Once An Axolotl

Once an Axolotl, always an Axolotl. One of the things I love about teaching at a Montessori school is that our multi-age family quickly becomes a family. After being together with the same teacher and most of the same classmates, I hope that children feel like our classroom is their home away from home.

We continue to have visits from former Axolotl students. While I have been teaching since the Clinton Administration, and some of my earliest students now have their own kids, my first CLASS at J.J. Hill (Now Obama Montessori) is currently in 6th grade as of 2026.

With this in mind, we are starting a new section called Once An Axolotl, a section about current happenings in the Axolotl classroom. We will feature first names only, photos of student work but not student's faces, and hopefully, many entries written by students themselves.

Wednesday, January 14th

Vinny and Trey have been so excited about the start of the NFL playoffs that they have made a poster of the playoff bracket that they are updating weekly. Mr. Peter is hoping for the Bills vs Da Bears in the Superbowl while Vinny has picked the LA RAMS to go all the way.

Harriet and Harrison continue to investigate and educate about the wonders of the periodic table. Some projects that all students are working on this week: finishing up FAST reading tests and HMH Math tests, writing book reviews, choosing biography research projects, and completing their weekly Math Buzz work. We have had whole class lessons on equations and number sentences. Younger students are working on Fact Families and memorization of addition / subtraction facts while older students are working on the same for multiplication and division.

Given, the state of the world and current events in Minneapolis - St. Paul it seems like a good time to talk about civil rights. As we move towards the end of February, we will be making a whole class timeline of the civil rights movement.

Here are some videos that we watched and discussed in the first 2 weeks of January, 2026 :