Garinim

Monday, we celebrated Eliot‘s third birthday. Eliot’s mom, dad, brother Aviv and Savta joined our classroom celebration! They also brought in yummy cupcakes.

This week we focused on health & safety, and doctors and hospitals! We read many books about ways to keep our body healthy and safe, such as eating lots of different foods, washing our hands, catching sneezes and coughs in our elbow, staying home when we are sick, getting enough sleep, exercising, and practicing mindfulness. We also read books about hospitals and ambulances, and about visiting the doctor. Some of the children have even had recent doctor visits and could share a little bit about what happened there. 

We also reviewed handwashing, the importance of drinking lots of water/mayim(we had a pitcher of water for each child to pour water into a cup), getting exercise and care of self (blowing our noses using a mirror) followed up by washing our hands/ yada’im!

We had so much fun crab walking and bear stomping this week. We danced to a silly song about our bodies/gufim, shtai/two hands, arms, legs, and wiggled our entire body. We have been practicing walking in a line in our classroom and in the hallway. 

In art we have been cutting and tearing paper into different shapes to create a healthy salad! This activity allows the children to use their imagination by choosing what vegetables they may want to add: lettuce, carrots, olives or tomatoes! The children were also able to use snowman shaped frozen ice cubes to create a watercolor painting!  used an old fashioned egg beater to blend soap flakes and water to see how many bubbles we could make!

In art we have been cutting and tearing paper into different shapes to create a healthy salad! This activity allows the children to use their imagination by choosing what vegetables they may want to add: lettuce, carrots, olives or tomatoes! The children were also able to use snowman shaped frozen ice cubes to create a watercolor painting!  used an old fashioned egg beater to blend soap flakes and water to see how many bubbles we could make!

On Wednesday we had a very special guest visit our classroom! Doctor Martin came to talk with us about ways to keep safe and healthy, and about what a doctor does to help us stay healthy as well. He brought LOTS of cool things in his very big bag, and the children loved getting to touch and hold them. There were lots of different healthy foods, helmets that keep us safe when we ride a bike, sunscreen to help keep us safe in the sun, and doctors' tools like bandages, a stethoscope, and an otoscope. The children did an excellent job listening to what Doctor Martin had to say and really enjoyed his visit. 

On Thursday we had music with Morah Dawn. It was our very last day with the Boomwhackers! The children reviewed the solfege scale, and played another song with the instruments! This time they got to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The children did an amazing job! We're sad to see the Boomwhackers go, but excited to see what Morah Dawn brings for us next week!!

This week we made yummy challah! Our sous chefs added all the ingredients to a large bowl. We counted in Hebrew and in English how many cups of flour and named all the items that we add to the bowl in both languages.

Hurray for Shabbat even though we had a snow day this shavuah/week, we had a very busy week. We began our morning off by singing our way down to the chapel. The Parshah Hashavuah is Terumah which means offering. Morah Lana told us how Hashem told Moshe and the Hebrew people to make 

a portable sanctuary for the people to carry throughout their journey in the desert . Ask your child what they contributed to the Mishkan/sanctuary.

We hope everyone will have a wonderful short winter break! When we return on Thursday, we will start learning about teeth and visiting the dentist.

Alim

This week we talked about health and safety for the children.  We talked about ways to care for ourselves to keep us healthy and ways to make us safe.

On Monday,  the discussion was about how to keep ourselves healthy.  Some kids said taking a bath, brushing their hair, eating fruits and vegetables and brushing our teeth.  There was a dental model for the children to practice brushing teeth in practical life.  We had a new Sound of the week “Rr”.  We read an Alphatale story called Rosie Rabbit’s Radish.  There were new sound association worksheets for the "Rr" and letter formation sheets for them to practice. 

On Tuesday,  we had our snow day. No school. 

On Wednesday,  we talked about what we did on our day off.  Some children mentioned that they played with their siblings in the snow.  We pretended to fly down to South America and visit that continent.  Their Passports got stamped at the airport.  There were South America maps that the children could color and hole punch the continent of South America. Also, we had a wonderful visit from Dr. Martin who is a pediatrician.  He came into the classroom to discuss ways of keeping our bodies safe like using helmets and seatbelts. He talked about eating the right foods.  He was very sweet and engaged well with the children. 

On Thursday, we had a nice visit from Morah Dawn.  The kids did a chorus on the BOOM Sticks.  They sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with the boom sticks.  

On Friday, we went down to the chapel to enjoy the Shabat songs with Morah Lana.  We blessed the Challah and had grape juice.  The Shabbat box went home with Ellie and her family over our short winter break.   

Alim Judaics  We  had such a fun filled week! The theme was Health and Safety and it included a special guest, Dr. Martin who came in on Wednesday to talk about health and healthy habits. We had a great time!

We learned how to say in Hebrew:

Brushing teeth- letzhachtzach shinaim

Wash face- shotef panei

Shower- hitkaleach

Car seat- kisseh betichot

Vaccination- chisum

Fire drill- tagil esh.

We read the books Shani’s Shoebox by Rinat Hoffer and Shabat can Be by Raymond A. Zwering.

The class also watched a video on road safety by the Jewish Learning Junction.

Today we celebrated Shabbat with our Montessori friends, listened and participated in the parsha and came back to the classroom for a tasty kiddush.

Anafim

What a fun week we had.  This week we wrapped up our Human body unit.  Monday we were busy working in our classroom.  The children are really enjoying diving deeper into many of our Montessori activities.  In gym class we played the new 4 corners again.  We were so excited to run around the gym!

Tuesday was a snow day!! We hope you all enjoyed getting outside and playing in the snow.

We came back full of excitement about the previous day's snowfall on Wednesday.  We were all so excited to share what we did on the snow day and how much fun they had out in the snow.  After a brief work period we gathered back on the rug and welcomed Dr. Martin into our classroom.  He is a local pediatrician who came in to talk about ways we can stay healthy.  He brought lots of examples of healthy food, sunscreen, helmets, and more.  He also brought a stethoscope, otoscope, and bandages and listened to some hearts and lungs, looked in mouths and ears, and showed us how arms can be wrapped up if they are injured.  We had so much fun listening to what he had to say and asking him some questions.  After it was time to say goodbye we had a bit more time to work and this week was again a challah week for our classroom and so we whipped up the dough before heading outside to play in the snow.  The children were so excited to play in all the fresh snow.

Thursday we enjoyed rolling and braiding and baking our challah dough.  We also enjoyed our last week using the boomwhackers with Morah Dawn.  This week we played twinkle twinkle little star with them.  We really had to focus to play our notes at the appropriate time while also singing along but the children did great with this challenge.  We also tried playing a couple of the notes together to create chords.  This was so cool to try out.  Morah Dawn told us that this was the last week we would be working with the boom whackers and next week we would be moving on and the children were so excited to try to guess what we would be doing next. 

Friday we had a wonderful time down in the chapel with our Montessori friends.  We heard all about where they kept those wonderful rules or commandments.  We heard all about how the mishkan (ark) was constructed and how it was adorned with precious metals, fabrics and jewels.  We also saw how they carried it around since they were not settled in one place.  Once back in the classroom we were joined by RJ’s parents to celebrate his 5th birthday.  We enjoyed a Montessori birthday celebration and then had a lovely Shabbat and birthday snack. 

We hope you all have a lovely long weekend.  School is closed Monday- Wednesday and reopens on Thursday.  We will start talking about dentists and teeth!

Keshet

Outside time has been sooooo much fun!!! With all their snow gear the Keshet kids climbed ‘mountains’, made snowpeople and threw snowballs (but NOT at one another:) 

Back in the classroom we learned the ‘Build a Little Snowman’ poem and created puzzles by cutting the poem into phrase strips and practiced reading and putting it back together. 

We’re reinforcing math concepts, in addition and subtraction, using picture stories, number lines, number bonds and 10 bars.  We continue to practice with the clock, some working on O’clock and half past, others working on quarter after or the more detailed increments. 

In English we are exploring parts of speech, labeling ‘doing words’ (verbs) and ‘names of people, places or things’ (nouns).  I think they are mostly getting the idea of this, working in pairs and helping one another as they read sentence strips.  

On Wednesday Dr. Martin (Gad) visited to talk about health and safety and brought in (amongst lots of healthy fruit and vegetables) bicycle helmets and life vests.  The children wondered why Dr. Martin would have Morah Lana’s helmet in his bag, and in true 5-6 year old style, when it came to question time, giggled and asked if he was really Morah Lana’s husband?  They really enjoyed lining up to have their ears, tongues and heart checked.

They are labeling Mr. Bones, our classroom skeleton, and learning about the senses, with Montessori activities to go with this, including the Smell Bottles. They learned about the brain, in association with eyesight, hearing, muscles and how everything works together. 

On Thursday we celebrated Ivri’s 6th birthday and we all know about the uterus, the umbilical cord, and the amniotic fluid!  We almost got to hear Ivri’s mom sing Happy Birthday in Arabic… and then we got caught up in cupcake delight and forgot all about it (!) The children wrote beautiful detailed messages to Ivri - helpful when the birthday is celebrated later in the school year and they’ve had practice in writing.  Adorable written messages -so cute!

In music this week the Keshet kids learned about Chinese musical instruments and listened to peaceful Chinese music.  They also took turns playing the gong, with deliberate precision! See this week’s pictures here 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/AEzgfADrnkN7iVwD8