Garinim 

This has been a week of celebrations in Garinim!  On Monday we started off the week by celebrating Pierre’s 3rd birthday and then on Thursday we celebrated Benjamin’s 3rd birthday.  Thank you so much to their families for sending in such yummy treats to help us celebrate!  We were also so excited to welcome tiny little caterpillars into our classroom this week.  We have really enjoyed watching them crawl around their cup and see how much they have grown every day.  This gave us the opportunity to talk about the lifecycle of a butterfly and we are anxiously anticipating all of the next stages. There are cards out with the stages of the butterfly and we have enjoyed reviewing them and trying to put them in the proper order and match them to learn the vocabulary of the different stages.  We introduced the sound “b” this week because it starts bugs and butterflies, and have enjoyed feeling the sandpaper letter and checking out all the items in our basket.  These included a button, bell, brush, bear, bus, box and more.  We played a couple of games with these objects at circle time which we all enjoyed.  We have worked together to complete floor puzzles and worked independently strengthening our fine motor skills.  We braved the wind and enjoyed lots of sunshine this week as well.  We can’t wait to see what the caterpillars look like on Monday when we come back!

 

Alim

This week we finished our beautiful gifts for Mother’s Day!!  We have visitors in our classroom…CATERPILLARS!!!!!  (in a container ;) The children have been watching them grow.  The Caterpillars are moving around and getting bigger.  The children are always watching and making observations on what they are doing.  We discussed the Life Cycle of the Butterfly.  There are new materials with Butterflies for the children to explore.  The Sound of the Week was “Ll”.  We read the alphatale book called The Lamb who Loved to Laugh. Also, there are worksheets available for the children to practice the sound association and letter formation.  

 

Alim Judaics  We returned after Passover with counting the Omer - starting with the 2nd day of Passover - we are counting daily in English and in Hebrew for 49 days until the day before Shavuot.  We enjoyed watching a mini Youtube video about counting the Omer and learned a fun new song where we would shout out today’s number - Day 12/ shtayim esre.  Each day a different student is asked to place a sticker on the Mt. Sinai/ Omer Poster - which finds the 10 Commandments at the top.

- We are excited to learn about our Homeland, Israel and read many wonderful books about Israel - the land, people, weather and traditions.  Today we read PJ Library’s book, First Rain.

Alim Shabbat  - We celebrated with singing and Dancing to many of our favorite Shabbot tunes like “I’ve got a Shabbat Feeling”, ‘Shabbat Bamba’ and we ‘Put a chicken in the pot’ - pretending to make our own Class recipe for Chicken soup and Matzoh balls. 

*Momo and Denny* were the Shabbat helpers this week- lighting the candles and saying the prayers.

We read a beautiful book after the Fiddler on the Roof movie’s song, ‘Sunrise, Sunset’. Such a nice story. 

 

Keshet

We returned to school after Passover and immediately took up the Counting of the Omer (counting each day from the second day of Passover through to Shavuot - a total of 49 days / 7 weeks, marking the time from the exodus and travels through the desert to the point at which Moses ascends Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments.) Each morning at group time we recite the bracha (prayer) and recognise the day, by number - and add one more ‘stone’ to our ‘Mount Sinai’. 

We’ve completed our exploration of the solar system - mostly the planets, each accompanied by an artistic component,  a different art technique explored for each planet.  The large mobile will come home early next week and though we tried our best, you may need to adjust things a little to fit your space (!) 

We put on garden gloves and cleared out our garden planters, now waiting for the last of the cold mornings.  We started planting some seeds indoors- mostly herbs, in little containers and will water and watch them sprout and grow. The plan is to eventually transfer the little plants to larger containers in our outdoor garden.  A big thank you to Audra’s family for contributing towards this project! More vegetables and flowers will be planted directly outdoors once we are over this cold spell. 

We have started talking about Israel and about the Zionists who arrived with big hearts, and strength and determination to turn the mostly dry and desert land into the thriving country that it is today.  Yom Ha’atzmaut is on Thursday and we will be participating with the rest of the school in Israeli fun activities. 

Just in time for the weekend, our tube of ladybug larvae arrived (a week earlier than scheduled!) and as the ladybug habitat is yet to be delivered, we fashioned our own, piercing tiny holes in a clear container and added pieces of wood and leaves, and a little wet sponge all neatly arranged in place. Now we watch and wait… 

 

Keshet Yoga Yeladim -   It’s an Earth Day celebration - with a Jewish twist on caring for our Earth and ‘Tikkun Olam’.  We talked about the 3 R’s - reduce, reuse & recycle and acted out a short story through yoga about cleaning up the Park.  Lots of fun balancing in our TREE (Etz Chaim) poses of course and so much more….

 

See this week’s photos https://photos.app.goo.gl/PPF3gSL56jsNiSbM9