Lower Elementary 1 Newsletter

November 2008

Dear Parents;

It is no secret that I am a knitter.  I love the process of creating, the connection to the recipient via the garment, and the meditative state that knitting puts me in.  The last project I started was a sweater for my niece Helen.  I chose the pattern for the challenge of using 4 colors and tiny yarn and needles.  It has been fun and I don’t regret having chosen such a challenge, but I’m a busy guy and progress has been slow.  See, I bought the materials and pattern on December 12 of last year and decided to do the “12 month” size.  Unfortunately I didn’t have it ready for her last Sunday at her birthday party, but I am so close.  In fact, I’m going to proof read this newsletter and then go pick up the stitches for the collar…

Ancient Greece

Last month I mentioned that I had started reading a fiction story set in Ancient Greece.  It was called Odysseus in the Serpent Maze and while it was a lot of fun, and not poorly written, it was no feat of literature.  After the story there was a chapter called, “What About This Story Is True?” which of course made mention of the Iliad and Odyssey (the events of the story I read took place when Odysseus was 13).  One of the children asked me to, “Get that book next” and I thought, “What could be the harm in reading a bit of the Odyssey to the kids?  They probably won’t like it and we’ll end up reading something else after a day.”  Well, they liked it.  We are three days in and still the vast majority of the children raise their hands to vote to keep reading it.  I too am enjoying the story, in the past I have read bits of it, seen parodies, and excerpts, but never read the whole story, so even if the children eventually vote to have me stop reading it, I’ll keep going on my own.

Auction Item

I have presented the plans for this year’s auction item to the children and they are pretty excited about it.  Materials have been gathered and work will begin in earnest this week.  It will be a functional item that will call upon some of the children to do some felting and others to do the embroidering and embellishing. 

Peer Mediation

An important part of childhood development is learning how to resolve differences of opinions and get along with people not like ourselves.  Montessori environments teach these skills well, just by giving the children more time to interact and work with their  peers.  Learning these skills takes time, so occasionally there are disagreements for which both parties stubbornly refuse to compromise. 

For times like these a mediator might be needed.  Mediators help the people involved in an argument to listen to each other and come to an agreement that everyone can live with.  The teachers in each of the four elementary classrooms have chosen two mediators who will undergo a brief training course at school during the week after Thanksgiving.  After giving a presentation to each of the classrooms they will be available to help their peers solve disputes whether they are needed at lunch, during recess, or within the classroom.

For the Love of Trees

On a recent Monday the children returned to the classroom to discover that several of the trees outside our window had been removed.  Several of the students were very upset and petitions and protest signs were being brandished by lunch time.  It is a testament to the compassion and stewardship of the students that they took up the cause so quickly and wholeheartedly. 

However, as I explained to the children (after reviewing my facts with Kathy), most of the trees that were removed were Siberian elms, which is defined as an invasive species by the Minnesota DNR.  The other tree that was removed was our beautiful, old willow which unfortunately took root too far from water and was thus depleting the soil of nutrients and water.  This wouldn’t have been a problem except that it was affecting the native spruce and red pines that were its neighbors, so either the willow would have to go or all the others would. 

We hired two arborists to help us decide whether to remove any trees and which to remove, and the decision was three years in the making.  By the end of my chat with the children, I felt that they understood the situation.  Now our room is graced with more natural light than ever.

Great Work Sampler

A small group has started work on a fiction set in the Civil War era.  At the moment, they are just doing research and taking notes to make the story authentic.

Inspired by all the talk of Ancient Greece, a large group has made a beautifully accurate map of Greece with labels for the ancient cities-states and other interesting information.  A report is accompanying.

When one person makes a great map, you can expect more maps.  Several of my youngest students have taken to labeling and coloring maps of the fifty United States.  Some are even making copies of each of their flags.

Another group started to measure the hallway in front of our room on a whim.  Measuring became calculating the area of the floor, including all of the nooks.  They repeated the process for the activity room and got started on the sanctuary before they ran out of steam.  It was a project that involved skills in teamwork, measuring, long addition, long multiplication, calculating the area of rectangles and triangles…  Oh, and their unit was the square inch!

There has been more than that, as the walls outside the classroom will testify, come on down during the book fair for a peek. From a simple lesson about the layers of the earth, two students created a beautiful 6 foot tall wedge shaped chart to explain the details.  It's hanging just outside the classroom, if you'd care to have a look.

Sincerely,

Jim Daniels

Lower Elementary 1 Teacher

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Oak Hill Montessori is an independent non-profit school accredited by the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI).