A Miracle!

Mrs. Getlan-Watson and Mr. Ungerman, Zoe's dad (gr.8) came to our classrooms to tell us the story of the miracle of Hanukkah.  They told us the story of the Maccabees saving the Temple in Jerusalem long, long ago. When the Temple was ready to be rededicated, they found only enough oil to light the menorah for one night. It was going to take Judah eight days to get more oil. A great miracle happened and that one jar of oil lasted eight days!


We learned how to light the menorah and play the dreidel game.

       The Owls peeled and grated potatoes to make latkes. They added onion, eggs, and a little flour.

                  Yum! "Latkes, latkes, good to eat. Cook me up a Hanukkah treat!"

Power of One

    "To the world you may be one person but to one person you may be the world."

Montessori has been immersed in candy!

The children first decided on categories and then began to sort all the candy they collected for House of Peace. It was sweet work!

                                                   Let the counting begin!

                              What has been sorted and counted can be graphed!

Following the "Golden Rule" the children made sure that each bag they packed would be one they would like as a gift themselves.

                                              From candy to colored pencils???

 "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
                                                                                             --Dr. Seuss' The Lorax

Mr. Powers read Galimoto to all three Montessori classes to help us launch our next service project-- supplying backpacks and pencils to the children of Nyumbani Village in Kenya. Our gifts will make it possible for them to attend school.  Did you know that all children in Kenya are required to have a uniform, backpack, and pencils in order to attend school? Unfortunately, that cost is prohibitive for many families!

We are also reading Wangari's Trees of Peace, One, and The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind to learn how one person CAN make a difference.

" You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."                                                                                               --John Wooden

Falling into Learning

Montessori is learning all about the season of fall.

         The children used their senses to discover signs of fall in McCrillis Gardens:

     Crunching leaves! Gigantic leaves! Rough pine cones! Red holly berries! Hard acorns! Singing birds! Scurrying squirrels! Mowers vacuuming leaves! Gardeners trimming plants!

         

    Rakes, brooms, and wheelbarrows create wonderful piles of leaves on the playground!

The leaves of deciduous trees turn red, orange, yellow, magenta, and brown before falling to the ground.

                    Trees are large plants with a trunk, branches, leaves, and roots.

                             Why do plants have stems? Why do trees have trunks?

             Do plants need light, water, soil, and air? What will happen to a leaf if we cover it in foil?

Leaves make food for the tree and have stems, veins, petioles, and blades. The Botany Cabinet is used to trace and label blade shapes. Our violet's leaves are cordate.  Grass is linear. The dogwood leaves are ovate.

                        Those veins and stems "pop" and make great leaf rubbings!

Montessori is falling in love with fall!

            "The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness--John Muir

Happy Halloween

Montessori celebrates Halloween in all areas of the classroom. It's fun--and it's learning:

          We have read lots of Halloween stories about pumpkins, bats, and witches.

          We have practiced our fine motor coordination hammering golf tees into a pumpkin.

We worked with pouring, pin punching, and tweezers to develop fine motor coordination and pencil grasp.

          We have created lots of spooky art--following directions and practicing sequencing.

    We have learned how to extend patterns and use symmetry to bead Halloween necklaces.

  We have created a jack-o-lantern, learning all the parts of a pumpkin--skin, meat, pulp, seeds, stem.

             We have counted pumpkins 1-10 and made double patterns with weaving.

We have learned about our bones by labeling a skeleton and making parts of books--skull, ribs, femur, patella, spine, clavicle, radius, tibia...

We have collected data about our costumes and created a bar graph. What a surprise to see everyone dressed up!

The Lunchers visited Homestead Farm.  They meet some farm animals, rode in a hay wagon, picked pumpkins and played in the straw. Afterwards, they wrote class books and journal stories about their adventures.

Trick-or Treating was fun, but don't forget candy for Mother Teresa's House of Peace!  We are planning to sort, count, and graph our candy collections before making gift bags. Getting candy is good--giving candy is even better!

      " Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace."
                                                                                                   Mother Teresa

Whether the Weather?

Ms. MIM has arrived just in time for Halloween! She loves words with Many Interesting Meanings!

The Owls went for a walk in the rainy weather. They had to decide whether to take the umbrellas.

       Which should they choose? They did not take a witch along--only Montessori children!

                  Wait a minute!  Weather and whether??? Witch and which???  HOMOPHONES!

A homophone is one of two or more words that are pronounced alike but different in spelling and meaning.

The Owls walked to the playground. Two children shared one umbrella. Ms. Canter went too.

 Then it was time for Reading Buddies!  Second grade read  books to M II and M III. One was red!

Some fish were blue, but the no wind blew under the sea.  At least, we did not see it!

Ms. MIM taught us that we can find HOMONYMS too! Homonyms are two or more words that are spelled and pronounced alike but have different meanings--like school, present, jam, swing...

Meet Ms. MIM!

                                             Balls are a ball of fun!

                                             These bars are not granola bars!

                                              In the fall the leaves fall.

                                                 Two sons enjoy the sun.  

Whether in the wagon...

           ... or while playing with dump trucks, the playground is fun in all kinds of weather.


      Our Word Detectives are searching for more MIM words for our list. They are everywhere!
                                              Words are wonderful!