Garinim

Oh wow! What a busy week we have had. Monday the Garinim children made Hamentaschen dough. 

Tuesday we rolled out the dough, made round circles with a cookie cutter, filled our Hamentaschen with apricot or raspberry filling. The pinching part was a very tricky part of Hamentaschen process. 

Wednesday the children made challah dough, we had a great time baking this week.

We have been reading stories about Purim, singing songs and practicing with our ra’ashanim when we hear Haman’s name.

This week we also began practicing what we can do when we would like a turn with something someone else is already using or doing. The children took turns holding our bubbler timer and asking for a turn from the holder. The holder could say yes, and hand it over right away, or they could say not right now, and they would hang onto it until all of the bubbles made it to the bottom. We really stressed the importance of remembering that it’s okay for someone to say no if they aren’t ready to give you a turn! It will take a while before the children are consistently using this skill when they want to ask for a turn, but that is why we practice!

In the art center we decorated Mishloach Manot bags with markers. We also made paper baskets, decorated them with multi colored tissue paper and then filled them with chocolate oznai Haman/Hamentaschen.

We braided our challot on Thursday and the children started singing “Challah in the Oven” and “Mixing Challah and Kneading Dough”! They love singing! Each child had the opportunity to pack their own Mishloach Manot. It was a bit chaotic but a lot of fun.

Also on Thursday, we had music with Morah Dawn, and this week she brought claves for us to learn about and try playing! We learned two notes- a whole note, which is four beats or one “wa-ter-me-lon,” and a half note, which is two beats or one “ho-old!” Ask your child to show you how they make these notes. It’s so fun!

Friday we went down to the Chapel for a very special Shabbat and Purim show/shpiel! The teachers re-told the Purim Sipur/story. We had our own Vashti/Morah Lana, King Achashverosh /Kevin, Haman/Wendy, Mordechai /Elaine, beautiful women who wanted to marry the King/Sandy, Jessica, Moran and our very own Queen Esther/Marcia! The children laughed and enjoyed watching their morim acting out the story on the bimah. It was pretty funny ?! Shabbat was extra special this week. We always enjoy our challah but we ate our delicious Hamentaschen. We hope that you enjoyed your Mishloach Manot, have a wonderful Shabbat and a Chag Purim Sameach.

Alim

Monday

During our gathering we used our ‘talking flower’ and each child had a turn to talk & share about their weekend.  We had a new sound of the week ‘Ee’.  We read the AlphaTale book The enormous Elephant .  There were worksheets that corresponded to the letter formation and sound association. 

Tuesday-

We read some new Spring books in the classroom and discussed the season change to Spring.  

Wednesday-

We all decorated a kite with watercolors and sparkles for our bulletin board outside our classroom. 

Thursday-

We had a busy work day and Morah Dawn came into our classroom.

Friday- 

We had so much fun down at the chapel.  The teachers acted out a fun Purim play for the students.  It was a blast! The Shabbat box went home with Levi and his family.  Yay! 

Alim Judaics  The smell of Hammentachen was in the air. We made the dough, baked the delicious treats and enjoyed them so much! This week we learned Purim songs so we could sing them at the chapel. We even danced to the tunes in a hora. 

With that being said, we also finished our grogers, set up our mishloach manot baskets, made and baked challah AND read two wonderful books: “The better than best Purim” by Naomi Howland and “ Sweet Tamales for Purim “ by Barbara Bietz. Phew we were busy !!!!!

At the chapel we watched the teachers reenactment of the Purim story and we laughed a lot! Back in the classroom we had a wonderful kiddush and enjoyed our Hammentachen. Chag Purim Sameach! 

Anafim

We had an incredibly fun busy week this week!  We have been full speed ahead prepping for Purim and the children have really been enjoying all the new activities.  We also had several new practical life activities on the shelf that were quite popular.  In preparation for the idea of giving tzedakah (charity) on Purim we worked on some penny polishing.   The children mixed salt and vinegar in a small cup and then used a cotton swab to rub all over a penny.  This requires a lot of concentration and focus, as the child has to carefully rub the solution all over the brown areas of the penny.  It is a wonderful activity for them as well because it gives them instant results of seeing the penny being restored to its shiny self.  We also enjoyed making bubbles with some soap flakes water and a manual egg beater.  The children loved it and repeated this activity many times throughout the week. 

On Monday we enjoyed a new game in gym class.  It was a form of tag but this time the tagger was “a wolf” and he was trapped in his wolf den (the middle of the gym separated out by cones).  The sheep (all the rest of the children) had to run through the wolf’s den to get to the other side.  When the sheep were in the den the wolf tried to catch or tag them and if they were tagged they too became a wolf.  If the sheep made it to the other side they were free to graze in the meadow until they needed to go back to the other side.  The children had so much fun running back and forth trying to avoid being tagged.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we enjoyed making Hamantaschen!  The children were broken up into small groups and had a chance to make the dough one day and then roll it, cut it, fill it, and fold them into the triangular shape.  All of the children excitedly waited their turn and each child was so happy to see the results of their hard work.  In between all the baking we worked on decorating and filling our groggers, decorating and filling our shalach manot bags and keeping up with all of our regular Montessori work. 

Thursday Morah Dawn joined us for music class and her new instrument was claves.  She introduced the sounds they make and we learned that unlike many other musical instruments, the bigger or thicker they are the higher pitched sound they make and the smaller/ skinnier ones make a lower pitched sound.  We then reviewed the number of beats different notes make (quarter makes one or ta, half is two or hold and whole is four, watermelon) and had a chance to try out some patterns of these note lengths with our claves. 

Friday we were joined for Shabbat by Itamar’s mom.  She walked down to the chapel with us and she was in for quite a treat because the teachers had prepared a special Purim schpiel (silly story).  In place of the weekly Torah portion we decided to act out the story of Purim.  With Morah Lana playing the parts of narrator and Queen Vashti she started us off on our way.  The children were quite excited to see Morah Wendy as Haman and Moreh Kevin as King Ahashveros.  We enjoyed a rousing rendition of the story before heading back to our classroom.  We made sure to pack up our mishloach manot and finish off our groggers during the rest of the morning work period.  We hope you all have a wonderful and joyful Purim and we will see children on Monday in their costumes!

Keshet

We are gearing up for Purim and with that, the Keshet Purim Players entertained us with the Purim story.  It was wonderful to have so many Keshet parents and some grandparents join us on Wednesday morning!  Everyone had a wonderfully happy time.  

With all the stories and discussion, we made time for Purim character groggers, and character mishloach manot bags, and to round it out, we baked Hamantaschen.

In between we learned about quarters, as in money, and as related to the quarter of a circle, using the Montessori fraction circle. The children practiced switching out 4 quarters for one dollar, and for reinforcement, wrote and cut out 25c circles and $1 notes. You may want to play this at home - give them a handful of quarters and see how many dollars they can make - home made dollars work really well! 

We are working on team building and getting along with one another in a positive, supportive way.  We read How to be a Mensch,by A. Monster, and discussed scenarios that could work for us, and how being a mensch would make us feel.  This generated lots of positive ideas! 

In Science we are learning about the Respiratory system and how we take in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide.  We discussed the little hairs in the nose (ask your child about this) and how the trachea separates taking air to the left and the right lung. They know about the trachea and how the ‘flap’ closes when we eat, to prevent food going down the wrong ‘pipe’. They made plastic bag-and-straw lungs, which I’m sure they demonstrated for you when they brought them home on Thursday. 

On Friday we put together our Keshet mishloach manot bags and following that, had a nice long time to work in groups of three, creating Mensch Stories, with some students writing, some designing and some cutting and pasting the construction paper characters.  At the end of the day each group stood up and presented their story! 

See this week’s pictures here https://photos.app.goo.gl/rwuorr8M9rdGDMpW8