October 2022
Peek Inside Lower Elementary
BLACK BEAR
Dear families,
We are so thrilled to see another joyful and productive month go by! October brought cooler weather, and with that, more time to extend work into the outdoor environment.
The children continue to get busy with follow-up of lessons, creatively producing extensions to reinforce their knowledge. We have dioramas, sculptures of lizards, going-outs to interview experts at Pet Smart and the Creō farm, and a play written and produced by two of our own Black Bears!
Ms. Lucy continues to help nurture and beautify our outdoors sharing her knowledge and care with the children and Ms. Carmen is attentive to the needs of our community, while she speaks in Spanish to the children and instills in them a love for sewing!
As always, we appreciate your trust and support!
Best,
Ms. Rebeca and Ms. Carmen
COYOTE
Greetings Coyote Parents and Family!
This month has truly flown by!
The children have been truly engaged in large projects, presentations, plays and follow up of lessons. They have been keeping very busy and this month has been all about learning to follow through with big projects and setting deadlines as well as smaller goals at times. We have had a lot of presentations as the children are finishing research that they have been working on and are ready to share with the rest of the class. Other groups of children are in the middle of or are wrapping up large projects like their diorama of the Universe, their reptile research, a project on using their understanding of lines, angles, and polygons to create a structure.
This month, they have also been sitting together and discussing what it means to be in a community and what it needs. As the year progresses the children are taking more initiative to create a community that is truly theirs, taking on leadership roles, creating systems and discussing any issues that arise. We are also taking the time this month to beautify our work and our environment.
A couple of our children revisited the grammar symbols in our classrooms and created poems with the Fall/Halloween theme using a pattern with the grammar symbols.
An excerpt of the beginnings of one…
The small pumpkin rolls,
The big pumpkin sits,
The silly pumpkin falls…
Can you guess the pattern of the parts of speech they are using?
Sincerely,
Coyote Teachers
Peek Inside Upper Elementary
FALCON
Dear Falcon Parents,
October seemed to fly by! With Fall Break in the beginning, parent-teacher conferences in full swing, and the upcoming holidays, the days went by quickly.
There is a variety of work happening in the classroom from paper making to operations with positive and negative numbers, and from presentations on fashion and human anatomy to rehearsals for a student-led musical. The children are inspired!
While we don’t celebrate Halloween at the school, there are many students excited for it. As they see decked out homes, costumes and decorations at stores, and scary movies advertised all around them, it is inevitable that they will be curious and interested on the festivities.
In the classroom, we aim to bring culture to the children. Some of them have decided to research the origins of Halloween, and others the anatomy of fear or the traditional Mexican Day of the Dead. We present a variety of traditions from around the world throughout the year, and at this time we bring awareness to other traditions similar to Halloween, this is in response to their interest on the topic. We always make sure to note that not everyone celebrates on these days due to a variety of reasons.
We look forward to all that the children will discover and explore during the upcoming month.
Until then,
Ximena Camarena
“Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.” -Dr. Maria Montessori
ROADRUNNER
Dear Roadrunner families,
October has come and is almost gone. It has felt rather short with fall break, but the children have been incredibly busy nonetheless. While independent practice continues as needed, there have been many large community projects in which the children are working collaboratively.
Last month a few students noticed a small red bump growing above the eye of our beloved dwarf hamster Stormi. After monitoring and tracking its growth, a group of students arranged a visit to the veterinarian last week. They came back with knowledge, medication and news that it could be cancerous. The group at large is having mixed feelings surrounding this topic and are patiently waiting for the news from her follow-up visit in November.
At the end of last month the children wanted to do a cultural cuisine research and luncheon to share dishes from around the world. As they dived into finding recipes and calculating budgets and schedules necessary, they quickly came to realize that it would be very costly and difficult to coordinate as the majority of the class wanted to participate in cooking and preparations. They set a new goal of a buffet style taco luncheon Tuesday, October 25th. The children made chicken and beef tacos, fresh tortilla chips, salsa, guacamole, rice, beans, lemonade, horchata and handmade decorations. They shared lunch together and invited faculty to join!
Sugary Sweets Bakery held their third successful bake sale (thank you to those who came and supported the girls in their endeavors). This work has inspired another group of children to have a bake sale on November 4 to help raise money for the follow up visit for Stormi and any other costs that may be associated with the vet’s findings.
The children also had a chance to participate in ceramic paintings for our class project for the Viva Las Vegas event next month. There have been presentations on marvelous buildings from around the world, planets and the solar system, rocket launchings (a variety of different shaped shells were created and tested beforehand, so cool to witness!), and many more research projects are in the works.
We love getting the opportunity to learn from the children everyday as we continue to provide guidance to their explorations. We look forward to many more days of discoveries.
Best regards,
Ms. Lauren and Ms. Juany
