Saturday, December 8, 2012

Lower Elementary Friday Letter- November 16, 2012


11/16/12
 

Dear RiverRun Families,

                This week started lessons on the Sun and Earth.  The children learned about gravity and how the Sun’s pull is much stronger than Earth’s and how velocity, Earth’s forward movement, stops it from being pulled into the Sun.  We also discussed how we rotate from shadow to light and dusk to dawn and how hot or cold portions of the earth would be if we did not rotate.  Demonstrations accompany these lessons which keep the children interested and able to interact and experience the concepts being taught.

                In Writers’ Workshop we have been looking at leading or opening lines of various books.  After hearing them we would vote on whether they caught our attention enough to read on.  The children are working on having good leading lines that the rest of their stories can follow. 

                The Elders had lessons on how to work out math equations with parenthesis, and we are continuing to read Wind in the Willows, a novel study we did not complete last year.  The Middles had refresher lessons on the Snake Game (another way to encourage memorization of math facts) and many of them were introduced to the Life of Fred series.  I believe the Fred series compliments the Montessori math material.   The children can do the work on their own, it is humorous as well as filled with many fun facts not always related to math.

I leave you with an excerpt from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem The Pumpkin (1850):

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,

From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest:

When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board

The old broken links of affection restored:

When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,

And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before:

What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye,

What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

 

Best Wishes for a wonderful weekend and joy filled Thanksgiving,

Amy

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