Anafim, and whole school activities:

This week is Fire Prevention Week and on Monday we were fortunate to have a visit from Ezra Academy parent, Firefighter Mike Blatchley. Firefighter Mike was friendly and patient and answered all sorts of questions, including 'Why is a fire hot?' and 'Is a fire as hot as lava from a volcano?' The children tried on the very heavy helmet, and picked up the heavy boots with pants attached (to make it easier to dress in an emergency situation). The children enjoyed firetruck collages, firetruck and emergency vehicle puzzles and reading A Day in the Life of a Firefighter. (That was Monday!)

Tuesday started with the children engaged in their choice of activities, including a small group 'going to the bank' collecting unit beads, tens bars and hundreds squares (all combinations of golden beads, increasing in size and weight for a concrete understanding of quantity). One child was carpet- sweeping the rug after we returned inside with footprints of sand, another sorting modes of transportation  miniatures that go on land, air or sea, while another child was sorting the color tablets and grading them from darkest to lightest.  Gym class on Tuesday was led by Morah Nicole, who is also a soccer coach.  The children loved all the games, which included moving a soccer ball 'with your head,' 'with your elbows,' ' with your heel.'  When the weather prevents us from playing outdoors, we look forward to more soccer coaching from Morah Nicole.  

 

Moving on from Yom Kippur to Sukkot, we are learning new songs:

 

Let's build a sukkah, a lovely sukkah

A hut that's open to the sky.

Each night of Sukkot, we'll sit inside it

And we'll watch the stars going by.

 

(To the sukkah) x3 

We will go

(Shake the lulav) x3

To and fro

(Smell the etrog) x3

Deep and low

 

Patish mazmer

Nicach maher

Sukkah Livnot

Banim U'banot

(lalalalala) x3

lala lala

 

(Loose translation - brothers and sisters quickly building a sukkah with hammer and nails)

 

We talked about fire safety and the Sukkot holiday this week. On Monday, we had a visit from firefighter Mike and he showed us all of his special equipment and spoke to us about fire prevention and safety. We learned that 911 is the number to call in an emergency, and we even got to try on his hat and boots! We made a fire truck collage with red and yellow paper and black felt, and made fire truck tracks in play dough to mark the occasion. Special books we read were “Fire Engine Number 9” and “A Day in the Life of a Firefighter.” For Sukkot, we read “A Watermelon in the Sukkah,” “Tamar’s Sukkah,” “1,2,3 Sukkoth,” "Let’s Build a Sukkah” and “Sammy Spider’s First Sukkoth.”
We created our own Sukkah’s to take home, with popsicle sticks, glue, green “grass”, and leaves and twigs that we collected on the playground. We also created a classroom mural for our Sukkah outside. We painted the lulav and etrog at the easel, and joined with the other class to talk about the significance of the lulav and etrog and to sing Sukkot songs. We sang “Patish Mazmer” and “Let’s Build a Sukkah.”