This week began with a birthday celebration - Happy 5th Birthday to Peyton! 

The children are listening intently and becoming quite involved in the 'watered down' story of Martin Luther King Jr's life and legacy.  We are sharing stories about the young Martin and his relationship with his young friends, how life for him changed along with the rules in Alabama, the unfairness of separating friends based only on the color of their skin and then the influence and strength he garnered from his parents, that shaped his life. As we talk about Martin Luther King Jr's life experience, we take from it concrete examples of living with kindness, respect, using our brain and our mouth and tongue to use words to say what we are thinking or feeling.  We follow with real examples and then link it back to MLK.  We have been singing:

Peace is a flame in your heart

It shines like a fire

to light up the dark

Love will shine always

Wherever you are

If peace is a flame in your heart.

In Hebrew we sing Ohseh Shalom (Peace for everyone).

 

On Wednesday, the Israeli emissaries, Tal and Li'on played a game with us;  a song in Hebrew about animals in the market place.  The children learned the names of the animals and held animal pictures as the song evolved.  

Kelev (dog), chatool (cat), tarnigol (chicken), donkey (chamor) and duck (barvaz).

 

One of the stories everyone enjoyed this week was Trombone Shorty, the story of Troy Andrews, the musician from New Orleans.  The children learned the traditional New Orleans greeting 'Where y'at?' 

 

And along the way, children are cutting snowflakes, creating colorful house collages (some covered in snow), painting with water colors, coloring flags and learning about the countries, mixing the primary colors, tracing and punching out continent shapes, playing 'I-Spy', sounding out words, writing stories, counting beads in the teens, and up until 100 - everyone at their own level and according to each child's interest and challenged accordingly by activities chosen and presented by teachers.  We are ALWAYS very busy! That's the word from visitors touring the school.  If you are comfortable being an ambassador to the school, or willing to chat to interested families, please let me know.  

 

We continued our discussions on winter and winter weather, and also touched on Martin Luther King, JR. this week. The children created cotton ball snow collages, finger painted “snow”, and played a snow man game in class that consisted of the children looking at different cutout snowmen and having to determine what was missing (such as hat, nose, scarf etc). We read “Blizzard”, “Owl’s Winter Rescue”, “Flannel Kisses”, and “Martin Luther King”, in honor of the holiday on Monday. In addition to reading the MLK book, we did a craft to help exhibit what Martin Luther King, Jr. was all about. Peace. The children used green and blue bingo dotters to create a world, and then cut out their handprint to place on top of it to show that we should always be kind to others.
We have been reviewing shapes in class and the children are familiar with circle, oval, rectangle, and triangle. We play a game where the shapes are hidden under a cloth, and one shape is taken away. The children then have to say which shape is missing. We have gotten very good at this! We have also begun shape matching and the children are given the challenge of matching shapes that are the same, even though they may be different sizes. 
New songs:
“I’m a Little Snowflake”
I’m a little snowflake, look at me
No other snowflake is just like me
I am so unique, as you can see
And just as special as I can be

“Snowflake Dance”
Dance like snowflakes, dance like snowflakes
In the air, in the air
Whirling, twirling snowflakes, whirling twirling snowflakes
Here and there, here and there

Parashat
At this time, the 70 people of Jacob’s household have died. The Israelites have become more numerous than the Egyptians. The new Pharaoh of Egypt who didn’t know Joseph, notices this. He becomes concerned that the Israelites will take sides with an enemy if there was ever a war. He decided that he must control them. He does this by making them slaves to build his cities with mortar and bricks. He goes further by telling the people that he would like no boy babies. There was a woman who had a baby boy. She wanted to hide him from Pharaoh so she made a basket that would float in water. She placed her baby in the basket and his sister, Miriam, would watch the basket float from a distance. The daughter of Pharaoh noticed the basket and found the baby. Miriam ran over to her to tell her that she knew someone who could take care of him. She was referring to her mother. The baby lived with his mom until he was a young boy. Then he went to live at the castle with Pharaoh’s daughter. He was called Moses which means “I drew him out of the water”. When Moses was a man, he ran away so Pharaoh would not punish him. Moses encountered a woman who helped him when he ran away. Her name was Zipporah and she later became his wife. He lived with her and they had many sons. One day, Moses noticed a burning bush while out with his sheep. A voice from the bush told him that G-d had chosen him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to freedom. Moses at first did not want to do this. He eventually agrees to do what G-d asks. Moses was asked to show three signs if they didn’t believe in him. His rod would become a snake, his hand would change from looking sickly to normal, a bowl of water from the Nile would become blood. Moses again pleads to not have to do this, and G-d allows his brother, Aaron, to do the talking to the people. But Moses must still go. Moses and Aaron visit Pharaoh and tells him that G-d says to let his people go and to allow them to worship him.