Garinim

It's been a very busy week as we prepared for both our classroom Passover experience with families and for everything the children are taking home for Passover as well! This week there was "sewing," painting, cutting, and gluing all on a daily basis at our tables, in addition to all of the work that we normally do! The children also worked very hard to practice the songs that we hope you enjoyed hearing on Thursday. 

And thank you to all of the families who came to visit Thursday! Our Passover interactive experience was a great success and lots of fun for all involved. Children and their parent(s) or grandparents enjoyed decorating an Elijah's or Miriam's cup, pretending to bake matzo using play dough, and chopping apples and mixing ingredients to make charoset. It was absolutely fantastic to see how much the children and parents loved working together. The children also proudly showed off the songs they had learned, and of course their paper plate frogs! Goodbyes aren't always easy, but the transition out to the playground made it much smoother for our students.

Friday was another special day in Garinim! Our friend Ashley turned 3 years old and she brought her mom and grandparents to celebrate with us. They brought yummy cupcakes- thank you so much Ashley!

We hope you all have a wonderful, safe Passover and spring break! We can't wait to hear everyone's stories of what they did over their time away when we come back. Please feel free to bring photos!

Judaica:

Wow! What a busy week we had! We finished our Afikomen bags, painted our frogs(tsfardayah),and transplanted our parsley (hopefully they arrived in one piece)! We created a water scene with blue paper, glue and green plants that grew alongside the river where Pharaoh's daughter “drew” the baby out from the water hence the name Moshe.

We read so many books for Pesach, “Company’s Coming”, “What is Passover “,“Let’s Have a Seder”, “Let’s Ask the Four Questions “, and “What I Like About Passover”!

We sang and listened to Pesach music! The children loved jumping like frogs!

It was fantastic having our interactive Pesach celebration with our children’s parents and or grandparents joining us in our classroom! We made Eliyahu Hanavie cups/Miriam’s cup, you can choose which one you would like it to be used for! We made matzo and baked them in our mock “brick oven” and topped it off with some yummy charoset making! We ended our celebration with two songs sung by the children, No Chametz Here and Frogs Here and Frogs There.

We joined in the Chapel today to celebrate Shabbat and enjoyed listening to a story about the Matzo Ball Man!! It is Ashley’s birthday today so we had yummy challah and cupcakes provided by the Korwin family! It was fun to meet her grandparents as well!

Have a Chag Pesach Sameach/Happy Passover!!

 

Alim

What a great week of fun!!!! This week we continued to focus on PASSOVER!!!!!  We practiced some special songs and  we practiced a play for our special interactive passover experience that took place on Thursday morning with parents in our classroom. 

 

On Monday, we had a nice work day and we practiced our Passover Play and songs.

 

On Tuesday, we had Gym with Coach and then practiced some more of the songs and the play.

 

On Wednesday, we made playdough pretend Matzah in the classroom with the children, including baking it in our pretend oven, which they really  enjoyed. 

 

On Thursday, was the fun Passover interactive experience in which the parents were invited into the classroom. There were two stations with activities.  One station was decorating a Matzah Holder.   The second station was making Kharrosset with apples, cinnamon and grape juice. Then the children put on a special performance for the parents.  

 

On Friday,  we went down to the chapel.  Pearl's Grandfather joined us for our Shabbat morning. We enjoyed singing our fun songs and listening to the Parsha with Morah Lana. Also, we did the ceremony of Bedikat Chametz with the children in the classroom.  It was a fun hide and seek game in the classroom.  The children brought home their feathers. They really loved this activity.  We hope you all have a very nice Passover with your friends and family. Enjoy some special time with your children during the break.  Shabbat Shalom. 

Anafim

It was another very busy week in our classroom.  We spent a lot of time learning more details about the Passover story, singing songs, and creating.  We finished up our Afikomen bags this week.  Everyone sewed the two sides of their fabric to make a bag.  Then we used a stencil and fabric paint to write אפיקומן (afikomen) on our bag.  We also spent this week creating paper seder plates.  We used pompoms as our roasted egg, a clover punch to represent parsley, green crepe paper as lettuce, brown paper and a cotton ball to make a bone, brown packing paper as our maror (bitter herb) and pieces of red, brown, purple, and white paper for our charoset.   We also got ready for Passover by learning how to polish.  We worked hard polishing a napkin ring, a Kiddush cup and a small plate.  The children enjoyed this multi-step practical life activity.  They all felt quite rewarded when the metal objects shined!

This week in gym we played red light green light.  The first few rounds were normal- running when it was green light, walking for yellow light and stopping for red light.  However as we mastered this, Coach Oren made it a little trickier!  Future rounds we had to crawl; fast, slow or stop, all while on our hands and knees.  From there we tried out a round each of jumping and doing a table walk.  It was quite a workout!

Thursday we were so excited to welcome families into our classroom!  Thank you to everyone that joined us!  The children had such a wonderful time making their matzah boxes, charoset and acting out the beginning of Moses’ life.  It was so lovely to be able to sing a couple of Pesach songs for you all as well. 

Friday we enjoyed going to the chapel with Alon’s family.  It was so lovely to have them be our Shabbat guests this week.  We listened to Morah Lana read and act out the story Matzah Ball Boy.  The children really enjoyed the story which reminded them a lot of the gingerbread boy. 

Back in the classroom we enjoyed acting out the Baby Moses story from Thursday and then we gathered on the rug to try out a cool experiment.  We all got a turn to be Moshe (Moses) and part the sea.  This was done using water, blue food coloring, black pepper and dish soap.  The children were so excited to part the sea of pepper using just their dish soap covered finger. 

We hope you all have a wonderful couple of weeks together and a lovely Pesach (Passover).  

 

Keshet

On Monday the children completed the final pages of their Haggadot and couldn’t wait to bring them home! As you go through them, singing kadesh, oorpatz… encourage the hand motions. The children have been practicing with the older children, sitting in the hallways with 6-8 graders, practicing and singing their way through the haggadah. 

We decorated our classroom to showcase ‘Egypt during the time of Moses’ and loved sharing the story with the parents.  You may use some of these acting out / dressing up ideas at your own Seders. (Just a suggestion ;) Or perhaps you’ll incorporate the Passover puppets we made together, perhaps the rest of the family can work together to create all the characters in time for the Seder. Maybe you’ll impress your guests with the parting of the Sea of Reeds experiment… all ideas to create a meaningful and child friendly Seder. 

This week we brought focus to the sounds ‘i-e’ / ‘igh’ and thought of words with the long ‘i’ sound. Read through the list of words with your child and help them practice /recognize the sound. 

In Science we learned about matter: solid, liquid and gas, and what this means. Experimental science is always fun: this week we added alka seltzer tablets inside a bottle filled with water and attached a balloon. The gas molecules expanded and caused the balloon to inflate. Always a fun one to try at home. We had some time to spare, so we inflated two balloons with … carbon dioxide, one larger than the other, and played a game which the children told me was called ‘Keepy Uppy’ (!!!) We dropped them both at the same time and noted the difference in speed between the lighter balloon, filled with more air and the smaller balloon. 

In math we explored measurement; on Tuesday we measured smaller objects with paper clips and then with plastic cubes. On Friday we measured objects with a ruler; they went around the classroom with a clipboard and pencil and measured various familiar objects in the classroom ( then compared with one another). 

Oh, and we finally finished reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (and I told them about the party I hosted for one of my sons for his 7th birthday - in detail. They’re already planning for their next birthday party - Sorry ;) 

Just another week in Kindergarten!

Enjoy this week’s photos https://photos.app.goo.gl/gZHnyWwKQbZpLXqL9