Montessori Academy | Room 4 eNews

Dear Parents,

We are having a great start of the New Year with students excited about choosing challenging work. Many have made significant progress. We introduced to the class two new students: Greyson Brasfield, 3 years old, and Advik Vasanth, 4. They are enjoying their work and their new friends.

The children are working to reinforce and build upon their reading skills. We will continue as each child is ready, to encourage them to strengthen their reading skillsl with blending sounds and reading with the parent listeners, and also to move on to spelling and writing. In writing, we are helping them to transition from fine motor skill practices to writing independently. The kindergartners are working on cursive writing and will soon work on writing journals.

In math, the young students are working to recognize and trace numbers 0-10. Working with several materials reinforcing the concept will also help them build order and organizational skills. Many four and five years old are working on mastering the teens and tens, linear counting to 100, 100 numeral tiles, and the introduction of the decimal system. Several children who are ready are introduced to U.S. coins. They learn the value of coins. To reinforce this, we would like to invite you and your child to collect 100 pennies and bring them in a zip-loc bag with name on to exchange for a dollar coin.

This month we are studying Nutrition and Health in science. Students are learning about nutritious foods and the children like to identify their healthy lunch items by food group: protein, vegetables, fruits, dairy, and grains. We are learning about the functions of major organs in the human body, such as the heart, lungs, stomach, and brain. We are also learning names of the bones in the human skeleton. Since we had little time in December to work on our dinosaur unit, we are continuing it for a couple more weeks as well. During February, we will begin our study of Animals with Reptiles and Amphibians.

Our geography unit focuses on Antarctica this month. We also discussed about the Arctic and Antarctic poles and the different animals living in the two opposite areas. We will go in more details about penguins and their life cycle. In two weeks we will start our unit on Australia. The ginger roots that we had left over from tasting in the fall were planted and now is growing. Children are very excited to see the green stems shooting out after the winter break.

Thanks to the Muellenbach family, our Sparky was well cared for over the winter break. Josh has enjoyed taking care of Sparky when school is on breaks and has taken an ownership of making sure Sparky is well fed and cared for while at school. He will take care of the bird again during spring break. Over the summer, if you would like to have the chance to take care of Sparky, please let us know.

Please make sure your child comes to school with warm clothes and winter gears such as mittens or gloves, hats and scarves. We will go outside when it’s above 32 degrees and not rainy. We would like the children to play outdoors safely.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Carlson and Mrs. Chintanaphol

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