In class this week we will be focusing on the Steven Covey’s 2nd Habit: Begin with the End in Mind.   This habit teaches that we live by design not default, it helps us improve outcomes, prioritize important things, and gives us a greater sense of purpose.  We will be reading a number of books where the characters begin with the end in mind.  At the end of the month we will use the books we have read to help us write our class mission statement.  Once we have our class mission statement we will recite it everyday to remind us of what is really important.

We will be learning about vertebrates and invertebrates this week and will be classifying them.  Vertebrates are animals with backbones, there are five classes of vertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.  We will eventually be studying in detail each of these 5 classes, but this week will just be an introduction of the idea of classifying between animals with backbones and animals without.  To help us understand invertebrates a little better we will be having some Dubia Roaches visit our room for a few days so we can observe them.

In art we will be introduced to secondary colors.  These are the colors you get when you mix the primary colors, so purple, green, and orange.  We will have a number of color mixing activities  on the shelves for the children to do.

We will begin our study of biomes this week with what makes a biome.  Biomes consist of 6 elements; energy, soil, water, air, plants and animals.  Throughout the year we will be learning about the different biomes we have on earth, they are: dessert, rainforest, mountain, wetland, grassland, ocean, polar region, and temperate forests.  On Thursday we will do an activity with our junior high mentors to help introduce this study to our students.

Field Trip Friday:

We have a field trip on Friday October 7th.  We will be meeting at Oak Lawn Park in North Ogden.  You will need to plan on dropping your child off and picking up at Oak Lawn Park.  Just as a reminder the morning  class field trip begins at 9 am  and ends at 11:30.  The afternoon field trip begins at 12:00 and ends at 2:30.  At the park we will have a number of fun actives for the children. There will be a nature walk, pumpkin decorating, fall games, story time and a snack .  Along with the snack the children will receive a Dixie cup portion of a root beer float where they will be identifying the solid, liquid and gas.  The solid is the ice cream, the liquid is the root beer, and the gas is the tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide from the carbonation.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Ms. Jen & Ms. Martha

Parents,

Throughout this year we will be studying Steven Covey’s Seven Habits for Happy Kids.  This is a spin off of his best selling book for adults.  The seven habits are:

1. Be Proactive
2. Begin With the End in Mind
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand thento be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the Saw

We will start Habit 1 tomorrow.  We will first review the concept of “Love Lights”.  We will talk about how certain things that happen to us can dim our Love Light.  Like when a friend hurts our feelings or we become angry over something, or we lose something we love.  We will then talk about how we can choose how we react to these feelings.  This is called being proactive as apposed to reactive.  A reactive person may say “He made me mad!” A proactive person would say “I chose to forgive”.  A reactive person would say “I am like this because of how I was raised.”  A proactive person would say “I chose to do things differently than how I was raised.”  Being proactive is about choice.  We can not prevent or protect our children from all the hardships that they will face.  However, we can teach them to be proactive and choose how they will react to hardship.  Thus turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones.

To go along with our habit of being proactive we will be reading a book called “Unlovable” by Dan Yaccarino.  This is the story of a pug named Alfred who thinks he is unlovable because the cat was always telling him he was.  Alfred then makes a friend with a new dog on the other side of the wooden fence, but he lies to his friend and tells him he is a golden retriever.  He lies because he is afraid that if his friend sees him he will think he is unlovable too.  In the end Alfred learns to love himself no matter what the others say.  It is a great story with great illustrations, and it is powerful in showing the children that they are able to choose how they react to others when their words and actions are hurtful.  We will also read one of my favorite books – Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin.  We will talk about how Pete does not cry when his new white shoes get dirty, he is proactive and chooses to be happy with whatever color they are.

We will be doing several different activities that tie into our math curriculum.  We will be graphing how many letters are in everyone’s names as well as graphing the results of our apple tasting.

I wanted to share 2 quotes from Jane Nelsen’s book Positive Discipline that go along with the workshop that happened over the weekend:

“Children listen to kind, firm and consistent action more than they listen to words”

“You will do your best work as a parent/teacher when you are rested and reasonably content. Keeping yourself healthy isn’t selfish it’s wisdom”

Have a great week!

Ms. Jen and Ms. Martha

Parents,

We will introduce the final zoo phonics characters this week.  They are:

Q – Queeny quail

U – Umber umbrella bird

V – Vinny vampire bat

X – Xavier fox

Y – Yancy yak

Z – Zeek the zebra

We will learn more about our earth by focusing on the land, air and water.  We will also get to spend some time with some of our junior high mentors when they come to read books to our class.

As part of our peace curriculum we will be giving a simple introduction to Black Elk’s vision.  Maria Montessori felt so strongly about the role of peace education.  She knew that if our dreams for peace were to be realized it would be through the education of the next generation. she said “Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”

We have a small area in our classroom that is our designated peace area.  It has  a small table and shelf in the corner of the room.  The peace area has two uses.  The first is a place for one to go when their emotions are overwhelming and they need a quiet space to regroup.  If a student is using the peace area to regroup, they may choose one of the soothing objects from the shelf to look at to help them calm their emotions.  These objects range from a kaleidoscope, to a bottle of glitter suspended in water.  The Peace area’s other use is to resolve conflict.  We have a Peace rock in the Peace area that is used much like a talking stick.  Students can take turns talking to each other in order to resolve an issue in the classroom.  We find that this is a very valuable lesson, one that creates good life skills and empowers children to problem solve and resolve conflict without adult intervention.  This leads me to the concept of saying sorry.  When someone does something to hurt another they should apologize, this is the socially and morally acceptable thing to do.  We often try to teach our children to apologize by forcing them to say sorry.  Two things happen when we do this.  The first is that the apology whether sincere or not looses it’s power to heal.  Have you ever received an apology from someone who was forced to do it?  You may feel better in that your feelings were validated, but it does not bring about good feelings toward the person who wronged you.  It is the same with children, and some children will refuse to apologize putting you in a power struggle (Always avoid power struggles!).  So we must treat children with more respect.  When two children enter the peace area each child will get a turn to hold the peace rock and tell their side of the story without any interruptions.  If they need my help, I will validate how each child was feeling.  Throughout the discussion, I will do my best not to make any judgment calls on who was right, and who was wrong. I will also ask questions to help the children better understand what happened or how their actions may have contributed to what happened. Then I will ask each child (if necessary) to ask the other what they can do to make it better. This is better than an apology in that an apology does not always make things better and it puts the power into the hands of both students.  Sometimes a student will ask for an apology, sometimes it is just saying they won’t do it again, sometimes it is a hug/handshake or other appropriate physical contact and sometimes it is nothing.  I also allow the students to refuse to do what is requested and offer another solution instead, this does not happen often in that students are usually willing to fix a problem when they see that their side of the story matters too.  In the end both children hold on to the peace rock look each other in the eye and say “Friends”  They almost always giggle at this point and return to their work happy.

Hopefully this may be of some use to you.

Have a great week.

Ms. Jen & Ms. Martha

I just realized that I gave you the wrong letters for last week.  Sorry.  Here are the letters we learned last week

K – Kao kangaroo

L – Lizzy lizard

F – Francy fish

I – Inny inch work

D – Deedee deer