Garinim

This week we continued to learn about the human body while focusing a bit more on our five senses!

Two sensorial works that were introduced for exactly that were a sensory touch matching game, where the children felt different textures on each piece and then had to match the texture to the corresponding one on the board, and the Montessori sound cylinders, which were presented at our morning circle time and were very popular! 

The sound cylinders can be used in different ways, but the Garinim children were shown how to use them in a grading activity, arranging them from the softest to the loudest sound. First they shake the cylinder, then another, to see which is louder or softer, and begin to create a gradient. This requires going back often to see where to place a new cylinder, and sometimes the sounds can be very close! It took some children a lot of focus and shaking each one close to their ear again and again to really make a determination. Afterward, we check our work by first shaking each cylinder in order to see if it sounds like it's going from softest to loudest, then checking the color on the bottom of the cylinder- if we've done it right, they will make a rainbow!

The children were also introduced to a body labeling matching activity on our math and science shelf, with some familiar words like eye and leg, and some slightly trickier ones like elbow.

On our art shelf the children were provided with a blank body coloring page, various skin colored markers, colored pencils in all colors, and a hand mirror, for self portraits. They were encouraged to look in the mirror and determine what color their skin, hair, and eyes were, so they could fill in the body and face accordingly, then add some clothes and anything else they wanted! 

The theme of the week was again all about our body/guf, but with the focus on our senses. On Monday some of the children tasted a very sour lemon. The children discovered how we taste with our tongues/lashon. Some of our pictures this week you will see their funny sour faces/panim!

In our Art Center a project was created for our budding artists to use rough, soft, ribbed and hard materials that they glued to cardstock. The children were able to squish and make swirls with their index finger or smooth out a very colorful bag filled with shaving cream and blue/kachol food dye. Added to our playdough were six smooth stones and four cinnamon sticks. Many of the children thought that they were birthday candles, so we heard many renditions of the birthday song!

In the Sensorial table we added two different colored rice. The children could scoop it up with their hands/yada’yim and feel the smooth but prickly texture of the rice. Real ceramic cups, pitchers and metal spoons were added to this activity.

The other Montessori classrooms, Alim and Anafim were responsible for making challah this week! Boy what a treat to have a week off and we are looking forward to a challah tasting/ ta’ima ! We know it will be tasty/ta’im!

We sang the aleph bet song together and some of the children were very excited to point to some of the letters in Hebrew corresponding to their names or of course, aleph for Abba! (Sorry ema’s)

We went to the chapel on Friday! We had so much fun singing Shabbat songs really loudly down the hallway and in the chapel. Morah Lana sang challah in the baker’s shop, which is definitely a favorite for our Garinim! Morah Lana explained to us all about the Parshah Hashavuah, (the weekly Torah portion) which is Mishpatim. She explained that speaking kindly to one another and spreading kindness is so very important especially when we are playing on the playground. Such as, if one friend has a toy and another friend grabs at that toy… what happens? Ask your child if they remember the remainder of the lesson. We briefly touched on helping others and doing Mitzvot! All the yeladim/children were my Mitzvah makers! Today we also had a smelling presentation!!! It was fun letting our noses do some of the work! (Even though some of us mistook our mouth/peh for our nose/aff) We sniffed saffron threads, lavender and vanilla extract. Ira, Daniel, Ella, Razi and Eliot loved all three scents! Aurelia only liked the lavender! Well everyone has their own opinions and we respect those choices! 

Alim-

This week we continued talking about the human body and continued our discussion with North America in Geography. 

On Monday, we talked about the human body specifically on the five senses. We discussed how we use our five senses to find out about the world around us. The new Sound of the Week was “Yy”.  We read the Alphatale book called The Yak who yelled the Yuck.  There were new letter formation worksheets and sound association worksheets for the sound of the week. Also,  we went down to the gym to play a variation of Four Corners with Coach Oren.  The kids had fun doing that. 

 

On Tuesday,  we talked more about Geography. We talked about our visit to NORTH AMERICA.  We all got on a pretend airplane and visited the different countries in this continent. The children all were given passports for our world traveling trip we plan on doing in the several weeks ahead.  We got our passports stamped for the continent of North America :)  Also, we started a new project of world map making.  Some children started hole punching the continent of North America so they eventually will do all 7 continents to complete their own world map.  

 

On Wednesday, we had a busy work day in the classroom.

 

On Thursday, we talked more about our five senses during our morning meeting again.  Also, the children were shown a world atlas and we focused on the North America portion.  The book was very nicely illustrated.   

 

On Friday, we went down to the temple and enjoyed the Shabbat songs with Morah Lana and the rest of the Montessori children.  We blessed our Challah and had yummy grape juice.  We went to visit Lollipop the pony in the gym to say hi.  This pony was very sweet. The Shabbat box went home with Lily.

Alim Judaics  Sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. We talked about our five senses and how that even relates to the Torah. We learned how to count in Hebrew until five and extended it  to ten. 

The first song we learned is called Chamishim Hachushim (The five senses song by Chaya Mushka). The song also relates the body parts with the senses.

The class discussed and found examples of the five senses in the Torah and Jewish holidays. The song Five Senses by The Kiboomers was a fun way to relate to our topic. 

As we made our challah dough and braided it, the children were relating the smell of the dough to their sense of smell, the texture of the dough and the flour to the sense of touch. 

Towards the end of the week we learned two more songs: Af, Pe, Ozen by Jeff Klepper and I Got my 5 Senses by the Torah Tots.

Today we joined our friends in the sanctuary and learned about kindness and good manners. To top it off we got a special visitor named Lollipop. It was a very cute Sus (horse) and we ALL enjoyed meeting and petting her.

Shabat Shalom! 

 

Anafim

The sun was shining this week and the brightness carried into our classroom.  We continued on learning about the human body this week.  We read several books about the blood in our body and even had a chance to “look” at the blood in our bodies.  We went into a dark area of our classroom with a flashlight and then one by one held a flashlight behind our hand and were able to see the blood in our fingers.  The children were quite excited about this.  In one of our books it was also suggested to look in a mirror and shine a flashlight into your open mouth and you would be able to see the blood in your mouth.  This would be a fun activity to try at home with your child! 

Monday during gym class we played a different version of four corners.  This time we moved together as a group!  Each corner of the gym was assigned a number and a shape.  Coach Oren stood in the middle and called out either a number or a shape and we as a group moved to that corner.  He did get a little tricky and would call the shape of the corner that we were already standing in or a number or shape that wasn’t part of the game to see how everyone would react.  There was a lot of running and even more laughing during this gym class!

On Tuesday we celebrated Rene’s 4th birthday!  We enjoyed a special snack with cupcakes and donut holes along with our fruit and sang happy birthday to Rene.  Thank you so much for the tasty celebration.

This week was a challah week for us and Wednesday we got right down to making the dough.  The children are doing all the preparation of the dough now- counting and measuring, pouring and cracking, mixing and kneading!  These kids sure have become challah making experts. 

Thursday we rolled the dough into nice long snakes and braided the dough up before baking it in the oven.  We were so hard at work that we almost forgot about music with Morah Dawn.  When she entered our room we had to quickly clean up for music class.  This week we again used the boom whackers but instead of just playing the scale we learned that mixing up the order of the boom whackers we can make a song!  We took turns with the boom whackers and played frère Jacques.  It was so cool how we played one note at a time but made a whole song.

On Friday we were joined for Shabbat by Alon Zeevi’s parents and grandmother.  We enjoyed going down to the chapel together and singing lots of Shabbat songs and prayers.  This week the parsha told about some of the specifics of the ten commandments that we heard last week.  How we need to be nice to others, respect them and listen to everyone’s words.  This is a perfect preschool topic and Morah Lana made it quite relevant for everyone by setting up common classroom scenarios for the whole crowd to come up with ways to make it better (two children wanted the same truck, what do we do?; one child had a toy and another came up and grabbed it out of their hands, etc).  We then came back to the classroom and enjoyed challah and grape juice together. After Shabbat we had a very special treat, a miniature horse came to visit our school!  We joined the Keshet class in the gym to meet Lollipop.  We all had a chance to pet her and feel her love- the children loved that she was even dressed up like a unicorn!  It was a wonderful end to our week and lovely to get a little love from such a calm animal.

Next week we will continue to talk a bit more about the human body and how we can keep it healthy and Wednesday we will have a special Doctor visit.  

 

Keshet

The children are all working really well at their reading level.  They range from letter sounds placed together to reading words and matching pictures (including phonograms - oa, er, ch…for some students) to reading books.  Writing sentences in their journals is progressing beautifully as well.  

This week we learned about verbs and practiced reading ‘doing words’ and acting out for a partner to guess the word.  We worked on the combined sounds; oa and o-e (fairy e rule) and thought of words as examples in each list.  

This week we continued understanding of the clock - presenting 24 hours as in daytime and nighttime, and the clock stamping activity proved very popular! 

Our general theme this week, BONES, included an introduction to ‘Mr. Bones’ (our full size skeleton with baseball cap and scarf) and learning the names of many of the human bones.  We sang and danced…’Your toe bones connected to the foot bones, your foot bones connected to your ankle bones, your ankle bones connected to your shin bones…’ (Ask your child to sing and dance this for you:) As they learn about the human body, they reflected on what makes them unique, and they colored their ‘face’ with attention to eye color and added 3-dimensional hair.  The bodies are displayed in the hallway and will become more and more detailed as the weeks progress. 

We’ve been talking a lot about feelings and being kind to one another, thinking about what we say and how that may affect another person.  This prompted ideas and culminated in a ‘heart project’ where many of the students chose to sew little heart pillows, and to use them as snuggle pillows during quiet time at school. (We have a whole group of enthusiastic sewers!)

On Friday Lollipop the mini horse arrived for all the children to pet.  She had a unicorn to display her magical powers.  The  Keshet kids loved the experience and were very gentle. 

Enjoy this week's photos https://photos.app.goo.gl/g6M5jYBJEVBjXoLc7