Our Lovely Classroom

Cannot wait to see everyone tonight!  Everyone has worked so hard for this night!  After the performance, we will have a brief presentation and time to enjoy the refreshments made by the children.  Here are some links for some good articles on parenting that support our Montessori approach as well as resources for homework: How to Land your Kid in Therapy Involving Children at Home Montessori FAQ Practical Life Kahn Acadamy Typing Web Watch Nova Science Online

I am proud to announce that students have an opportunity to learn to type at school and home via a website called typing web. Click here to find out more!  If anyone is interested in volunteering in the classroom, I am looking for someone willing to give private lessons to small groups of students for about 20 minutes per group, preferably in the afternoon or late morning.  To login to typing web, please use your first name and then mec for the username and 123456 for the password. For example, my username would be Lizamec and my password would be 123456.   Try it out with your child at home if you can.  The accounts are connected to my email account and I am able to track everyone's progress in learning to type!

Since the start of the school year, students have been introduced to polymer clay.  I love the never-ending possibilities that can be made from this multi-colored clay that can be baked in the oven! Students have made necklaces, figurines, ornaments, and today learned about the intricacies of caneworking.  I am so impressed with what they have mastered so far.  When finished, students bring their creations home and bake them at 275 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-20 minutes or longer depending on thickness. (10 minutes per 1/4 inch is a good rule)    Click here for more project ideas and instructions.

 Halloween Homework Tonight or tomorrow, before you begin eating your hard-earned candy, your assignment is to count and classify all your goodies for some fun math work that we will do on Friday and Monday.  You may classify your goodies in any way (brand name, flavor, size, etc) and record the quantity of each using the empty data table on the other side.  (Just fill out the first two fields of information:  “Type of Candy” and “Quantity” In class, we will work on inputting data into a NCES website called Create-a-Graph in order to find the data for the remaining fields and present the information in a bar graph or pie graph format. ( http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/default.aspx )  You are welcome to try it out at home if you dare! J   Keep checking our website to see pictures from our big presentation day!  We are so proud of all the hard work from each student in our room.  There is not a single student who did not show...

Yesterday, I enjoyed watching a Nova Science Gem that my son found about how every person's brain is developed.  It also looked at Albert Einstein's Brain and how the connections he formed from experiences helped him to learn what he discovered.  And if you didn't know already, learning to juggle, or play music, or other new experiences really help build your brain! Click here to watch online

By fourth grade, most students feel pretty comfortable using the internet to find answers to questions, what they may not realize is that not everything found on the internet is completely reliable.  This week, students will learn how to use the internet to find scholarly resources.  This means resources that are considered reliable enough to use for publication.  When we first had a talk about using the internet, students insisted that Wikipedia was the best place to go.  While even adults use Wikipedia for fast answers (myself included), using it to support facts being presented is not considered a valid source for published research because anyone with a computer can go in and change the information presented without fully backing up their facts. One of the first search engines that can be used to find scholarly research is Google Scholar.   click here  Using Scholar, you will have access to many scholarly journal articles and online books.  The d...