A Splendid September!
Ms. Sarah and Ms. Natalie warmly welcome you to Lower Elementary Upstairs!
In LEU this month we have been busily learning classroom routines, exploring new materials, and getting to know each other. It was wonderful to observe many of our returning students independently make challenging choices in their work. We have enjoyed working with the first-year students in many introductory and review lessons.
Grade 1 Math
Hard at work
Children have particularly enjoyed listening to the First Great Lesson: How the Universe was Born, and the Second Great Lesson: Life Comes to Earth. The Great Lessons are a series of key Montessori stories that explain the creation of the universe, the beginning of life, the coming of humans, and the development of numbers and writing. The first Great Lesson, which focuses on the creation of the universe and the Earth, is presented as a series of science experiments. Experiments cover the forces of attraction in particles, the three states of matter, and how temperature and density affect matter. In The Second Great Lesson students were introduced to the life that gradually appeared on earth. They gained an overall impression of the major plant and animal groups that developed and the order in which these groups appeared. The story begins with the earliest life in earth’s ocean and ends just before the arrival of humans. The most wonderful part of sharing these lessons with the students has been listening to and discussing with them their thoughts, comments and questions afterwards.
Students have also really enjoyed making presentations to the rest of the class. Students can present things that they have made, or researched, or talk about an experience they had, such as a visit or vacation. This evolves the concept of ‘show and tell’ to a focused and informative presentation, after which the rest of the class are invited to make comments or ask questions. The children really enjoy sharing something they feel proud of with their peers and it helps students work on speaking and listening skills. They talk in a purposeful and confident manner, including relevant details as well as listening to and responding to others.
Jaspar’s Violin Presentation
Sarah’s Presentation
Every Friday, we hold our weekly class meetings. First, children are invited to thank or commend each other for something helpful or outstanding they may have done that week. This is followed by apologies or ‘next week I will be better at’. Children take turns to speak and listen carefully to each other. Finally we read out ‘suggestions’ which children have written and posted in a ‘suggestion box’ throughout the week. The children are quick to spot ways in which they could work together in the classroom, and they come up with positive suggestions to help keep the classroom environment a calm, peaceful and clean place to be.
We look forward to what promises to be an exciting and busy year ahead! If you’d like to see what we will be working on in LEU over next month please click here for October’s lesson themes.
Making Bread
Racks and Tubes