Garinim

On Monday, we were still very busy getting everything ready for Purim! The children always love helping put things together for a celebration. It's a nice way for them to be a part of our classroom and school community!

Our Purim celebration on Tuesday was a blast! It was so wonderful to see all of the families that came to join us for the Megillah reading, and of course, to see everyone's fun costumes! While the upper school enjoyed their festivities, we had our own Purim carnival along with Anafim and Alim. The children rotated between the three classrooms to participate in different activities that the teachers had set up. There was beading (you will have noticed your children came home accessorized!), a hamantaschen toss game, a mask decorating activity, a Purim picture bingo game, and "Haman bowling" where the children had fun trying to knock down as many pins (which wore triangle hats!) as they could! The children did a great job visiting other classrooms and having a little break from the ordinary!

The rest of the week, we recovered from all our festivities! Our new theme is music and musical instruments, so the children have been introduced to the names of some instruments with our nomenclature cards. They have been working to match the pictures of the instrument and to name it. It is a fun challenge for them because we are currently working with a set of six vs the three to four that they are used to! We will continue to expand on the theme next week. 

On Thursday, we had music class with Morah Dawn. She brought her hand bells back for us to play again, and this time the children got to play them together in small groups of three! It was a little hard for everyone to wait for their turn, but they did a fantastic job!

Judaica:

On Monday we talked all about Kelev, our Shabbat Box friend, who spent the weekend with Ella’s family! Kelev enjoyed their tickle party!!! We completed our ra’ashanim and each child packed their own Mishloach Manot bag. We hope that you enjoyed your gift/matan with your children!

Tuesday we had a terrific time in the sanctuary listening to all of the fabulous Megillah readers chanting the Purim story.

Wednesday we made yummy challah and read “Rise and Shine: A Challah Tale”, by Kimberly Ostrove.

Thursday we read “Modeh Ani, Thank You” by Rabbi Alyson Solomon. 

We are still practicing our manners skills, please and thank you, in both Hebrew and English.

As we wrap up our week in the Chapel we learned about how Moshe went up to Har Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. He came down from the mountain just to see the Israelites had built the golden calf, the first rule not to worship idols. He then destroyed the Commandments. Stay tuned for the next installment! A special thank you to Liora’s dad for joining us in the chapel today!

Alim

What a fun week at school!!!!! On Monday everyone wore superhero costumes.  We made Hamantaschen cookies with the children.  The kids had a chance to cut out circles in the dough and children placed jelly on the cookies.  Then we baked them.  We finished decorating our Mishloach Manot bags and had a blast being superheroes for the day.  

 

On Tuesday, it was PURIM!!!!!!!  Whooo hooooo.  We had a fun filled day with lots of activities to do with the children.  The Prek and K teachers were dressed up as M&M's .  The kids thought that was super silly :) The kids were dressed in their customs and we went down to the Sanctuary to celebrate Purim festivities with the rest of the school.  The children sat nicely while we listened to the 8th graders.  We used our groggers that we made in the classroom during that assembly. It was fun!!!!! Afterwards,  we came back into our classroom and enjoyed snack .  Then we took turns in each classroom, with fun activities set up for the kids to do.  One classroom was ‘freeze dance’ and ‘decorating a mask’,  the next classroom had bowling and bingo and finally the last room was bracelet making & Purim (Haman) beanbag toss.  The kids had so much fun.  

 

On Wednesday,  we had a nice work day full of lessons and activities in our morning session. 

 

On Thursday,  we celebrated Momo's 5th birthday.  We all enjoyed Momo's Montessori celebration.  There were pictures shown of every stage of Momo's life while she took her birthday walk around the sun.   The children enjoyed the special cupcakes that were given to the class by her family.   We had work time in the classroom and then Morah Dawn came to visit us. Her lesson involved the Musical bells again and it went well.  The kids are really beginning to understand the concept of musical notes.  

 

On Friday we went down to the chapel.  We enjoyed singing songs with Morah Lana and the Parsha.  We  went back to the classroom, ‘lit’ the candles and blessed the grapejuice and challah.  The Shabbat box went home with Taylor and her family.  We can't wait to hear all about what they did over the weekend.  Shabbat Shalom.  

Anafim

This sure was another busy week.  Monday was all about last minute preparations for Purim.  We packed up our shalach manot bags, including taping two pennies to a piece of paper, collecting all the different items and skillfully putting them into the bag.   Doing all this while dressed as a superhero was an added plus!  We also spent time trying out our groggers and practicing when to shake them and when to keep them quiet.  

Tuesday we all joyfully welcomed Purim!  We had so much fun joining the rest of the school (and many parents) down in the sanctuary to hear the Megillah and loved shaking our groggers whenever we heard Haman’s name.  After the Megillah reading we came back to our classroom and enjoyed snack all together; munching on some fruit and hamantaschen.  The children were all excited to show off their costumes as well.  Once we had finished our snack we dove right into our fun carnival games.  We enjoyed bowling over Haman, playing Purim bingo, tossing a bean filled hamantashen into a big hamantaschen cutout, making bracelets or necklaces, decorating a mask and dancing to Purim music.  Whew! It was all so fun and exciting and the children had a blast!  We topped off our day with some outside time with the Alim and Garinim classes.

Wednesday we settled back into our regular classroom routine.  We took some time to just enjoy regular Montessori activities.  We also made our challah dough and were excited to see how much it had grown over the morning.

Thursday we introduced the sound cylinders and many children have had a chance to work with these now.  They are wooden cylinders that all look the same but are filled with different material and it helps children to hone in their listening skills to see which sound louder and which are quieter.  We also braided our challah and had music with Morah Dawn where we played a real song as a bell choir!  It was so exciting to play twinkle twinkle little star all together.

Friday brought our pre-shabbat activities.  We went down to the chapel with the rest of the Montessori classes and this week we were joined by Lea’s dad.  We sang songs, and listened to this week's Parsha.  We heard about how Moses was up on the top of Mount Sinai for 40 days and the Hebrews below were getting restless, how they decided to melt their gold jewelry down to make a golden calf to pray to, how Moses got so angry upon coming back down and threw the 2 tablets down to the ground and they broke, and about how the Hebrews promised never to do that again and drank the gold mixed with water to prove they were serious.  We even got to sing about it all!  We then came back to the classroom and enjoyed our challah and grape juice and had a lovely work period.  It was a wonderful end to our week.  

Next week we will be spending some time learning about musical instruments.  Shabbat Shalom!

Keshet

It was a fun week of dress up all the way leading up to and including Purim day! The students were fascinated by all that was going on around them in the B’nai Jacob sanctuary listening to the Megillat Esther and shaking their groggers at the sound of Haman’s name. The rest of Purim day was filled with fun activities in the ‘Olympic Teams’ which come together on numerous occasions throughout the school year.  These teams are made up of a mix of students from grades K-8 and our students love being part of this!  Activities included acting out a puppet show, decorating masks, obstacle course in the gym, games room and musical chairs. 

Of course, Hamantaschen eating and putting together the Mishloach Manot bags to take home was an exciting activity on its own!  Everyone had a job to do and took it seriously. 

In other areas…

We are continuing with multiples of five as first introduced during the teaching of the analogue clock a few weeks ago.  Now, in conjunction with learning about money (USA coins), we are practicing with the nickel and exchanging pennies for nickels and then counting the total number of nickels / counting in 5’s.  

We read a wonderfully interesting story about Jane Goodall and her love of animals.  The book is called ‘The Watcher’, Jane Goodall’s Life with the Chimps, by Jeanette Winter. This inspired some questions and a little research and we found out that Jane Goodall is 88 years old now and still passionate about understanding animals, particularly chimpanzees. Ask your child about this.  

This led to some awesome organic teaching, which is really following the students interest at the time, and we turned discussion into a writing / learning experience.  As the students came up with questions, we sounded out the words, pointed out rules and noticed similarities and sight words. The ‘wh’ (silent ‘h’) appears a lot when writing questions (what, where, why…) We included reminders about the question mark, capital letters, phonograms, with the students helping to sound out and ‘help write’ the words / sentences. 

See this week’s photos here https://photos.app.goo.gl/2yWcF5RWYjJioTJV9