Nightingale Notes January 2016

February 10 Owl & Falcon Science Fair; 6:30 pm 15 President’s Day—NO SCHOOL

March 21-24 Owl, Falcon, Wing Explore Week 23 International Festival 6:45 @ Court

yard Marriott 25 Spring Break Begins—NO SCHOOL

“When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength.”

~ Maria Montessori

Charley Sleds Down the Hill. “No Hands!”

Lukas Takes Off! Wyatt Tries Snowboarding Charlie Is Doing It by Herself!

All NM Community Members are invit-

ed to join us to learn about Sensorial

Work in Montessori

A child’s first lessons are sensorial in which he is

mainly receiving information through his each of

his senses. Through this non-verbal instruction he

can research the foundational nature of the norms

of the world into which he was born. If these sen-

sorial experiences are specially controlled for spe-

cific outcomes, their educational value can be

guided. The outcome of methodical targeted sen-

sorial experiences would lead to the child’s ability

to finely discriminate and organize impressions

thereby increasing his exercise of judgment. Sub-

sequent learning is based on relevant distinctions

that allow a student to separate what is significant

and germane from a field of stimuli.

We meet every Tuesday from 3:30 to 5:30 at NM.

All are welcome to join us as we learn about the

Sensorial Work in Montessori

The NM International Festival

We have started our studies and activities that will lead to our grand celebration, The NM International Festival! All students will have a costume and many will share music,

dances and performances to help celebrate our global diversity. In the Chickadees and Eagles, we have began our preparations for our choir and dances. The Owls, Falcons and Wings travel down the road to the OPAI stu-dios to practice our dances, choir and a newly formed bucket band. Students will soon be invited to join culinary projects that will be part of the grand celebration. The NM Inter-national Festival will be March 24th at 6:30 PM at the Downtown Courtyard Marriott.

Bucket Band

In preparation for the International Festival, a group of Owls, Falcons and Wings are beginning practices for a bucket band. The students will prepare several cadences and pieces to perform at the festival. We will be practic-ing different rhythms, styles and methods as well as cer-tain cultural drumming traditions. Our drums are five gal-lon buckets and we have sticks made of dowel rods.

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From the Office

Thank You! A big thanks to John and Wilma Hicks, grand-parents of Wing, Jonathan Hannah, for the large donation of copy paper (reams and reams)!

Lost and Found

Please check out the Lost and Found Box locat-ed in the office. Our items needing claimed are overflowing our container.

Absences All excused absences must be documented. Documentation for excused absences must be maintained in the student file at Nightingale Montessori. Tardy hours are added to count for an absence. The sum of 6 tardy hours is equiva-lent to one day of absence.

The Montessori Science

Montessori invites teachers to become sci-entists in their investigation to see how stu-dents learn.

"We may define a scientist as one who has perceived something that leads to further investigation of the profound truths of life, and has lifted the veil which hid its fasci-nating secrets, and who in the pursuit of this knowledge has felt so passionate a love for the mysteries of nature that he forgets himself in his work. This is the type of man to whom nature reveals her secrets and crowns with the glory of discovery. " ---Maria Montessori

Here Montessori refers to the secrets of learning, and those of the preparations needed to be able to learn that characterize the Montessori Method at Nightingale Montessori.

A Learning Environment

Sharing a Story

Teaching a Lesson Individual Math Lessons

Teaching Language

where a child can settle down to work to that point where he feels awakening within himself the won-derful instinctive activity destined to build up his character and mind.

Olympia waters flowers.

Alaina explores through observation.

Montessori Discipline

Dr. Maria Montessori wrote: The more the capacity to concentrate is developed, the more often the profound tranquility in work is achieved, then the clearer will be the manifestation of discipline within the child. I would not be able to cite a single example of a conversion taking place without an interesting task that concentrates the child’s activities.

The Montessori method is not just a means of learn-ing concepts in a more developmentally appropriate and engaging manner - it is a means of acquiring in-ternal discipline. Rather than a system of rewards and punishments, Montessorians use the prepared environment to entice the children into engaging work.

Discipline will appear when the child has concen-trated his attention upon some object which attracts

him, and which makes possible not only useful exercise but the control of error.

It is a sloshing pitcher that tells a child to move more slowly. It is a coat falling off a hanger that tells a child that he forgot to zip the zipper. The task of the teacher is to create activities that cultivate this attention. These activities are marked by two distinct qualities: they require the child to coordinate his fine motor movements and they are reality based. Concentration is required to use the materials just because of their con-struction while controls of error within the activity call the child to engage his senses and mind rather than drifting off into fantasy.

At times Montessori says that teachers will need to recall the children. By this she meant for us to see the child as pos-sessing “powers which lie dormant.” The teacher sees the child as inherently good and capable, only need-ing to be awakened occasionally from sleep with a “voice or a thought.” Our goal is to provide a space and time

Layli puts away her work.

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Jayden washes fruit. Kylie finds her fingers.

Avery building the pink tower. Pier removes his gloves.

The Science of Water

After completing our work in carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores, we have begun work on understand-ing water. For this work, we are exploring the three states of matter (solid, liquid, and gas), the water cy-cle in our weather, and predicting the buoyancy of different objects. Using pennies as weight, we’ve also tested the storage capacity of small plastic vessels. Our next experiment will test the buoyancy of boats. We will make boats out of clay and test our different designs. We have also explored the behav-ior of food color in different water temperatures.

In studying the wa-ter cycle, we creat-ed “clouds” demon-strating the con-cepts of evapora-tion and condensa-tion. We were sur-prised to see how water can travel up as well as down.

Incorporating our outdoor environ-ment, we have tak-en ice indoors to see how quickly we can turn a solid (ice) into a liquid (water) into gas (water va-por).

Our next goal is un-derstanding how gas can have mass.

We cannot create observers by saying 'observe', but by giving them the power and the means for this observation and these means are procured through education of the senses.” ---Maria Montessori

Geography

We are continuing our exploration of North America this month with a study of Mexico. We learned how to say hello and good day in Spanish. We sang many songs, read stories and danced as we took in the Mexican culture. A favorite activity chosen is the building a Mayan pyramid. Another favorite activity came at the end of the week as we all tried our hands at the Mexican Hat Dance.

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Observing water vapor.

Studying North America.

Building the Mayan Pyramid.

Wyatt observes color in cold and

hot water.

Charley works on her

North American map.

Language

Many students have been working diligently on learning the next step in the Sound Shapes Pro-gram. While some students are just starting to learn beginning sounds, others are learning the phonemes of certain letters while tracing the sandpaper letters. Students learn to move the letters of the moveable alphabet to build words as a foundation before learning to read. Reading is practiced starting with the first set of readers. All of these levels re-quire the students to use their higher order thinking skills to apply their learned knowledge to meet the next challenge.

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Valentine’s Day - Optional Participation

The Chickadees will not be having a formal Valen-tine's Day party. However, if a child wishes to make Valentines to distribute they will be assisted in hand-ing them out on Friday, February 12th. We do not participate in using the commercially purchased ones. It is best for your child to sign each Valentine with their name and to not address them to individu-al students. This is not a required activity. Remember that we are a Smart Snack school if you wish to send an edible token.

Please do not send any commercially purchased Val-entine cards to school.

Thank you!

Lexie and Braeden using

sounds to build words

Austin builds a word.

Physical Education

During the Chickadee physical education program, we are learning which muscles we use for various exercises, the reason we stretch before and after we exercise, and why we need to get our heart rate up. We love to feel our heartbeat after a run or our biceps after working on pull ups, and concentrating on which muscles are being used when we stretch. We are learning how to follow the rules in a game and listen to instructions.

Besides typical exercises, we’ve explored an obsta-cle course, and played games - kickball and basketball. It’s amazing to see how much stronger our arms have gotten from when we first started exercising. Some of us couldn’t even get the ball as high as the hoop and now we are consistently making baskets.

With winter finally rolling in, our choices for working out are becoming a little more limited. We have been sledding and making snowmen. The rolling of the snow is strenuous and moving it up and down the meadow’s hill burns calories.

Please send your children’s winter clothes with their names on them. We’ve marked the gloves, hats and snow pants that belong to the school so if your child wears one of these items home, please send it back to school with them. __________________________________________

Math

The math area has been busy as we continue to de-velop our concepts. Fractions are the newest chal-lenge and we love taking the fraction apples apart and dis-covering equiva-lences as we see that two fourths make one half. We then see how we can put that with anoth-er half to make a whole apple.

Squaring Chains

Tristan is using the “nine chain” to study the won-ders of multiplication. Montessori designed the bead cabinet to provide a concrete method for chil-dren to explore the beauty and order of linear counting, skip counting, special numbers that create squares, and ultimately cubes. Working with each chain brings the child into this order and leads him on a path of successively longer chains that require increasing perseverance – a very nec-essary trait for lifelong habits of mind.

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Eagle Valentine Day celebration at NM

The Eagles have begun their traditional paper-making efforts using recycled paper scraps saved from other projects. They will assist the Chickadees in making a Valentine that will be taken home for a family member.

The Eagles will have many opportunities to ply their skills in making several different crafts for giving to their loved ones and friends. If you want to work at home with your child in creating cards for their classmates, we will acknowledge our community friendships on Friday, February 12. Remember that we are a Smart Snack school if you wish to send an edible token.

Please do not send any commercially purchased Val-entine cards to school.

Outside time at Nightingale

We consider the activities the children enjoy outside very important to their overall well being. If you want your child to remain inside for medical reasons, please notify us that day so we may honor this individual need. We have some snow pants , extra gloves and mittens to lend. We will be outside for shorter peri-ods if the weather is extremely cold. How to stay warm is a teachable opportunity.

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Janiya and Her Apple

One of the most important and invaluable things we can give a child is independence. Being responsible for oneself is empower-ing! Students are given many opportunities to do things for themselves here at Nightingale Montessori. Eagle, Janiya, decided she wanted to eat her apple in the form of slices. She attempted to use her hands to push the apple slicer down but found that to be very difficult. Janiya showed major independ-ence when she de-cided to emit more force another way and thought to use her forearms in-stead of asking for help. How exciting and exhilarating it was when the slicer made its way to the bottom of the ap-ple!

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see if the colors of the rainbow are different temperatures. These kinds of investigations helped pioneer astro-nomical spectrophotometry as a diag-nostic tool. Like Natalie, Herschel used prisms and temperature, but he was able to measure the wavelength distri-bution of stellar spectra actually giving him information about the atomic composition of the stars.

We are all seeking to relate how our research can have a real world impact. One of our major goals as scientists is to have our work improve the world around us with either innovation or proliferation of knowledge. Being able to relate our experiments to global is-sues empowers us to know we can have a positive impact on our world. Our realm of influence is small now but it will grow and grow based on our in-fluence.

Dental Dilemma

Eleni’s smile is our exhibit A for reminding us of the trials of Ea-gle-age growth. Eagles love fresh vegetables and fruits but have an extra challenge when it comes to enjoying their crisp textures. Carson is using our new spiralizer to create thinly sliced apples to conquer this obstacle. What fun, what sheer pleasure in biting into each juicy, wafer-thin slice! Parents, try this idea at home if you are packing lunches. Grated or thinly sliced fruits and vegeta-bles may be a way to ease your child’s pain when trying to eat with a slightly loose tooth. ____________________________________________

Science Fair

Owl Science Fair is progressing in the New Year. We are moving from the research and project develop-ment phase to the synthesis of our data into results and conclusions phase. Following the steps of the sci-entific method is an exercise in logic. Logic is a science in itself that deals with the principles and criteria of validity of inference and demonstration. The data we are collecting is coming from our observations and measurements. This data must be evaluated for er-rors to ensure that faulty information is not influenc-ing the results. The understanding and communica-tion of our findings require cognitive semiotics. We must do conceptual and textual analysis as well as experimental investigations.

Owl, Natalie, is experi-menting as Frederick Wil-liam Herschel did in the 1800s. Hershel was an as-tronomer and composer who proved the existence of infrared radiation using a prism and sunlight. Here, Natalie is experimenting to

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Observations and Reflections from the Owls The beginning of a new year gives us the chance to reflect on all of our accomplishments and focus on setting new goals. Fortunately, the Owls are always up for challenges and new experiences. One of the challenges we are tackling this session is the ability to become more accountable for our actions, reactions and use of time. We are also working to understand the importance of becoming more self-reliant. “I can do hard things,” is one of the mottos we are working to further internalize and embrace. With Science Fair fast approaching we are getting a great deal of prac-tice exploring these principles. We look forward to sharing all of our hard work during our Science Fair Presentation Night on February 10th @ 6:30 PM. We are very much in need of volunteer judges. Hope to see you there! ___________________________________________

Our Driving Question: Adolescence Around the World

The big driving question for the project based learning in the Falcon class in ses-sion three is Adolescence Around the

World. We will be learning about the science of adoles-cence (puberty, sexuality,

emotional and behavioral health); the history of adolescence in America (trends of teens in education, higher Ed, and the workforce); and coming of age traditions in other cultures (through cultural re-search and international pen pals). We are excited to share our work with you at the International Festival in March!

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Owl and Falcon Valentine’s Day

Instead of sharing cards or gifts with each other to cel-ebrate Valentine’s Day, Fal-con students will be mak-ing valentines to send to the families at Children’s Hospital in Dayton. Our

class has recently been given a donation of craft sup-plies which will be used for this activity. If your child would like to bring snacks to share with the class for Valentine’s Day, make sure they follow the Smart Snack guidelines determined by the USDA. Thank you! ____________________________________________

Connecting Our Studies to Our World

As the Falcons strive to make connections in our world to our studies, we visited the National Afro-American History Museum in Wilber-force, Ohio. We were able to see the pro-gression of Afro-American education through exhibits on

the campuses of Wilberforce and Central State Uni-versity as well as the history of sports programs in the Universities. We were deeply engaged through an exhibit that showed parallels between the Civil Rights Movement in the past and the current struggles of Black Americans. We learned about the Freedom Riders and the lessons were carried back to class where we spent several days expanding on this part of history and forming our own reflections on race relations in America. We also enjoyed an art exhibit that showcased art from high school students and we were invited to participate next year to add our own artwork. We were all moved by different art pieces presented in the Heritage Through Visual Rhythms Exhibit.

Springfield and the Civil War Era

To supplement our study of the Civil War and Under-ground Railroad, Falcons returned to the Springfield Heritage Center Museum for a special presentation developed just for our class’ interests. We heard from Betty Grimes, director of the Gammon House, a home in Springfield that was a stop in the Underground Rail-road and has been restored as a muse-um dedicated to the Gammon Family, who were free black business owners who risked their lives to be a safe haven, serving many fugitive slaves on their journey towards freedom. We also enjoyed finishing our tour of the museum, since we did not have time to complete it during our visit in the first quarter. This time, our tour guide focused on the city of Springfield during the Civil War era.

Brandon and Jahvon work on Science Fair data.

Brandon and Nathan Work on Science Fair Experiments.

Service in our Community

In our ongoing effort to educate our students beyond the classroom and to increase their Habits of Mind (thinking interdependently, remaining open to con-tinuous learning, persistence, and understanding and empathy) the Falcons chose a service opportunity with The Rainbow Table.

The Rainbow Table is a faith based food provider that serves a hot to meal to those in need. The stu-dents were led through food preparation for over 100 people (persistence), distributing goods (thinking interdependently) and serving people from the com-munity (understanding and empathy). The students have decided this should be a weekly experience so we plan to serve in small groups of five every Friday.

Gabriel studies decimal place value.

Science

We continued investigations of electrons (atomic particles) by conducting a series of experiments building circuits to discover the properties of elec-tricity. We used an online simulation to further our lab experiences. We learn better and retain more when we are engaged through inquiry, investigation and application. These challenges give us control of and responsibility for our own learning.

A virtual learning environment provides real-world situations we would not otherwise have access to. Multiple modalities of instruction and facilitated col-laborative activities are outlet to support all learning levels. We help each other see interconnections among the concepts and share multiple perspec-tives.

We studied the electrical infrastructure of a chosen country. This was one aspect of the research we conducted working to answer our Big Driving Ques-tion, ”Why wars, resources and revolutions are often related”, the foundation of our Project Based Learning. The source of the electricity was exam-ined and we charted the results. The current use and availability of resources around the world was con-trasted to the historical uses and the dynamics of the changes in resource acquisition and allocation was then used to support our thesis.

Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand. -- Chinese Proverb

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Collaboration.

Laboratory work. Jett works on hydropower

water wheel.

Designing and building turbines.

Valentine’s Day

In the Wing class we will not in-tentionally celebrate Valentine's Day as a class. If a student would like to bring in valentines for the whole class they may do so and pass them out at lunch. If they have valentines for certain friends but not the whole class they may give them privately and discreetly before or after school. If any student would like to include some sort of food for the whole class please Smart Snack guide-lines.

Our Studies

The Wings just finished their session two projects and presentations that sought to answer, “How do wars, revolutions and resources relate?”. The pro-jects were based on different countries and several students have chosen to preserve their projects to share at the International Festival.

Session three brings a new driving question and a new class project. Our big driving question is, "How has a transient culture like the Romani survived without political borders or protection?" The Roma-ni are a people group more commonly known by the term "Gypsies," which is actually considered a derog-atory term now due to persecution and killings of Romani in the 20th Century. This question seeks to build upon last session’s focus on countries and land masses by now looking at a culture that has survived in tiny pockets spread across various continents de-spite many obstacles. The Wings hope to present a performance based on Romani culture for the Inter-national Festival.

Seth Presents Germany

Mary Presents Korea