Garinim:

Well, after the long awaited arrival of Morah Jessica’s baby, he arrived Monday, September 25th at 11:55 PM weighing in at 8lbs8oz! (The Montessori team didn’t even think about starting a weight pool, but we were all so thrilled for the Greene family and their bundle of joy!) As we now know baby Greene is named Samuel Benjamin.

We have started off the week by signing our welcome to school song which I hope the children might be singing at home. They really are enjoying our first morning gathering/circle time singing and welcoming each other to join in and come together.

Tuesday we started building our indoor Sukkah with the children and decorating! We gathered some outdoor greenery to add to our rooftop/S’chach.

On Wednesday we made our challah dough which all the children participated in adding the ingredients one at a time. There were two new works set up on our Practical  Life shelves and a few children enjoyed the challenge. Morah Marta sang “Five Little Peas” with the children and they got to wave around some colorful scarves. We have earnestly been practicing our Sukkot songs for our snack in the Sukkah with our families next week.

On Thursday we had a very exciting day making long snakes with our challah dough shaping it into a crown! There was 100% participation I am so happy to say. We also added pumpkin scrubbing to our Practical Life shelf. 

This week we read ‘Let's Build a Sukkah’ and ‘Is it Sukkot Yet?’.

This Friday we joined the entire Montessori school classrooms in the B'nai Jacob Chapel for Shabbat services. We had such a great time singing Shabbat in the Baker's Shop and many other favorite Shabbat songs.

Alim:

We had a fun week at school.  The classroom was transformed to shades of BLUE.  We talked about how Blue is a Primary color in the color wheel and how it stands alone. Blue is used to make other colors.  We read more Fall books.  The children were shown different art mediums like pasting, cutting and coloring.  In the practical life area we added eyeglass polishing,  pumpkin scrubbing and a wet pouring activity from one vessel into three smaller vessels.

Hebrew-This week we talked about Sukkot and how we celebrate the holiday. We learned two songs about Sukkot and everyone made an art project, a mini Sukkah.  We are learning the days of the week and the weather outside, in Hebrew.  We have been reviewing a prayer.... Sh'ma Israel. 

On Tuesday,  the children were introduced to the Sound of the Week.  Every week we will be focusing on one sound at a time.  Each week there will be corresponding worksheets like letter formation worksheets and sound worksheets that correspond with the sound of the week.  This week we reviewed the sound  "Hh".

On Wednesday,  we worked on the Sukkot projects. The project was made with popsicle sticks, tissue paper and glitter.   We had a nice work day. We also made Challah.

On Thursday, we had a birthday celebration for Yahav.  We were able to celebrate with her and her whole family!  The children had a yummy cookie for a birthday treat.  The Montessori celebration was concluded with some nice birthday wishes from her classmates.  We had music with Morah Dawn.

On Friday,  we went down to the Chapel and sang songs with Morah Lana.  Some children acted out building a Sukkah.  Then we went back to the classroom to enjoy the challah and grape juice for Shabbat.

Anafim:

We are really finding our groove.  Everyone was eager to get back into the classroom after the three day weekend.  We quickly started discussing the next Jewish holiday, Sukkot.  On this holiday it is customary to build a temporary hut called a sukkah.  We looked at pictures of different sukkahs and discussed the different aspects of them.  We also learned about what a mosaic is and were introduced to the idea of making them.  We had the opportunity to make our own using dried beans, corn and lentils.  We are quite excited to use these as decorations for our sukkahs.  Remembering what we learned about sukkahs, we made our own on paper.  We used craft sticks, green paper shreds for the s’kach (natural material for the roof), paper flowers and fruit cutouts as decorations.  This week we also decorated our kippot (head coverings) that we will wear every Friday when we visit the chapel for Shabbat. 

This week has allowed a lot of time for individual and small group presentations and activities.  The children have all been very busy and excited to learn new work.  There were a couple of sorting and counting math activities available, lots of introductions and working with sandpaper letters, and cutting on the line to make strips of paper.  Towards the end of the week we used these strips of paper to make a paper chain to hang in our sukkah.  The letter sound “t” was introduced to the large group as well as the sound pouch.  As a group we worked on a list of other words we know that start with t and the children enjoyed thinking of t words. 

On Thursday, Morah Dawn came and brought her bongos.  We reviewed the notes that we practiced last week and then we had the chance to come up one at a time to play our favorite on the bongos.  Our class favorite definitely was ta!  This is a quarter note and it represents 1 beat. 

On Friday we once again made the trek down to the chapel with the rest of the Montessori classes.  We delighted in listening to Morah Lana read the book ‘The Sukkah that I Built’.  In true Morah Lana style she brought lots of props.  Different children were brought up to help hold different props and tell the story.  It was so fun to see all the different materials that are needed to build a sukkah.  Back in the classroom we enjoyed our brachot (prayers) and challah and grape juice. 

We hope you all have a wonderful start to your sukkot and a wonderful Shabbat.  

Keshet:

On Wednesday we celebrated the Keshet kids in our Hashem Sheli program, honoring their names (namesakes) and enjoyed a truly wonderful display of our kindergarten performers - so proud of each and every one of them! Thanks to all the parents who shared their family story; so interesting listening to your stories and then gathering for a little Keshet family interaction. We have such a sweet group and community. 

 

Continuing on with the next holiday of Sukkot, we are learning about the lulav and etrog, about building a sukkah, and we’re singing Sukkot songs. We hope you enjoy the rimmon (pomegranate) decorations which you can proudly display. The ten beads at the bottom concluded a math activity of quantities to 9 and then each child added another nine beads to total 18 (and we learned / counted the letters chet and yud as they correspond to the order of their place in the alphabet, 8 and 10 making 18 … possibly a little stretch for kindergartners! And the significance of chai -Life! (Your child may join in if you sing l’chaim l’chaim to life…) We practiced shaking the lulav - palm, hadas - myrtle and aravah - willow branches in all directions and loved the beautiful citrus aroma of the etrog. On this holiday we ask for rain, and rain is what we get! We continue with our letter recognition, you will see worksheets coming home throughout the year with letter tracing and matching etc. Ask your child to teach you some Hebrew letter yoga poses (that Verred and Lana invent and encourage them to follow:) 

We’re learning about the ten bar; told number stories (about Keshet kids singing in the chapel) and can now recognise the quantity of numbers to ten by just looking at a filled in ten-bar. We have continued to work on number bonds as well. Sukkot math also included a cutting and coloring activity, making number equations as we decorated a paper sukkah. We continue to practice letter formation, drawing attention to details in preparation for writing words. This week was ‘s’ for sukkah. We continued to talk about the life cycle of a fruit starting from a seed, to a seedling, to a bud, to a flower, to the small fruit beginning to form and to the fruit itself (and then the cycle starts again with the seed). We talked about how seeds get planted, sometimes by people, sometimes nature and sometimes even animals! We read a Sukkot story about squirrels being responsible for propagation (a big word!)

See this week’s pictures here https://photos.app.goo.gl/93Tyt6tRoEzBNZqB6