The month of November was very productive in the classroom. The children had a couple of catch-up days in order to help with some of their late work. On these days a few individual lessons were given, but for the most part, they were reserved for the children not to be interrupted due to a lesson. The kids were very grateful of these few days, because they really don’t like to be behind.

This month we also added another 4^th grader to our classroom. Our class size is now at 23. Of course new students bring new challenges, but together the class is helping him acclimate in the Montessori environment.

 The Thanksgiving Feast went very well, and the kids seemed to enjoy it. They all gained a lot of practical life skills from the preparations for the feast.  In fact, a group of students even helped to make each table beautiful by adding table decorations, in order to make the feast even more festive.

 A lot has happened academically as well during the past month.  The 4^th graders have continued their culture work of understanding the world around them and the forces of it. They are now learning about the solar system, which doesn’t just look at the Earth any more, but places the earth in something much greater.  In biology, they continued learning more about the parts of plants and have now began moving into learning about the characteristics that all living things have in common compared to non-living things. They have also been working on final drafts of their Snow White story, which has shown their handwriting coming along beautifully. They also have been involved in a literature circle, where they are either reading Ella Enchanted or The Prince of the Pond. Each week they meet for a discussion on the chapters they were assigned and seem to be enjoying the books. Ask them to give you a summary of the book. In grammar, the students have been working on spelling rules and finding patterns in the plurals of nouns. They have then been using these rules as part of their spelling lists the last couple of weeks.

             The 5^th graders also have been very busy. They began a study of birds with a field trip to the other E2 classroom in order to find the exterior parts of the finches. They then had a watercolor lesson in order to help them with their follow up work. Many of the children’s work were very detailed with this new method of painting. They also have been working with understanding how the Earth works, in terms of its properties of light and radiation. They have continued their work on poetry and will be done with that unit this week. Many creative poems have been created over the last couple of months. Ask them about their favorites. They also received a book of poems that was used in lessons each week that they have been very excited about. In grammar the 5^th graders are nearing the end of their study of the pronoun.

             The 6^th graders are nearing the end of a unit on fish in biology. They have done research to find information about freshwater and saltwater fish.  They have been learning about different types of essays in order to help their writing skills. They have also been challenged to understand some of the editing marks in order to make their writing even better. They have been working on an archaeology unit in history and are getting ready for their dig this week. In grammar, they have continued their work with sentence analysis and have also started learning about how some sentences have copulas (linking verbs) rather than an easily identifiable verb in the sentence.

              Geometry has brought continued work with area and discovering the formulas to find the area of a variety of shapes, finding the hidden parts of triangles and moving from the constructive triangles to the introduction of points, lines, and surfaces.

 In math the kids have been researching division by discovering which numbers can be divided equally and which have not. Others have been working with the checkerboard to continue their work with multiplication and larger numbers. The final math group has been studying multiples and have learned about Eratosthenes, who was one of the earliest people to began looking at patterns in numbers.