Garinim

It didn't feel like it outside for much of this week, but spring has definitely sprung in our classroom, at least!

This week the children all really enjoyed using small eye droppers to drip liquid watercolors onto coffee filters for a pretty tie dye effect. When they were dry we bunched them up and added pipe cleaners to create colorful butterflies and flowers! We used these to update the tree on our birthday bulletin board to better reflect the season. The children have also been busy working on flower and butterfly themed artwork of many other kinds, too!

Another new addition to our classroom has been different types of flowers added to water in mini water bottles on our nature tray. It's such a wonderful way to preserve fresh flowers a little longer, to magnify them a little with the water, and to allow everyone to explore and enjoy them without having to worry about the pollen! We began the week with samples of dandelion, wild violets, and an apple blossom. Later in the week Morah Elaine brought us some lilac flowers to add, and the children enjoyed touching and feeling them during circle time before we added it to another mini bottle for our tray.

On Thursday we were very excited to see what instrument Morah Dawn would bring for music class, and we were really happy when we found out it was a ukulele! Morah Dawn taught us a song about being thankful, and we had so much fun singing and dancing while she played the ukulele to accompany us! Some things the children were thankful for were food, our homes, and playing. At the end of class the children had the opportunity to strum the ukulele and most were super excited to do so!

Judaica:

On Monday we used a butterfly/parpar shaped cookie cutter and made butterfly prints. We read the book, “The Lamb and the Butterfly “, by Eric Carle

We reviewed the Hebrew word for lamb/keves.

Tuesday we created a fun caterpillar/zachal project with popsicle sticks and Pom poms. We read “The Hungry Caterpillar”, by Eric Carle. We also sang, Little Arabella Miller Had a Baby Caterpillar, using hand motions.

Wednesday we made our challah dough. We pretended to be fast horses and danced to Alon’s favorite song https://youtu.be/1ef8ByKnbMk

Roots Ben Susim!

Thursday the children prepared  snack and we braided and baked our challah for snack on Friday.

We continued our study of caterpillars to butterflies by reading “From Egg to Butterfly”.

Friday we had a great time singing Shabbat songs in the chapel with Morah Lana and returning to our classroom to eat our delicious challah!

 

Alim

 

There was a lot of action with our Caterpillars this week.  The Capillarillars have doubled in size this week in their container. It's been so much fun for the children to see them growing. 

 

On Monday,  we read a few fun stories regarding the life cycle of a Butterfly.  We read a cute and silly one called The Very Impatient Caterpillar by Ross Burach.  The kids were laughing so much and really enjoyed this one. 

 

On Tuesday,  we had a normal school day in the classroom.   We went to visit coach Oren and played a game.

 

On Wednesday,  we started doing a secret project for Mother's Day.  We will continue next week to finish the gift for our wonderful moms.

 

On Thursday,  we had a nice work day in the classroom.  We read more books on butterflies.  Morah Dawn came to visit us and did a music lesson with us.

 

On Friday,  we went down to the Chapel and sang songs with our fellow Montessori friends. We enjoyed the Parsha with Morah Lana.  The Shabbat box went home with Henry this weekend.  Shabbat Shalom. :)

 

Anafim

Happy Friday everyone!  This week was another busy and exciting week in the Anafim classroom.  Thank you to those that sent in flowers this week.  We put them to good use making flower arrangements (see the blog photos for some of the children’s floral arrangements).  We spent this week talking lots about flowers.  We looked at different kinds of flowers and the parts of a flower.  The children enjoyed making their own flower pictures using paint and forks.  They found it so funny at first to try to paint with a fork but ended up creating some gorgeous pictures that we have displayed on our bulletin board.

This week we also enjoyed spending a lot of time watching our caterpillars.  They have been very busy eating and are quite large!  We were a little surprised that they have not made their chrysalises yet but know it will be happening any day now. 

Two activities have been quite popular during work time this week, one was a mystery picture, and this is where the children are given a list of squares to color in certain colors on the 100 chart, which then creates a picture.  The other popular activity was pin pricking, the children loved poking all the dots to create butterflies, flowers, and an umbrella with raindrops. 

In gym on Tuesday the children were so excited to once again play 4 corners with Coach Oren.  They love this game and tried to move so stealthily.  Coach Oren was inspired by how much fun they were all having and even tried out running to the different corners while Morah Wendy or Moreh Kevin tried out being in the middle of the gym.

During music on Thursday Morah Dawn surprised us all by bringing a ukulele.  Everyone had a chance to listen to the sound of the uke and even had a chance to strum it at the end! It was quite exciting!

This week we made challah for our class and to share with the Keshet kids.  They love gathering around our big circle table, adding the ingredients, mixing and measuring.  The conversation flows easily as they children are baking away and you can tell that these moments are so special to everyone involved.
 

On Friday we were joined by Abby’s mom as our Shabbat guest.  We walked down to the chapel and were quite excited to be there.  The energy level was quite high this week as the sun was shining in.  The dinosaur came, we sang our prayers, made some soup for Shabbat, and of course bought challah in the baker shop.  We marched around with our stuffed Torah’s and took our seats once again to hear the parsha for the week.  This week we learned about the amount of wheat and barley that was donated every day during the omer (5 lbs) and Morah Lana even brought out a scale to illustrate how much that is!  We enjoyed our challah back in the classroom with some grape juice as well.  The children decided this was our best challah yet! Next week we will be looking at the life cycle of a caterpillar and of course watching ours go into their chrysalis and soon after emerge as butterflies.  Shabbat Shalom.

 

Keshet

Happy May! What have we been up to in Keshet this week?  

Our caterpillars arrived late last week and the Keshet students are journaling any changes that they note, not every day but there certainly have been changes! (Some have more entries than others;) We may have some budding entomologists amongst us! 

There are several insect stories and non- fiction books in our classroom library, and how wonderful to see a group of Keshet kids sitting quietly, reading and discussing drones, worker bees and queen bees. We enjoyed ‘the Bug Girl’ (A true Story) written by the Bug Girl herself, Sophia Spencer. A story about a girl’s love of insects, but also a wonderful illustration of being who you are and accepting others' interests.  We spoke about our own interests and each came up with a title of three words to describe themself. (In no particular order: Emmanuelle - The Pinkie Girl, Yael - Rainbow Unicorn Girl, Hannah - The Dolphins Girl, Teo - The Amazing Teo, Sahar - Green Geckos (are) Great, Zeva - Cotton Candy Queen, Noa - Fuzzy Slipper Girl, Emma - The Unicorn Girl, Ezra - The Magical Ezra, Tamar - ‘Tamar Ge - va!’, Lior - The Running Girl, Yasmin - The Owl Girl. 

We are exploring the parts of speech, this week with nouns (‘person, place or thing’) - reading and labeling sentences accordingly (black triangle represents a noun).  

We continue to count the Omer (days between the second day of Pesach, and Shavuot) we are currently on day 30. We are also exploring odd and even numbers and purposely numbering students in their seated positions at group and then calling odd (or even numbers) to go get snack, take out siddurim… 

In science we are learning about sound, sound waves and vibrations. Using a variety of forks and spoons attached (individually) to string, the students took turns holding the string to their ear while another student tapped the spoon/ fork with a ruler, creating a vibration. The string acts as a conductor, allowing the sound waves to travel through the string to the ears. Continuing with this theme, we all enjoyed the story ‘Decibella and her 6 Inch Voice’, by Julia Cook. An entertaining story - paying attention to five voice strengths (from whisper to outside voice, with a 6-inch voice and a table voice in between). Following this we played ‘broken telephone’ - whispering a sentence from the first student and back to Morah Lana (it went from a sentence to 2 words but the essential ‘it’s pizza!’ was retained - it is their homework this week - practicing whispering voices, in case you want to encourage that further ;)

On the subject of homework, you will see the baggie with a reading book in your child's backpack each Tuesday - thanks for helping them read out loud and remembering to return the book each Friday.

On Wednesday we welcomed Yael’s family and together we celebrated Yael’s 6th birthday in the traditional Montessori way! Followed by ice cream sandwiches :)

Enjoy this week’s photos https://photos.app.goo.gl/3My9JhFahB2BMMu6A