Thursday, May 2

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty fun day today. In the morning, we learned more about Peru, and watched videos on the Incan Empire and Machu Picchu. Then, the class worked together to build their own "city in the clouds" with materials from around the classroom. The purpose of this activity was to appreciate how amazingly difficult it would've been for the Incas to build their city at the top of a mountain, without any modern technology - not even the wheel!

Believe it or not, the whole thing was cleaned up in about 7 minutes.

After that, we did some division word problems. The students came up with their own examples, and solved them.

In the afternoon, we learned about the Montessori concept of Cosmic Education. 

Basically, this is the idea that everything in the world, and by extension the universe, is connected, on some level. Sometimes that connection is so seemingly insignificant, but its always there. We used the example of a bad day at school. Obviously it affects all the kids in our class. But often, after a bad day, we'll negatively impact our families at home with our bad moods, which in turn may impact people they interact with, and before you know it, our bad day is impacting people who have no idea who are. That's the idea of cosmic education. 

Thankfully it is also true for positive impacts we can have. We used a ball of yarn to show how we can uplift our peers, which often creates a ripple effect that goes well beyond the classroom.

We ended our day by practicing speeches. Tomorrow, the students will do some presenting!

Have a nice night,

Zac