Meadowbrook Montessori School | Freeport, Maine

We’ve been hard at work studying human origins. Here are a couple acrostic poems about Australopithecus by 3rd years.

Afarensis
Unique
Similar to Chimpanzees
Teeth are canine
Roamed a mixed habitat
Ape-like face
Loves fruit, seeds, etc
On-the-go
Plant based diet
Insects are good to them
Torso is cone-shaped
Has both ape and human characteristics
Early
Curved fingers for climbing
Upright
Short legs

Australopithecus Afarensis
Upright walkers
Similar to chimpanzees
Tender
Remains of Lucy
African Resident
Lizard eaters
Omnivore
Plant diet
Incomplete humans
Hungry
Early humans
Core flake tools
Unusually small
Straight stance

Greetings from the Elementary Classroom!

I hope everyone had a restful Thanksgiving break. Many students shared their Thanksgiving plans with me last week and some of them spent time making cards and notes for visiting grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Some of my returning students thought it would be fun to put on a skit about my childhood Thanksgiving experiences (since they hear me tell the story every year). My favorite part was their reenactment of my ride across Lake Huron on the “slow boat”.



Students were thrilled to finally receive the checkerboard lesson. These two students were very excited when they discovered that this equation left them with a product in the 10 billions place!

1st & 2nd year students are studying flags. They spent hours drawing the flags of North America.

Students drew state flags into each state. They’ll tell you that some were more challenging than others!

Hello Everyone,

We had a wonderful week in the elementary classroom. Students were able to enjoy some snow on Monday & Tuesday, but we were glad to have our leafy playground back by mid week!

We were visited by a group of 6th graders from Freeport Middle School on Thursday. The students are working on a community service project and we were honored to be a part of it. The students picked up trash on our playground and spent time reading to the elementary students – and being read to by the elementary students. They enjoyed peeking around our classroom and were surprised to see that our 3rd & 4th year students are doing some of the same work they are doing in their classrooms. This was a great confidence boost for our students.

Josh visited the classroom to give critiques to the older students. The art studio has a long waiting list most mornings as students work to complete Bargue plates and other drawing work.

In other parts of the classroom…

Allagash (1st Year)

*The first year students began working with fractions this week. We discussed numerators and denominators by comparing them to our first and last names. Everyone in my house is named Langstaff (that’s the denominator), but we all have different numerators. So one fifth, two fifths, three fifths, etc all belong to the same family. Students made fraction books using halves through tenths. One point that the students found interesting was the idea that there is no such thing as a “bigger half”. They tried this theory out during lunch by cutting sandwiches in half (well, attempting to cut them in half).

*In language we continued to practice reading sight words. We looked for this week’s words in some of our favorite books like Little Bear Comes Home and Frog and Toad. Students also created sight word flash cards and read their word lists to a second or third year each day. Students would benefit from at least 30 minutes of reading or being read to at home each day.

*This week we looked at months of the year and seasons. We laid out a giant timeline of the year (the students will happily tell you that is was so big that we couldn’t even use a work mat!). Students looked through a stack of photos and placed them next to the month or season they represent.

*Students continue to work on addition facts. They took their first timed test last week and are already looking forward to the next one.

Moosehead Lake (2nd Year)

*The BC/AD timeline is a big hit every year and this year was no exception! We learned about the terms BC. AD, BCE and CE and discussed how historians measure and define time. We identified the number of years in a decade, century and millennium. Students used labeled pictures of events throughout history to create their own timeline. It was great fun to listen to the students discuss events and people they are familiar with and to hear them identify the events they are most interested in learning more about. Some of the events/people depicted: Abraham Lincoln, the invention of zero, Alexander the Great, Cuneiform Writing, the Pyramids, the first flight, Maria Montessori and Maine statehood.

*In our other history work (which is considerably more ancient) we explored the clock of eras. This very special clock depicts all of earth’s history. We discussed each era and the important events that took place during each. We identified which major event during each era helped prepare the earth for humans. Students drew pictures of what the earth might have looked like throughout history. For parents who need a quick refresher, you can ask your student to tell you something about each era (Azoic, archeaozoic, proterozoic, paleozoic, mesozoic, cenozoic, neozoic). We used our etymological dictionaries to help us remember the eras. Ask your student what ‘zoic’ means.

*In arithmetic students continue to practice subtraction facts. We used the subtraction snake game to create problems this week. Students enjoyed working together on this new & more challenging snake game.

*Students are becoming quite good at identifying angles. Students set out last week to label all of the angles around the room. They were surprised and to find that all of the windows and doors form right angles (as was I, considering the age of our building!). However, using teamwork, the 2nd years were able to find a sampling of acute, obtuse, straight and whole angles.

Acadia (3rd Year)

*In language we began working with the logical analysis materials. Students used prepared sentences to identify the predicate, subject and direct object. They created charts using questions that help us to identify sentence elements. (Who performed the action=subject/What is the action=predicate)

*Our geometry work has been all about angles lately. Last week students drew and measured a variety of angles to refamilarize them with the protractor. This week they each chose 30 figures around the room to trace and measure. They have tested several hypotheses about different figures so far.They found that all squares and rectangles have 90 degree angles and that a good way to check triangle measurements is to add all the angles together to see if they equal 180 degrees.

*We continued our work with the golden bead frame. Students added mental carrying to their work with partial products. They are developing a script in their mind that allows them to work through large problems. Example: 4,378,919 x 267. 9 x 7 = 63, put down the 3, carry the 6 in my head. 1 x 7 = 7 plus the 6 in my head equals 13, etc.

*We did a quick review of the fundamental needs of humans. We looked at our timeline of humans and discussed the different ways in which the early humans met these needs. We looked for evidence of spiritual needs appearing on the timeline. I asked students if art/music/games/religion were always a part of the human existence. Students have been researching the history of each need – material & spiritual. Some of them created comic strips of early humans meeting their needs.

Katahdin (Upper El)

*The Upper El students have been quite busy with language work. They heard a favorite story of mine last week about an unfortunate fellow named “Isamare Waswere.” Ask them to tell you this story, which I used to help them understand copulas and auxilliary verbs. Students used a basket of prepared sentences to identify linking and helping verbs. If they get lost during the story, it might help them to draw the pictures or to hear some of the verbs (is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, do, does, did, have, has, had, can, could, may, might, must, will, shall, would)

*Students worked with table C for the past couple of weeks. This table used our previous work (tables A + B) and asked students to list all factors for each product 1-100. Ask your student to tell you which products surprised them by having more factors than expected.

*Students are working to create lovely charts depicting life from its largest definition (biosphere) down to its smallest (the cell). Although, students have been debating whether or not the cell is actually the smallest living structure. Next week we will create edible cells. I think we planned to do that last week, but those upper el students never seem to have time for me anymore! Work, work work…

Exploring the Timeline of Life

Working with the fraction insets

I mentioned these flower boxes on our Facebook page, but they are certainly worth mentioning again. Ina (Matt’s mom) has been maintaining these lovely flower boxes all season long (and donating the flowers). Thanks Ina!

Hello Everyone (especially those of you with sons),

Jill and I attended a very informative workshop on Friday given by William Maier of Lexington Montessori. He spoke about the current issues that boys are facing in education and in life and offered many strategies on creating boy friendly classrooms – this is often difficult for female teachers. This was an eye opening lecture for me and for many other attendees. I’d love to chat with anyone who is interested about this lecture. Please visit my new “Book List” page on this blog to see some book recommendations regarding this topic.

We will explore this topic during our new monthly book group, which will kick off in November. Just a note (very far in advance): The author of Raising Cain and other books about boys, Michael Thompson will be speaking at the Friends School of Portland in May. It might seem far off, but it will be here before you know it!

It’s the end of the 5th week of school already. That’s a grand total of 144 classroom hours, 75 lessons, 24 visits to the playground, 10 fiddle classes, 4 walks to the library, 3 art lessons, 2 field trips and 1 teacher who was ready for the 4 day weekend!

Thank you to all of you for helping the first month of school to go so smoothly for everyone. I have enjoyed getting to know our new families and I look forward to talking with you all at conferences on the 19th & 20th. A big thank you to Scott (Curtis) & Heather (Sutter & Alexandra) for being such amazing chaperones on our overnight to the Bigelows. I think they would both tell you that our students handled this trip with exceptional maturity, good manners and most importantly, a great attitude. We look forward to many overnights in the future. Thank you to Tori & Robin (Elyse) for providing yummy snacks for the trip and donating the first bag of James Place Blend coffee to the Lodge (come in and try some! The lodge is now open to parents).

Some general notes:
Josh has 2nd year students and up working on Bargue plates. These are graphite drawings done on the easel that help students to observe and copy master work. Ask your student to tell you about these plates and which ones they are working on.

Andrew has students working on the song, ‘Boil ‘em Cabbage Down’. Students are to practice this song at least 10 times each week. It takes about 30 seconds to run through the song, so this should not be a problem. This class is going to start moving a bit faster, so it is very important that students make time to practice at home. To guide them, you can remind them to do all the steps to get into playing position. They know these steps, but might need to be reminded that we don’t just grab the violin and start playing – even at home they should complete all the steps. We’ve been talking a lot about this in class.

Here are some classroom highlights:

Allagash Group (1st Year)

* Nouns are everywhere in our classroom lately! Students had great fun searching for nouns around the school. They discovered that tables, chairs and even classroom friends are nouns. Students performed a skit about nouns and created posters with photos of people, places and things.

*First years continue to practice writing in cursive. It is helpful to encourage cursive writing at home. Very soon they will write only in cursive while at school.

* We used the addition strip board & the snake game to practice addition facts. Students have been enjoying working on this in small groups.

* Students have been studying polygons for the past couple of weeks. We identified pentagons, hexagons, septagons, octagons, nonagons (everyone’s favorite) and decagons. Most of our lessons include word etymology and geometry is a great subject for this. Ask your students about poly & -gon.

* “I live in the universe…” That was the beginning of a favorite lesson last week. Ask your first year to explain where they live starting with that phrase. This lesson is meant to help students begin to understand that cities are within states/provinces, which are within countries, etc.

* We are exploring fish during biology class. Students identified and labeled the different fins on fish and we discussed the different jobs performed by each fin. We took a trip to Jill’s classroom to meet their fish and see which parts we recognized.

Moosehead Lake (2nd Year)

* This group continued their verb/adverb study by using a new special paper we have in our classroom. I wrote them a basket full of sentences to symbolize with the parts of speech they already know.

* 2nd years have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the new time line of life that I purchased over the summer. It finally showed up on our doorstep last week and students have been exploring all of the illustrations and labels. This time line will be the focus of our second year history curriculum. Next week we will begin work with the ‘Clock of Eras’ & we will begin working with the time line in a few weeks.

* We continue to work with memorization of subtraction facts. Students have their first timed test coming up soon. We also brought out the stamp game earlier in the week. 2nd years will work with dynamic operations using the stamp game for the next month or so.

* In geography we began a study of South America. We reviewed the names of different land and water forms (lake, island, cape, bay, strait, isthmus, gulf, peninsula). Students are working to label these land and water forms on a map of South America. 

Acadia (3rd Year)

* 3rd Year students continue to work with large numbers in arithmetic. We introduced the Golden Bead Frame a couple weeks ago. Students are focusing on multiplication with multipliers in the tens place and multiplicands into the millions place (1,232,589 x 51). They also continue to practice multiplication games aimed at the memorization of facts.

* Students who have been at Meadowbrook (or any Montessori school) have always seen grammar as a series of special symbols that represent each part of speech (the noun as a black triangle, the verb as a red circle). We had a discussion last week about how helpful that has been, but that when they are in middle school or high school, their teacher’s won’t use – or even know – these symbols. I introduced the grammar boxes which will help the students to take all of the grammar studies from previous years and remove the tricks and symbols. This is a perfect example of the Montessori curriculum moving from concrete to abstract. As I slowly remove materials and move students toward paper work, they will build on the very concrete foundation we have been laying for the past 2 years. If you can’t tell, I am THRILLED to have 3rd years!! It truly is the year that puts the icing on the cake.

*Students have been doing scientific illustrations of leaves that can be found in Maine. We created field guides and brought them along on our trip to Flagstaff Lake. Ask your student which leaves were most commonly found near the lake and why they think that might be so. Ask them which leaves we were unable to find.

Katahdin (Upper El)

* We continue our work with the 3 geometry concepts of congruence, similarity and equivalence. Students have completed some amazing work with equivalence.Congruence and similarity are relatively simple concepts for students because you can see them. Equivalence gets a little trickier. The upper el students have made many discoveries about equivalence by using our guide square and cutting out shapes using the diagonals and midpoints. This work has sparked a lot of excitement.

* Upper El students have each chosen a nation that they will study during the first semester. Their October assignments include creating a poster with basic facts about the country and designing a travel brochure that will entice people to visit their country. We have many examples of travel brochures for them to look through while they complete this project. Students will also choose a notable citizen (past or present) from their nation and create a project around that person.

* Students tell me that the best lesson all year has been the one about matter and energy. We discovered that matter is like a noun and energy does for matter what the verb does for a sentence. Students are making charts of energy they see around home or the classroom and deciding whether that energy is kinetic (motion) or potential (stored). They enjoyed the story I told about getting to school as a child (I grew up on the top of an island with no cars – this story is filled with potential and kinetic energy!). Students were filled with questions after the lesson, which is always wonderful for me. Next week we will talk about the laws of thermodynamics.

* Our arithmetic work has focused on long division using the test tube division material. Students have also been practicing division facts in preparation for the first timed test of the year.

Art Lesson

Fiddle Class

Some highlights from the second week of school:

* We continued our work with multiples this week by making charts of more than one number and finding common multiples. Next week we will work on Table A – this is a large table that will help us become very familiar with common multiples.