Hello families,
I have been bragging on our class left and right because we have just had a really great start to our school year. We have been busy learning the expectations of the classroom and how to care for our materials appropriately. This week we worked on taking care of the library, the practical life shelf, learned about appropriate use of the iPads, how to roll out and put mats away, how to use the map cabinet, and more! We even did our first writing project which we will share with you at Open House. Thank you to those who have been brought snack in already. Having snack for every child, every day, has been really lovely for everyone. We have had enough snack for a snack during the morning work session as well as the afternoon and I cannot thank you enough for this. It makes such a difference when our kids have energy to keep them powering through the day. We are currently doing a lot of SEL lessons (social emotional learning) and we are beginning to focus in on the Montessori Peace Value lessons. This week we learned about "Do right" and we talked a lot about doing right by our classroom and what this looks like and sounds like. Your child should have gone home with a "bracelet" with a single orange bead. Orange represents this peace value and as we learn about each value their bracelets will grow. They are responsible for keeping track of these. We will also be making peace flags for each value that they will be taking home towards the end of September. If your child has not brought in photos yet for their timeline books, please send those in by the end of next week. We are going to start putting together our books that will be used as part of our timeline lessons as well as for our Celebrations of Life this year. The spelling words are posted for next week under "weekly spelling words". The kids will be practicing these at school twice per week on the computer and are welcome to do so at home but it is not homework or required. I'm going to keep our "word work", which is part of our Daily 5 (literacy activities), strictly Montessori materials so that they are not getting too much screen time at school. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to drop by for a chat or send me an email. Thank you for a really great start to our year and have a great weekend! Christine Homan Important Dates: Pyrah's Peak field trip - September 13th at 9am Open House - September 14th at 6pm Picture Day! - September 28th (Forms to go home soon) Leo's Celebration of Life - September 29th at 2:45pm In-Service day (No school!) - October 20th Half-Days/Parent Teacher Conferences - October 25th & 26th In-Service day (No school!) - October 27th Fall Carnival - October 27th
0 Comments
Hello families, We made it through our first week of school and it was truly spectacular. I am being genuine when I say that this has been the best week of my teaching career. These kids are simply lovely, kind, and so respectful of each other and our environment. I am so excited for all that we are going to be able to do this school year. This week we have been practicing taking out materials, using them correctly, and putting them away in their appropriate place. We have also been working hard on our SEL (social emotional learning) activities to strengthen our classroom community. I often refer to our classroom as a family since we spend so much time together over the course of not only the current school year but THREE years! It is important for us to spend this time learning the classroom expectations so that we can have the best school year possible. If you have not yet sent the field trip form back to school, please do so soon. They are due Wednesday with $7 per person. Currently we need a few more chaperones. I have a few "maybe" chaperones but only one other adult other than myself that is confirmed. Next week we are going to be working on our Montessori peace value lessons as well as continuing to learn how to appropriately use the materials in the classroom. If you have not sent in photos of your child's life (one photo per year), please do so by the end of next week so that we can begin working on our timeline books. Thank you to everyone for your support, it means a lot to me and to our classroom environment. Also: our alternative seating project was FULLY FUNDED through Donors Choose! We should be getting our new seats sometime in the next few weeks. Be sure to come by our classroom and check out our environment if you haven't done so yet. One of our lovely classroom moms suggested I start an Amazon wish list for our classroom. I do a lot of fundraising/requests through Donors Choose and you can always search my name there if you'd like to donate to the cause. Most of the materials I ask for through these things are authentic Montessori materials as they're very expensive and it can be hard to get things through the districts. Here is my wish list link: http://a.co/ausy0ra Have a great weekend, enjoy the fair and your family. Christine Homan Hello families,
It was so nice to meet all of our new families at the picnic and to see familiar faces too! I am really looking forward to getting started this year; we have so many fun things planned! I am sending home a ridiculous amount of paperwork (sorry!) on the first day of school. Please remember that Xtramath, Lexia, and Spelling City are all optional activities for home. Your child will be using Spelling City and Lexia at school 2-3 times per week so I am simply providing you with their login information to use at your whim. The letters with their login information states X amount of time per day/week, please ignore that. However, your child should not be on the programs for long stretches of time and they should be doing the work independently. If they are not successful on their own please have them log off. Along with the computer programs I have sent home a textbook and workbook for each child. GoMath is the district math program and we use it as supplemental work at Denali as our main focus is on using Montessori curriculum. It is just another resource for you to use at home as you wish. If you want to toss it, please do. We have a field trip on September 13th. We will need 6 chaperones for this trip. Please see the "field trip" tab for more information on this. This year we are going to have a snack calendar. I have already put it together and posted it on the "snack" tab. Please check the date your child has been assigned. It will be once a month. If you are unable to provide snack please let me know, I will be sure to provide snack for the kids that day. I am still using the Remind system, as well as this website. If you are not on the text message service, please enroll in it. It's the easiest way for me to send out reminders and quick information at no cost to you. As always, if you have any questions, concerns or you just want to chat you can find me in my classroom after 8am or after school until 4. I'm also quick to answer emails, usually. Here is to another fabulous school year! Christine Homan Hello families,
We had a really lovely week together, despite our crazy day with the sub on Wednesday. This week we learned about transition words and how to make our sentences more interesting. We ended the lesson with an experiment in peanut butter and jelly sandwich making (ask your kid about this!) We also did our 5th and final Great Lesson. This lesson is all about the history of numbers and we learned a bit more about Roman Numerals. With just a few weeks left in the year we are wrapping things up in the classroom but we also have a lot more to do. Please make sure that your kiddo is getting enough sleep each night. With all of the additional sunlight it is so tempting to stay up late but it is starting to show in the classroom with some of the kids. Everyone should be eating a good breakfast before arriving at school. Many of our friends are busting out their lunches at 9:05 which means they don't have enough food for lunch or snacks to sustain them through the rest of the day. Field trip forms were due on Friday. Thank you to everyone for getting those back to me. I will be contacting you the weekend before the BBQ to remind you of the item that you signed up for. Are you available to chaperone for any of these field trips? We really only have chaperones for the BBQ. We need parents to sign up for the Pioneer School House and the ANHC as well. Thank you, Christine Hello families,
I am just now realizing that it has been a full month since my last newsletter. I apologize but the time has just FLOWN by! Last week we had the most amazing field trip to the SeaLife Center and I cannot thank our chaperones enough for helping it to be such a success. It was so much fun to see all of our learning and hard work from the school year be put into action during this culminating trip. This is what makes teaching so much fun! Ms.Goodman and I are so thankful that we have such awesome parents to stand behind us to help offer our students these kind of experiences. Are you ready to do it again?? :) Check out some of the photos from our trip below! This week we will be continuing to work on our math and language skills. We are also going to be learning about the 5th, and final, Great Lesson which is focused around the History of Numbers. With the school year coming to a close, we are wrapping up loose ends and focusing on specific skills that the kids have learned this year that they may need additional support in. Please keep an eye out for the field trip forms coming home as we have a few more field trips to round out the year, including our big end of the year BBQ on the last day of school. Thank you, Christine Homan Hello families,
We had a really lovely week together! This week we talked a lot about science. Specifically, we learned about producers, consumers and decomposers. Each of the kids worked on understanding the difference between a food chain and a food web and how they are related. Our culminating activity for the week was dissecting owl pellets. Make sure to check below for pictures from our experiments. Several students gave their book reports this week and they were fantastic! Many students are creating very beautiful paragraphs and giving lovely details from the books they are reading. I have to say, it has really brought out the artists within them too. We have had a great time sharing and learning from each other through the use of the book reports. Some students will be moving on to Literature Circles next week. In math several students were given new lessons on multiplication and division. One requirement for daily math work is that the kids do fact work and operation work. The difference between these two is that fact work helps the kids build speed within the facts. They should be able to answer a math problem (single digit) within 3 seconds or they technically don't have the fact (memorized). We are using flash cards and other simple games in class to help strengthen this skill but it would be great for them to be practicing at home as well. For operations the kids are using the Montessori materials to better understand, concretely, how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. Thank you to those that were able to attend the SeaLife Center field trip meeting on Tuesday. There were a lot of families there and it was great to be able to share our excitement and information with you all. If you have not met with me yet about the trip, please do so soon. In order for your child to attend we have to have a meeting about the behavior expectations. Next week there is no school on Friday. It is a grading day for teachers and allows for us to prepare our classrooms for the final quarter of the school year. Can you believe that the school year is almost over already? This year has been exceptional and has gone by so fast! As always, if you have questions or concerns please let me know. I so appreciate the communication between you and I, it helps support not only your child but the class as a whole. Thank you, Christine Homan Hello families,
We had a lovely week together. There was a lot of great work completed and we have a wonderful compliment from our substitute teacher on Monday afternoon. She shared with me that this was the nicest class that she has ever subbed for. How lovely is that? I am so proud of how respectful and on task they were for her while I was away. Next week is conference week. This means that our schedule is a little unique. There is no school on Monday, Tuesday we have a field trip from 12-3pm, and Wednesday and Thursday are early release days. School is closed on Friday. Our first mandatory parent meeting is coming up quickly for our SeaLife Center field trip. It is on February 28th at 4pm. We will meet in Ms.Goodman's room across the hall from us. I sent home paperwork on this earlier this week. Please let me know if you need to schedule and alternate time to meet with me. We will be handing out the permission slips at this meeting. The admission fee for each person is $60, including adults. Have a great week! Christine Homan Hello families,
This week was filled with a lot of learning opportunities for us to grow our social skills as well as our academic skills. We lost a lot of freedom and also gained some back. I am pleased to announce that we have ended the week on a good, respectful note. Yahoo! This week some of the students learned more about fractions, angles, and how to use the Stamp Game for multiplication. We also talked about how to use apostrophes and contractions in our writing. Many of the kids are starting to work on their first or second book reports. I am looking forward to these projects as the first round were really lovely! This work should be completed at school as they have one full hour each day to read and write. They also have four weeks from start to finish to complete this work which is plenty of time if they are self-managing. We have also been learning more about Alaskan animals and got to do a create experiment with "blubber". Ask your child about this! Next week we will be celebrating Valentine's Day on Tuesday, the 14th, in the afternoon. If you send in Valentine's, please be sure that there is one for every child. I sent home a form with all of this information last week. It would be great if you could send in a food dish to share as well but no sugary treats, please. I will provide sugar cookies and other activities for this celebration. We have just enough chaperones for driving to the zoo on February 21st. If you have offered to chaperone and need to cancel, please let me know well ahead of time so I can try to find more drivers. Our chaperones for this trip are Tom, Laura, Caitlyn, Lynn, Jacob(?), and Richard. I will also be driving students to help with the seat numbers. Please send in a booster seat if your child rides in one in your vehicle. I want to keep your children safe. On Monday afternoon I will be out for a training. Please remind your child of the expectations when a guest teacher is present. She is used to the Montessori classroom and knows some of the kids. I am sure that it will be a great experience for everyone. Have a great day, and as always please email me with any questions or concerns. Christine Homan |
Archives
December 2017
Categories |