Week Nine Notes

Monday, Oct 31

Art History - Is It Sculpture? day 3

Morning Work Time

PPI: Alchemy - read poem and article, use The Atom Board to show the electrons for an element of iron and compare them to plutonium

all of my teaching notes for Alchemy are detailed here



Grammar - finish adding details to the Haunted Houses of Speech, write sentences describing what is happening in the scene; use the Montessori Grammar Stencil and colored pencils to identify the part of speech for each word; learn the advanced symbols for proper noun, collective noun, and abstract noun

Inventors - recall Walter Diemer and the invention of bubble gum, and Bob and Joe Switzer and the invention of Day-Glo colors; choose an inventor to add to the MLB; find Day-Glo colors in Gelatos (this happened later in the day when we were doing the Pumpkin Portraits and was completely fortuitous)



Gelatos - Brights - Limoncello
Gelatos - Brights - Orange soda


read The Marvelous Thing That Came from a Spring: The Accidental Invention of the Toy That Swept the Nation by Gilbert Ford at snack



Lunch / Read Aloud - finish The Witch Who Saved Halloween by Marian Place



Board Games - play Cauldron Quest (provides good practice in even/odd numbers)



Halloween Activities - Mummy Race, Ghost Mud (with the toilet paper from the Mummy Race and the Ivory soap scraps from the Soap Sculpture Exploration), Witch's Brew (with baking soda and vinegar)

Art - Pumpkin Portraits (on Bristol vellum with the child's choice of colored pencils, Gelatos, or acrylic paint)

Tuesday, Nov 1

Farm Day

SSR - When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead, Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson



Art History - final lesson for Barbara Hepworth

all of my teaching notes for Barbara Hepworth are detailed here

Legends of the Saints - read legend of St. Colman (feast day Oct 27) from Saints Among the Animals by Cynthia Zarin at snack



Number Bases - measure and cut brown felt, make Octal Mat

Board Games - Lion in My Way, Clumsy Thief in the Candy Shop

Wednesday, Nov 2

SSR - Reading Meetings for new SSR books happen when needed (today someone began When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller)



Morning Work Time - finish up Projects of Personal Interest

Inventors - hear a presentation on the life of Erno Rubik



add Gilbert Ford and the invention of the Slinky, and Erno Rubik and the invention of the Rubik's Cube to MLB

Fable at Snack - read The Ant and the Grasshopper retold by Amy Lowry Poole at snack, discuss our Aesop's Fables & Puppetry Class Play and how the fables are universal and can be set in any place and time (this retelling is set in the Chinese Emperor's summer palace)



Read Aloud at Lunch - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, chapter 1, "Down the Rabbit-Hole"

you can read this book online for free at Carnegie Mellon University



Handwork - knitting (kitten, turtle, lamb, pig, horse), embroidery (embroidered circle mat), counted cross-stitch (pincushion)

Science Club - session 2 of Temperature: How and Why

Thursday, Nov 3

Morning Work Time - Math!

ages 6, 7 - recall tally marks (skip counts of 5) used in counting the dresses in the Hundred Dresses Project, show how little pouches can be used to create sets of 10 gems and allow us to skip count easily by 10, note that 11 is "one pouch and one loose gem" and 12 is "one pouch and two loose gems" and continue the pattern up through 19, what would 20 be?, wonder how many pouches of 10 it would take to get to 100, read The Hundred-Year Barn by Patricia MacLachlan



ages 9, 10, 11 - assessments in order to determine the topics for individual Math MLBs (fractions, decimals, and reading an analog clock), look at the student handbook Math at Hand for an example of how to write up the steps in how to solve a particular type of problem



age 13 - NOAA Data in the Classroom: Investigating El Niño module

SWI - recall the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia PA in 1793 as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, look up the etymology of epidemic (and its relationship to democracy) and epinephrine (and its relationship to the kidneys)

Fable at Snack - read The Tortoise & the Hare retold by Jerry Pinkney, observe setting as well as the unusual language used in the retelling (Author's Craft)



Read Aloud at Lunch - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, chapter 2, "The Pool of Tears"

Art History - first lesson for Mary Blair, our new artist for the month, and Concept Architecture assignment with cut paper collage

all of my teaching notes for Mary Blair are detailed here


Mary Blair's Unique Flair: The Girl Who Became One of the Disney Legends
by Amy Novesky

the words they came up with for first impressions of her art were:
colorful
elegant
playful
childlike
geometric

The photos to go with this week are here.

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