Week in Review: November 10th -14th

We had a wonderful week in Lower Elementary! Students were busy at work rounding numbers, researching the flags of North American countries, and editing sentences for correct punctuation, commas, and capitalization.

For language jobs this week, first grade students were introduced to homonyms and edited sentences. Second grade students reviewed homonyms, homophones, and homographs, edited sentences, and reviewed the rules for making words plural. Third grade students continued working with suffixes, edited sentences, and reviewed the rules for making words plural.

For math jobs this week, first grade students practiced addition facts, counted sets of quarters, and reviewed skip counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. Second grade students worked with math operations, practiced counting coins to solve word problems, and reviewed rounding numbers to the ten, hundreds, and thousands place. Third grade students worked with math operations, practiced making change, and reviewed rounding numbers to the tens, hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands place.

For cultural jobs this week, students began independent research on a flag from a North American county. Students also participated in the Fourth Great Lesson - The Coming of Language as well as a lesson identifying the different climate zones found on the Earth.

Next week, students will solve problems using various math operations, work with fractions, finish their flag research, and investigate some of the earliest known cave drawings found in France.

Montessori Minute- The Fourth Great Lesson 

The Fourth Great Lesson is the Story of Language and Written Communication (sometimes called Communication is Signs). It presents the basic story of how people living in different places developed their own spoken languages, and then began to create ways to write their ideas down. The story explains how trade, involving long journeys, was one impetus to develop written language, as was the need to maintain records and set down a record of events and stories. Included in the story are pictographs, symbols, hieroglyphs, early alphabets, and the invention of the printing press. This lesson introduces many concepts and serves to awaken the curiosity for further study into multiple areas such as: Reading (e.g. literature, poetry, non-fiction, myths and folk tales, authors, reading comprehension, reading analysis, literary terms); Writing (e.g. elements of style, function, voice, composition, letter writing, research, study skills); Structure of Writing (e.g. alphabets, spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence analysis, word study, figures of speech); Language (e.g. origins of spoken language, foreign languages, history of languages, speech, drama).

Reminders

- Homework is sent home each Monday. Please return homework the following Friday. We also encourage students to read every night for 30 minutes and to record it on their reading log.

-JBMA is currently participating in a community service project by collecting food supplies for The Catholic Center of Concern. Lower Elementary is collecting cereal (boxed or bagged). Please continue to bring these items in through Friday, November 21st. On November 21st, everyone is encouraged to bring FRESH fruits or vegetables to the Peace Ceremony.

Important Dates 

November 21st- Peace Assembly 9:00
November 21st - Talent Show 7:00
November 25th - Dismiss at 1:00
November 26th, 27th, 28th - NO SCHOOL (Thanksgiving Break)