Congratulations to Kaylee for receiving Best in Show at the CMS Iris Show! And Thank you to Erin Chien and Jean Morris who led the design workshop for our students and coordinated the show. This year was our largest group of student participants and many families and community members joined us. Here are a few photos from the event:
T3 is off to a great start with a visit to the Land Campus. Students spent their time searching and exploring for limbs to use for their next micro-economy project (Montessori-inspired educational toys). The AP Winter Market Days will be held after school Wednesday and Friday next week (3 to 4 pm). Hope to see you there!
Today, the adolescents presented group projects to their parents and the Elementary and Primary classrooms of CMS. Students shared the experience and knowledge they acquired in their studies of Ancient African Kingdoms and computer programming with Raspberry Pi computers as well as the process of design and creation. While it is not possible to share all of their work from the second trimester in only one hour, the students crafted and delivered an informative and entertaining presentation. There was quite the buzz among the elementary students that were engaged in learning about the work of the adolescents. Well done, adolescents!
Today, we had the first draft of our humanities research paper due. Every trimester we bring two copies of our papers to be edited by our peers in a peer-edit session. We are also required to write a memo with questions, suggestions, and comments for our editors. Each editor has a checklist. We are looking for a thesis, proper grammar, punctuation and all the things you need for a nice research paper (introduction, body, and conclusion). Our papers need to meet the requirements and have in-text citations. We use color markers to edit. We will turn in our final copy next week.
-KM
We started this week off with a classic current events discussion. Monday and Tuesday were pretty average days, but that was as average as the week got. From Wednesday on it got exciting!
Wednesday was a great expressions day. From the grasses we harvested last week at our land campus, we attempted to make baskets. Some students weaved the grasses together to create a placemat or coaster, while others coiled the grass with string to make a small basket. You may see these grasses at the Winter Market Day!
Meanwhile, some students watched a play based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as a follow up from reading the play aloud. We also had our third discussion of the book, Life of Pi by Yann Martel. In the afternoon, to end the day, we walked the course of the Candy Cane Dash event that was later this week and prepared for it by assigning roles.
This Thursday, our class went on a going out to learn about African art at the St. Louis Art Museum. At first, we explored some other art in the museum. This included ancient Mesopotamian pots, medieval armor, 1970’s architectural chairs, and contemporary paintings. One interesting artist (Kehinde Wiley) replaced historical depictions of white figures with images of contemporary African-Americans from North St. Louis and Ferguson. The people posed in the same positions as the people in the old paintings. He then painted their photographs with patterns of flowers in the background.
The African art talk we went to was also very fun. The curator of the African art, who was also the speaker, spoke mostly about the gods and goddesses of the Yoruba culture, and the exhibit presented was about Yoruba artwork. Here are some cool facts we learned about the Yoruba people. They believe that people have two heads: The outer head of which people can see, and, more importantly, the inner head where people receive wisdom. They put these ideas into their art using big eyes. Big eyes symbolize a very wise inner head.
Later on Thursday, we also had our first Occupations seminar. We discussed opinions on self-driving cars, robotic animals, Artificial Intelligence, and the engineering workforce.
On Friday, we went to the CMS gym for some PE in the morning. The activities included dodgeball, bean bag tag, and basketball. Everyone participated in the fun and successfully got rid of their excess energy so that we could take the rest of the day seriously. After PE we walked and marked the course for the Candy Cane Dash, preparing for later in the day. It was a wet walk and some of us stayed behind but everyone who marked the course completed their task!
-AMP & ER
12 weeks goes by fast when you are having fun.
Trimester 1 Presentation Day!
Restoration at the Land Campus (native plants, salamanders, toads, birds, butterflies, and bees)
Inequalities, math pathways, and seminar
Market Days (tables, windchimes, black-walnut coasters, candles, and apple butter)
Edmund A. Babler State Park Overnight
Scary stories (Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Monkey’s Paw, Three Skeleton Key, Sleepy Hollow, The Little Mermaid, The Pit and the Pendulum)
Time to reflect, relax, engage, and enjoy the company of others
Energy (farms, life, flow/transfer, photosynthesis)
Research papers (religion, geography/climate, trade, astrology, time, military, civilization, writing, medicine)
Mathematics: “What’s going on in this graph?”, dot plots/bar graphs, binomial cube, fourth power of a binomial, mean, median, and mode, box plots, 5-number summaries, and more!
Language: Verb-agreement exercises, writing and identifying thesis statements, themes in works of literature, dialogue as a tool for characterization, dialogue skits, parts of speech quizzes.
Humanities: Defining humanities, defining a civilization, introduction to the humanities timelines, introduction to Ancient Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia seminar, current events
Expressions/ Occupations: Winslow’s Farm visit, American Iris Society introduction (Thanks Erin and Jean!), Bush Honeysuckle table construction (Thanks Dale Dufer!), AP Inc. marketing and advertising for the Grillfest
Committee work: CMSAP compost program, GTC garden planning, Land School field guide/plant identification, Pink Tower Button quote, yearbook and technology
Mathematics: Bar graphs and dot plots, five-number summaries and box plots, Math Seminar, solving quadratics, mathematicians of early astronomy
Occupations: Introduction to prairies at Shaw Nature Reserve, The properties of water, Why is the Earth Habitable? seminar, Snowball Earth discussion, Habitat Earth
Humanities: Tips for choosing a research topic
Language: Transition worlds, future world creative writing, Fahrenheit 451 vocabulary and discussion
Micro-economy: Compost!, Fertile Farm Sale prep, famous entrepreneurs
Community: Montessori Adolescent Program (MAP) Meet Up & scavenger hunt at the Land
Chesterfield Montessori Adolescent Program 