Garinim

This week has been filled with flowers and sunshine!

We continued to work on creating butterflies and flowers in our art activities, and painted with springtime colors as well. 

A popular new practical life activity this week was using tongs to transfer craft jewels from a tiny container into a three-compartment tray, sorting by color. It was very tricky! Some children opted to use their fingers and just focus on sorting the jewels, which is just fine! A pincer grasp is an important step on the way to being able to use the tongs in the future. Some were able to do both. All are making progress!

The magnet tiles were popular this week, and the children built things like houses, space ships, and playgrounds!

In our sensory table, the children have been invited to explore a pretend “garden” with burlap for dirt, and flowers and veggies growing. The children have enjoyed reaching into the “dirt” to see what they can pull out.

On Thursday, Morah Dawn brought a tambourine and the children learned about “rhythm notes” by playing and saying the notes together. They were introduced to two rhythm notes- “ta,” which is a quarter note, and “hold,” which is a half note.

Judaica:

Monday the children took straws that had slits at the ends and shaped them into flowers/prachim with paint by swirling or dabbling. We glued on a vase and connected the flower swirls with green marker and positioned them in the vase. 

Tuesday was all about food preparation by cutting grapes/anavim and bananas/same in Hebrew. We read “Ten Good Rules,  A Counting Book” by Susan Remick Topek for Shavuot.

Wednesday we had cantaloupe/maylone and clementines(same in Hebrew), a very orange/katom snack day! We sang The Peanut Butter and Jelly song and used hand motions. The children loved singing it together. We are creating Har Sinai/Mount Sinai, where the Israelites received the Torah that Moshe brought down from Hashem. We have been practicing to say Shalom to greet each other. We also greet our new guest Moshe with a Shalom!

Thursday we discussed more about Shavuot and how long Moshe was on Har Sinai, and we read another Shavuot book.

Friday we had fun singing and marching around the Chapel with our Torahs. Mora Lana read us a book about different mountains in Israel by showing the children where they were on a map of Israel. We always enjoy our challah on Friday, that the Anafim classroom made for us this week.

Alim

This week there was a lot of action with our classroom friends.  

On Monday, we transferred the Caterpillars to a large butterfly net.  We had a group discussion and decided to name some of the butterflies.  Some names the kids came up with were Spidey, Baby, GECKO, Rainbow Unicorn and Snowflake!!!!!!! It was very sweet.  

 

On Tuesday, we started our Planting Unit.  We planted seeds into the soil.  We will water it.  We have it placed next to the windows in our classroom.  The kids are excited about this.

 

On Wednesday,  we made Challah.  We started a new Butterfly project with tissue paper.  The children glued tissue paper to an image of a cardstock butterfly.  Also, one of the butterflies popped out of their Chrysalis.

 

On Thursday, we baked the Challah.  We enjoy Music with Morah Dawn.  The kids were excited because two more butterflies came out of their Chrysalis.

 

On Friday,  we released our three butterflies outside in the playground. We went down to the Chapel and enjoyed the Shabbat Friday routine with our fellow Montessorians.  Then we blessed our Challah in the classroom.  The Shabbat box went home with Pearl this weekend.

 

 

Anafim

In the blink of the eye, another week has passed.  Big things have been happening in our butterfly garden.  During school on Monday we looked up at our netted container and saw that one of our butterflies had emerged from its chrysalis.  It was quite exciting!  We carefully brought the garden down and the children enjoyed gazing in and we made sure to put an orange slice in for the butterflies.  As the week progressed we watched more and more butterflies emerge from their chrysalises and flutter around.  Finally on Friday morning we released 5 of our butterflies out into the wild (first snagging some pictures with a couple of them- check them out in the photos!) There were two left in their chrysalises so we figured we would add some fresh orange slices so they could eat when they emerged over the weekend.  Lo and behold when we got up from nap another had emerged.  We decided to release it Friday afternoon before we left so it wouldn’t be trapped all weekend. 

This week we continued on talking about spring related items.  We of course kept an eye on the butterflies, looked more at the parts of a flower, did lots of sorting of photos of seeds, roots, flowers, and leaves, and did a little planting as well.  We looked at lots of different types of real seeds and the similarities and differences in them.  We started to plant a few in the classroom and will continue to plant more next week.  This week while we were on the playground we watched as the Keshet kids cleaned out the garden area, which of course brought our attention to it.  Next week we are going to try to get out into the garden and help with the planting. 

On Tuesday in gym class we enjoyed a game of scooter tag.  Two children were on blue scooters while the rest were on yellow and the blue scooter people had to try to tag someone on a yellow scooter.  When they successfully did so the two children switched scooters.  It was a lot of fun, however many of the children on the yellow scooters wanted to be on the blue so they scooted themselves right up to the people on the blue!

Wednesday we looked at a new letter sound ‘d’ and enjoyed going through all the items in the sound pouch.  We also made challah dough and enjoyed kneading it the best of all.

Thursday Morah Dawn came with another new instrument.  This week was the tambourine.  We practiced playing different note values (eighth-ti ti, quarter- ta, half- hold, whole- watermelon) first with clapping and our different hand motions and then tried them out on our tambourines.  The cool thing was that she had a variety of different tambourines so everyone’s had a bit of a different sound and shape.  The children enjoyed following along with different rhythms and next week will have a chance to lead their peers in their very own rhythm. 

Friday we were joined for Shabbat by Jasper’s parents.  In the chapel Morah Lana incorporated a bit about Yom Yerushalim (Jerusalem Day) and Shavuot together.  She read the book The Littlest Mountain which is a great book for preschoolers about sharing and being kind to one another but done through different mountains for which Moses will receive the 10 commandments from G-d on.  As different mountains were discussed in the book Morah Lana showed us where they were on the map of Israel.  It was so exciting to see.  Back in the classroom we enjoyed our challah and were very excited to share with Keshet this week.  Have a wonderful weekend.

Keshet

We celebrated Hannah’s birthday on Monday with her mom and dad, and all the children wrote a lovely note with a  beautiful illustration. Happy 6th birthday Hannah!

Butterflies, gardening, composting, recycling, reusing… 

Our four butterflies emerged from their chrysalises and we observed them moving about in their habitat, and landing on the piece of clementine that Yasmin so kindly offered. We couldn’t exactly see the probiscis sucking up the juice, but synthesizing information we know, this was our observation! 

Later that same day we voted to take them outside and set them free, and finally they all left the butterfly habitat and flew away. Bye-bye painted lady butterflies. Ask your child what happens after the butterfly flies away (the butterfly life cycle). The Keshet scientists documented their observations from tiny caterpillars until the butterflies flew away - ask to see the Butterfly Journal. 

We continue to collect all compostable snack and lunch items and fill a container weekly, which Morah Verred takes home to add to her compost and returns with the empty container for continuous refilling.  And though we don’t use compost in our own garden (a problem we had with animals at night) we are diligently weeding and clearing our garden - getting it ready for planting. We started with sugar snap peas, which require a slightly cooler temperature.  Our chives, oregano and thyme have come back strong and healthy. On the other side of our garden (along with the Spring daffodils, tulips and hyacinths) we have coreopsis, daylilies and milkweed, which we keep for migrating Monarch butterflies. We lifted all the stepping stones and laid down mulch, filled the large pots with new soil and will plant carrots seeds and sunflowers outside next week. Our tomato seeds are planted and are now on the windowsill in our classroom covered in plastic.

Our empty tissue boxes, paper towel tubes, yogurt containers… have been transformed into buildings, playgrounds, helicopters and an underground subway on our ‘Keshet City’ - a three dimensional bulletin board display. Be on the lookout when you are in the Ezra hallways. 

Enjoy this week’s photos https://photos.app.goo.gl/v1yiG8dodcNtnBmj9