Category Archives: Uncategorized

Announcements:

Dec 18th           International Festival Projects DUE – Students have their countries assigned and the project questionnaire. Check on their progress! Looking forward to seeing their work!

Dec 19th            Job Fair in JR High. UE to visit.

Dec 20th           UE International Festival Presentations 9am – 11 am

Dec 21st            LE International Festival Presentations 1pm – 2:30pm

Dec 22nd – Jan 2           NO SCHOOL/WINTER BREAK

First, a great big shout out to all who helped make our Festival of Lights a success! The children enjoyed it so much and we had lots of fun. It truly was wonderful to see all the children making the crafts and playing the games. Plus, to see them explain about other holidays celebrated around the world at this time of year just made it that much more exciting. Thank you students for all your hard work and fun personalities.

In news this week, we are studying the work of air and how our earth’s rotation produces a wonderful engine for ocean currents, seasons, the water cycle, and much more. Last week we touched on three historical time periods: The Dark Ages, The Renaissance, and The Age of Exploration. Very interesting times indeed. Ask your student about their progress in science and history!

Also, so many students are making skips and jumps in their writing and math progressions. Exposure is happening in so many areas: operations in fractions and decimals, multi-digit multiplications, long division, orders of operations, exponents, and more in math. In writing, students are learning patterns and formulas to use for paragraphs and essays to ease the process of getting thoughts from mind to paper.

So much is happening in our wonderful classroom; come by and take a peek. I welcome you to do observations. Call the front office to schedule one. Steer clear of Wednesdays though-they can be super hectic with all of our specials occurring that day. However, we also readily welcome volunteers too. Let me know when and how you’d like to help. MAPA has their tracker ready and we could use your expertise.

Thank you for all you do for the classroom, the school, and most of all- your child!

Sign-up here to help with tomorrow’s event!

Look for a flyer from your student today about the Festival of Lights this Friday!

Announcements:

Dec 8th               9-11:30         Festival of Lights (at school event) – See further directions within the blog.

Dec 19th-21st             International Festival – Day One Jr High Presents; Day Two Upper Elementary Presents; Day Three Lower Elementary Presents

Dec 22nd-Jan 2nd, 2018     NO SCHOOL-WINTER BREAK

Jan 4th               Pizza and Game Night with Rm 1 Families

Jan 15th             NO SCHOOL – MLK DAY

The upcoming weeks are packed with projects and festivities! I hope everyone will join us for these occasions. We will be learning about festivals around the world for our Festival of Lights this Friday. The children selected a holiday at random this past Friday and are being asked to answer the basic questions of : What is this holiday? Why is it celebrated (is there a story attached to it?)? How is it celebrated? (Give 5 customs) Who celebrates it? (Country? Culture? Etc?) Where do they celebrate it? (a particular building, at home, with family, etc?) They can put together a simple poster of the answers and either draw or print some pictures to go with it.

It is good for our children to be exposed to how other cultures celebrate their holidays too. We live in a global culture and need to seek first to understand, then to be understood. It’s exciting! On the 8th, we will begin with our presentations, then have some games and a $5 white elephant gift exchange, then lunch and since it’s a half-day, go home after recess as usual. If you can help with some of the drinks or food, please contact Jessica Bateman at bateman.jessica@gmail.com. Thank you!

Also, we have begun units on geometry, fractions, exponents, decimals, conjunctions in our sentence writing, types of sentences to diversify our writing, and much more. Ask your student to teach you a thing or two and it will help them solidify their learning as much as remind you of former school day lessons.

Our International Festival is fast approaching. All students received a detailed rubric and questionnaire to complete which will aid them in being fully prepared for this special day. Students can retrieve another copy from the red basket in our classroom at any time. This is a very involved project so please aid your student in completing it and encouraging them to do their very best. Students present these to the school population and it is a wonderful opportunity to build confidence in presentations.

The students have chosen to delay the Pizza and Game Night to the first week of January. We are looking at January 4th. Anyone that can help with it, please contact Kristen DeLong <k2delong@gmail.com or Jessica Bateman at bateman.jessica@gmail.com. Thank you!

Let me know of any further questions and look for any more news, as we will have lots of it during this busy month!

Due to my illness the past two days, we will postpone the event for this evening. I will notify you with a new date as soon as possible. We will need some wonderful volunteers to bring in some things too, so a wejoin will also be available. Thank you!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

MONDAY, November 13th, TIMELINES DUE

November 14th    Pizza and Game Night @ 6:30pm in the North Kiva and our classroom.

November 20th to 24th       Thanksgiving Holiday Week – NO SCHOOL

I am so thankful to our class of students for their hard work and diligence in being friends with each other. I am also thankful for their efforts to learn and grow. In addition, I am thankful for the parents who saw the vision of Montessori and wished to give it to their children, so brought their child to MMA. I am thankful for MMA for building a charter Montessori so that children could have the exposure to Montessori education without the huge expense usually related to Montessori schools. My gratitude extends beyond what I can record here; so please know, I am so grateful.

This time of the year is our usual time to remember those things for which we are most appreciative. In class this past week, students began working on a Thankfulness essay. We are concentrating on the elements of paragraphs and the patterns we need to use to create effective paragraphs. Our spelling is individually focused; therefore, the students are alerted to a word they need to review throughout their writing and then they seek to improve it. Spelling is a process. Thus, through this intensive process of essay writing, the hope is that students will understand the fundamentals and comprehend that revision is essential and that seeking answers that improve us is our major job while in school. It is beautiful to see the children’s thoughts on their lives and what they appreciate most.

As a class, we have delved into fractions in Math, weather and seasons in Science, knowing continents by finding countries in Geography, and manners in our Social Skills circles. In smaller groups, children are working with large number addition and subtraction, long division, multi-digit multiplication, squares and square roots in the thousands through the ten thousands – both concretely and abstractly. In grammar and writing, students are learning sentence types, greater comprehension of the parts of speech and their roles, homophones, synonyms, antonyms, and much more. These groups will all expand to further ideas in the upcoming weeks.

This week will be exciting to see all the children’s timelines, their interests and understandings of those interests. They will present on Thursday and Friday to groups of three or four students. The rubric includes a peer review piece; I’m curious to see how everyone takes to it!

Students brought home a letter titled “Upper Elementary Expectations” this past week. Ask for it and go over it with your child. Look for a pink or green conference sheet, as well as further feedback, by the end of the week. HOPE TO SEE EVERYONE ON TUESDAY EVENING FOR PIZZA AND GAMES!

Announcements:

Material-making Sign-up (Sign-up to help with making materials the classroom needs)

November 13th     Timeline Home Projects Due/ November 16th       Timeline Project Presentations to the class groups

November 14th @ 6 pm               Class Game and Pizza Night – Come have some fun with your child and his/her classmates! Sign up here if you’d like to help with the planning.

Good day, all! I hope you thoroughly enjoyed our Fall Festival on Friday; I sure did. I got to enjoy dunking by both our own classroom students and many others. Our students certainly enjoyed dunking me and watching me get washed by ice cold water!

In class news, we have been learning methods of doing historical research, the calendar (months, years, centuries, B.C./A.D., B.C.E./C.E), and well-known people in history. We have also been wrapping up knowledge of our Work of Water in science.

In geography, students are learning more concretely their continents, what countries are included there and the people who live there. The Fundamental Needs of Humans are very relevant here and would be a wonderful dinner topic: how people all over the world have the same needs and how they fulfill those needs.

Students are also delving into their individual math, language, and handwriting goals. In handwriting, some students have started using watercolor paints to practice their hand control; another suggestion has been to do structured art, where students look at a particular item and draw what they see, not what they think they see. It can get tricky but we’ve had some fun trying it in class.

We’ve gotten a new assistant this week! His name is Carl and he is amazing. We will all be aiding him in acclimating to our environment and learn our routines. The students were wonderful in showing him works and teaching him how to do certain activities in the classroom this past Thursday and Friday. So excited to have him with us!

We have many things coming up. Be sure to re-check the announcements and get in on helping your child’s classroom. Thank you!

This Friday is the Fall Festival! Please come support MMA’s efforts to provide all our amazing in-school activities. (Plus, I have signed up to be dunked! Maybe your student would like to dunk his/her teacher!)

My request? I need some help material making (cutting, gluing, laminating, copying, a little bit of woodwork, etc.). I have both, things that can come home and be created and things that you can join me to create on a Friday or Saturday afternoon. If you are willing and interested in helping me with these things, please email me your home or school and timing preferences at sellis@mariamontessoriacademy.org. I will definitely be doing Fridays from 3-5 the next three Fridays, and Saturdays the next two. Thank you!

Portraits (school pictures) will be on October 11th, this Wednesday!

Look at the Conferencing page/tab on this blog to know which day and week to expect a conference between your student and myself. If for some reason we miss our conference due to absence, we will strive to make it up within the week; otherwise, we will make it up the next Monday. Thank you!