Fall Comes to Foothills
Fall is in the air, vegetables are in the garden, and the classrooms are filled with activity.
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Foothills Montessori School is a private Montessori school serving families in Henderson, Las Vegas and Southern Nevada.
Helping Gardens Grow
FMS is getting ready to expand its garden area this year, thanks to the help of our wonderful staff, parents and students. We are planning to build new planter boxes (thanks to the gracious assistance of a few FMS fathers); fix the sprinklers; and start planting! One of our elementary teachers, Ms. April, is spearheading this exciting new development with the hopes of teaching the children more about nutrition, health and the natural environment. If you would like to get involved, please contact her at ap***@fo*****************.com. We really have some amazing, knowledgeable and proactive parents in our community and we can’t thank you enough.
This week, middle school students got involved by cleaning out the garden and researching best planting practices. On their classroom blog, E4 writes:
“Thank you to Middle school friends for researching and cleaning our garden! After finding out some facts about the plants in our courtyard boxes, they cleaned and cut back tomatoes, peppers, and sunflowers. Next, they provided us with a list of plant information. We are preparing to build more planters and add more sprinklers. Now we know we can always turn to our middle school students for knowledge and assistance! It was interesting to learn how to care for sunflowers and tomatoes. Here are some helpful hints:
- We should use distilled or rain water for sunflowers because other types of water can be poisonous to the flower.
- They need at least two feet of space to grow
- They need to be watered every other day
- If the flower is dead, cut the head off then uproot it
- Tomatoes need deep soil so the plant’s roots can hold it upright
- If you don’t prune tomatoes regularly, the plants will develop extra branches called suckers. Suckers take away energy from the plant.”
Stay tuned for more garden expansion updates!
Foothills Montessori School is a private Montessori school serving families in Henderson, Las Vegas and Southern Nevada.
Sunflowers and Dream Jobs
Last week, our middle school students explored different career options and spent some time in the gardens. Here are their thoughts:
Rochelle: This week I learned that sunflowers grow toward the sun, so if you put them in shade they will most likely fall over.
Ian: This week I found some tips on taking care of sunflowers, like putting them in direct sunlight and to water them with distilled water.
Olivia: I have grown an interest in architecture after doing my project, which was drawing a layout of a house and the rooms inside it.
Logan: I have always been interested in skyscraper architecture and during this assignment I was able to design my own skyscraper and learn how they are built.
Nicole: I chose interior design because I love decorating different kinds of things, especially rooms because I can make them my own.
Erin: After going to the optometrist this weekend, I began to have a sudden liking for the job. I made a graph about our class to see how many kids go to the optometrist.
Matthew: I tried doing a police officer’s job by checking fingerprints and learning about the crime rate in Nevada. I was surprised at how difficult it was finding out whose fingerprint was whose. Police officers have a hard job.
Benjamin: I chose microcomputer programmers because it has always interested me to create a new program for the computer. I coded a history quiz game for my project.
Paulina: I chose zoology because I really like animals and I thought it would be interesting. Some of the branches of zoology are shown in my project, including cetology, the study of whales and cynology, the study of dogs.
Hayden: I learned that plumbers would do water throughout the whole house. Anything that involves the sink or anything similar to that is what they fix.
Sofia: I learned about two careers, first the different types of photography and then dentistry. My collage shows the different types of careers in photography.
Kyla: I learned that once tomato plants are overgrown, it doesn’t make a difference if you trim them, and the ones we removed were hard to pull out because they had so many roots.
Brennan: I learned a lot of cool stuff about programming and I have always liked computers, so this is a career I might be interested in.
Maddie: I learned that if you don’t prune tomatoes regularly, the plant will develop extra branches called suckers that take away the plant’s energy.
Bella: I learned that you need to plant the plants in deep soil so that the roots can spread out and the plant won’t fall over.
Talia: With a love for styling, making the room of my dreams will be a project to remember.
Sondra: With the thoughts of a designer, I took the time to make the room of my choice.
Also, E1 Student blogger Bella explains about the upcoming FMS World History Day:
“Every year we have done International Children’s Day and it has been a great experience, but we wanted to try something new this year so we came up with World History Day. World History Day is instead of going into different states and countries the kids will go into a different time period. The same thing with the costumes: The kids still get to dress up, but this time instead of dressing up as a person from around the world their going to dress up from a different time era. The way it works is the younger kids are going to be doing the invertebrates to the age of mammals and then it goes all the way up to the middle ages in upper elementary. This is a way for children to learn about the timeline of history and get a feel of what it was like. I believe that is a great change for our school and it will help children develop and learn about the different time periods.
After World History Day is over all of Middle School is going to do a miniature parade in order. The kids are going to walk through and look at our booths and see such things as The Age of the Invertebrates, The Age of Fishes and Amphibians, the Age of the Reptiles, the Age of the Mammals, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Ancient India, The Middle Ages, and finally the Renaissance. At the end of World History Day I hope that kids will find a better understanding of history and what it has come to be since the beginning of life.”
Thank you to E1 for this blog — read more here! (FMS Parents only).
Foothills Montessori School is a private Montessori school serving families in Henderson, Las Vegas and Southern Nevada.