How do colours help us?

We had a great start to our day with tag games, Learning Commons, Music and reading!

Montessori period was busy with lots of math games, writing and work in our Learning Journals describing our sorting groups we made yesterday.

After celebrating Leyah's birthday, our class looked at pictures of different ways colours help give us information.  We discovered that colours can help us know many things:
-identify variations of fruits (red delicious apple vs. golden delicious apple, lemon/lime)
-tell if foods are ready to eat (a green banana is not ready, brown is over ripe, but yellow is perfect)
-foods of certain colours contain certain vitamins ie. orange veggies have carotenoids
-animals use bright colour to show they are poisonous
-leaves change colours in autumn
-flags use colours to identify signals or countries
-boats have lights to starboard and port sides
-our class notebooks can be identified by their colour
-money can be recognized by its colour

We discovered that red is an important colour.  Red catches peoples' eye and grabs our attention. Artists use red to show emphasis in paintings and safety equipment often is red or bright orange to be very visible:
-fire hydrants, stop signs, signal lights
-protective safety vests, life jackets, fire trucks
Red also shows heat like on a hot element or on a fire.

Look around your house and community.  How are colours used to help us get information?  We will share some ideas next Wednesday.

Sorting and more

We explored primary, secondary and tertiary this morning by constructing colour wheels using playdough.  The children started with primary colours, dividing them up into three balls and mixing them to create secondary colours.  Even though most of the students were well versed in how to create secondary colours, like mixing yellow and blue to make green, we still had many ohhhs and ahhhhhs as the playdough magically became new colours.  Making the tertiary colours (mixing of primary and secondary colours together) reminded students there are more than one blue or green.  Just go to the paint store and you can see there are many shades of each colour.  We discovered this on Orange Shirt Day when people said my shirt was more red than orange.....I responded that it was reddy-orange or orangy-red.  While people said Alyssa's shirt was yellow, to which she responded it was a yellowy-orange. 

During Montessori period, children named the planets we created during our First Great Lesson and did some interesting writing about the characteristics of their individual planets.  Since it was a holiday on Monday, our weekly word lists went home today.  On the 1st day of the week the children write them on Montessori paper.  Please look at the above example with your child to see if they are using the lines correctly to help them form their letters.  The lines are on both sides so you can do some extra practice at home.  Remember always start letters at the top and go down. When printing with your children, ask the child where they are going to start when forming letters. 

In math, we have furthered our discussion on characteristics to sorting items in a set.  Today students worked with a variety of manipulatives to sort a set into two groups.  We discussed problem solving ideas if their sorting attribute did not fit into two groups.  For example, Nowellia and Leyah were sorting pom-poms and wanted to sort by colour but there were purple, pink, light pink and white balls. 

1.  pink and not pink
2.  pink and white (put the others that didn't fit (purple) back into the container)
3.  choose a different attribute like big and small that fit into two groups

Talk about sorting at home.  How are things sorted in your kitchen?

Montessori Work Period

                 

Students have been working very hard to get started with the routine of our Montessori work period. This month, students started tracking the choices they make. Each day they should be making a variety of learning choices, such as work with language materials and math materials, exploration of science concepts and practicing writing skills. Every one in room 2 has been focused and working hard to improve their skills. Ask your child what his/her favourite lesson has been so far? Which lessons are they excited for? How are they going to continue to improve their reading, writing, and math skills, each day?

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Scholastic Book Orders

Today your child will be bringing home a scholastic book order.  If you would like to order books from this catalogue please do so ONLINE. I will not be placing the orders myself nor will I be accepting cheques and/or cash. When I send these out, the due date to place the order online will be one week from the day they go home. So please have all your orders in by next Thursday.

First great lesson

One of the great Montessori Traditions is the telling of the Great Stories.  Today we experienced part one of the First Great Lesson: The Beginning of the Universe and of the Earth.
The intention of the Great Lessons is to spark curiosity and awe in the world around them. Through images, demonstrations and scientific-based stories, the children are led through the accepted theories of how the universe was formed.  Details are kept brief, focusing on big ideas and sparking questions that will excite the children to learn about the world around them.

Understanding that there are many galaxies in the universe, containing many solar systems, we decided to create our own Room 2 Solar System with 22 planets!  We thought up a list of characteristics our planets could have:

-hot (close to our sun)/ cold (far from our sun)

-made of solid materials with rocky crust or a gas planet

-big/medium/small in size

-number of moons orbiting around it

-colour 

-surface features

The children chose a stencil circle of the size they wanted then used big brushes to do a wash.  

Kids chose to use hot colours (red, orange, yellow) or cold colours (blue, purple, green)

One their background were dry, they were challenged to use a variety of different paint tools to add texture and features to their planets.  Kids experimented adding liquid tempera paint with Q-tips, sponges, toothbrushes, string, corks, lids, and cottonballs.  It was a bit messy but we had fun.  

Support in Room 2 for Orange Shirt Day!

The children in Room 2, showed great empathy talking about human rights and the importance of treating all people with respect and compassion.  Led through the true story by Phyllis Webstad, a First Nations women whose experience in a residential school left her life forever altered, was presented in a very relatable way to our young learners.

The children enjoyed the new nature centres to explore during Montessori Work Period.  The children have five containers to explore holding items from nature.  After examining the items carefully and exploring them with magnify glasses, the children choose two objects to compare and contrast.  In their journals students, sketch their two objects and state how they are the same and different.

Orange Shirt Day Tomorrow

ORANGE SHIRT DAY - “Every Child Matters”  

  

Join us tomorrow, on Tuesday October 2nd in recognizing Orange Shirt Day by wearing an orange shirt! Orange shirt day was started by Phyllis Webstad and based on her experiences and memories of residential school in Williams Lake, BC when her new orange shirt was taken away on her first day of school at the mission.  

 The date was chosen because it is the time of year in which children were taken from their homes to residential schools, and because it is an opportunity to set the stage for anti-racism and anti-bullying policies for the coming school year.  It also gives teachers time to plan events that will include children, as we want to ensure that we are passing the story and learning on to the next generations.  Orange Shirt Day is also an opportunity for First Nations, local governments, schools and communities to come together in the spirit of reconciliation and hope for generations of children to come. “Every Child Matters”  

For more information on Orange Shirt Day, you can visit the following website:  http://www.orangeshirtday.org/