October 10
Admissions Open Houses
9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.
*
Parent Education:
MTAD Parent Evening - Addressing Challenging Behaviors at Home
7 p.m.
Ursuline Academy
*Earn two co-op hours if you attend!
October 11
All-Staff Professional Day - no classes, no child care
October 17 (sign up by October 10)
Flu Shots
7:30-9:30 a.m.- Adults only
3-5 p.m. - Adults and children ages 4 and up (with adult)
*Parent Education:
8:30 a.m.-12 p.m.
*Earn co-op hours if you attend!
4:30-6:30 p.m.
Ivy Gables Senior Living
Look for the WMS car!
October 22
7 p.m.
Archmere Academy
*Recommended for ages 10 and up
October 24-25
Parent-Teacher Conferences
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Toddler
Room 3 (year-round classroom):
Room 3 students wrapped up their study of monarchs with two successful butterfly releases. This week they began exploring farm life. They also kicked off their weekly food-tasting activity - first with watermelon, which all the children enjoyed, then with sugar snap peas, which they enjoyed as much as the watermelon! Popping open the sugar snap pea pods also tested their fine motor skills.
Room 4:
In the coming weeks, Room 4 students will explore various aspects of fall, including the leaves changing, the air feeling colder and some animals gathering and preparing for hibernation. They also began tasting apples, and learning about the parts of an apple and its life cycle. Soon they will learn more about the life cycles of a chicken and a pumpkin, explore the harvest and experiment with different fruits and vegetables (like the pumpkin). They embarked on their first woods walk two weeks ago and hope to continue their visits to the woods to explore the labyrinth and listen to outdoor sounds.
Room 5:
Students in Room 5 are starting to talk about fall and farm animals. They have taken their first woods walk and are making nature blocks from their collections. This week they will start exploring pumpkins and gourds with activities including hammering golf tees into a pumpkin, painting gourds and learning about the life cycle of the pumpkin. To end the unit they will taste various types of squash, including roasted acorn, spaghetti and butternut squash.
Room 6:
During the past couple weeks, Room 6 students finished up their apple study. They mashed and chopped apples to make applesauce. As part of their unit on farm life, they discussed the life cycle of a chicken - how a chicken starts as an egg and becomes a hatchling, chick and chicken. Soon they will be dissecting a pumpkin, roasting pumpkin seeds, and learning about how pumpkins grow.
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Primary
Room 16:
Last week, Room 16 released two monarch butterflies, wrapping up their monarch study. This week they are focused on the life cycles of pumpkins and apples ahead of their first field trip to
Ramsey's Farm
on October 22. In the practical life area, they will begin food prep work with apples, and later this month they will make applesauce.
Room 17:
Like many classrooms, Room 17 students have been observing the life cycle of a monarch butterfly. They released one monarch, who they named Abram, last week. They also have been learning grace and courtesy lessons with respect to lunch etiquette, formally greeting each other in the mornings and graciously responding to friends. This week, they will explore new fall-themed practical life work. In preparation for their first field trip to
Linvilla Orchards
next week, they're also learning about the life cycle and parts of a pumpkin.
Room 19:
In the spirit of October, Room 19 students will be learning about creatures with exoskeletons and how they compare to their own (endo)skeletons. After studying monarch butterflies and insects, they're excited to learn about spiders. They are also learning about the parts of a pumpkin, and they're looking forward to their first field trip with Room 16 to
Ramsey's Farm.
Room 20:
Room 20 students are still patiently waiting for their one monarch butterfly to emerge from its chrysalis. They've been focused on identifying living and non-living things, and will be studying the life cycle and parts of a pumpkin in preparation for their field trip to
Linvilla Orchards
next week. They've also been observing the seasonal changes of fall.
Kindergarten:
Kindergartners from all four Primary classrooms meet as a cohort daily and have kicked off their work together by
creating "hopes and dreams" (goals for the school year). They have also been brainstorming about rules, and learning how those rules might help them reach their hopes and dreams. Additionally, they started their weekly Scholastic News reading activities and are participating in a paper bag get-to-know-you activity.
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Lower Elementary
The 6-9 students have been busy exploring numbers. Third-year students are researching different ancient number systems, such as Egyptian, Arabic, Mayan and Roman, as they prepare to present their research to both 6-9 and 9-12 students during Montessori's Great Lesson: The Coming of Numbers. First- and second-year students have been building their measurement, data collection and graphing skills. They've recorded data about the height, and eye and hair color of each member of their group, and created giant graphic representations of this data. Several children even worked on finding their group's average height. This week they enjoyed their first field trip to
Ashland Nature Center
, where they learned about Delaware's Lenni Lenape Native American tribe and their dependence on nature.
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Upper Elementary
Despite some dreary weather, the 9-12 students were thrilled to be at the
South Mountain YMCA Camp
last week for their annual overnight trip. As they returned to the classroom this week, they picked up where they left off in their cultural studies. This year they are exploring the question "what is culture?" They have been working on identifying fundamental needs - humans' needs, our country's needs and now specific countries' needs, which they will study for similarities and differences. In their reading work, they've been discussing figurative language, prefixes and suffixes. In math, they're exploring arrays, fractions, factors, and prime and composite numbers. In addition to the 9-12 students' weekly writing workshops and free writing time, they will soon be starting book reviews.
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Middle School
Middle-schoolers are fully immersed in their research for the
Montessori Model United Nations
, which they will attend in February 2020. Tying into this year's middle school focus on conflict, students are reading and discussing Alan Gratz's "Refugee," which tells the stories of three children
seeking refuge in 1938 Germany, 1994 Cuba and 2015 Syria. Using a Google Slides template, students are also working on creating
virtual museums
about World Wars I and II. In their
flipped classroom
approach to math, the middle-schoolers are
finishing up their first individual units of study. And in science, they are studying space and have created scaled models of the solar system. Last week, they joined 9-12 students for an overnight trip to the
South Mountain YMCA Camp
.
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The Wednesday Weekly shares WMS news and events that are relevant to the families in our community.
Please send submissions to
wednesday-weekly@wmsde.org
by 4:30 p.m. on the Friday prior to the issue in which you wish to include your information. Content may be edited for length and style and may be held for a future issue due to space constraints.
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WWW.WMSDE.ORG
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