Garinim

What an exciting week we had! The highlight of our week kicked off with the Chanukah performance! It was a bit strange to the children to be in school in the evening with their parents, but they did a fantastic job and EVERYONE PARTICIPATED! Woohoo! We were very happy to sing and dance to I Have A Little Dreidel.

We had fun learning all about Hanukkah and talking more about the miracle of the oil, and the light. The children were excited to play the dreidel game and ate delicious latkes/levivot made by our classrooms parent volunteers! 

In between Hanukkah festivities, the children have been busy in the area of practical life cleaning and tidying up our classroom before we leave for winter break. There have been trays and mats to wash and dry, and a messy easel to clean as well! The children really take pride in our classroom and being a part of it by taking care of it just as the teachers do. 

They also enjoyed using watercolor paints to add color to some winter bird pictures that we added to our classroom bulletin board tree along with some snowflakes that our older children helped to cut out. We love our new winter scene!

Wishing everyone a wonderful winter break and a very happy new year! See you in a bit!!

Anafim

 

What an exciting week we had!  Monday evening was a huge hit.  The children were such composed little rock stars.  They performed beautifully and loved every minute of practicing and performing on stage, just like the big kids.  Thank you for coming to watch your little stars (well actually dreidels).

This week we spent, of course, talking about Hanukkah. We enjoyed saying the brachot (prayers) every morning over the candles, adding another one each day.  The children loved acting out the rhyme 5 little latkes, well we changed it to 11 little latkes (see below for the words):

11 little latkes sizzling in the pan,

One jumped out and said “catch me if you can”

And he jumped and he ran all around the kitchen floor,

And when I turned my back, he ran right out the door!

On wednesday with the help of some wonderful parent volunteers we made our own latkes that we enjoyed at lunch time.  The Anafim crew worked hard using vegetable peelers to peel a whole bag of potatoes.  The children learned how to properly hold a peeler and worked hard to take all the skin off the potatoes.  The children then took turns using a box grater to shred the potatoes.  We happily delivered all of our potato shreds to the kitchen where they were mixed with some other ingredients, cooked and then returned to us in the form of latkes! We had the choice of putting cinnamon sugar (like they do in South Africa) or applesauce on our latkes and the children happily made their choice and dove right into eating them, mmmmm they were good.  Thank you again to all the parent volunteers that helped to make this happen.

 

On Thursday our class was feeling an incredible sense of vacation approaching so we had to break out something a bit different.  Armed with paint and dreidels the children congregated around a large piece of paper.  We dipped our dreidels into paint and then spun them onto the paper.  It was so fun to see that sometimes the paint splattered off into little drops around and sometimes the paint made a circular trail on the paper just like the dreidel was spinning.  The children’s only complaint was that they couldn’t see what letter their dreidel landed on because they were all covered in paint.  Everyone agreed it was definitely a great time and enjoyed washing their dreidels at the end as well.  

 

Have a wonderful break, enjoy your time with your child and we can’t wait to see you all back in the New Year!

 

Alim

What a week of FUN at school!!!!! There were so many fun things we did this week!!!!!!!

On Monday we enjoyed Pearl’s Birthday Celebration.  We enjoyed her special snack that she brought in and everyone gave her warm wishes.  Then we did our final dress rehearsal in the morning on stage. That evening we had a blast with our Hanukkah production.  The kids were so excited and really proud of their five minutes of fame.  They were the best little candles ever!!!!  :)  

On Tuesday,  we celebrated Levi’s Birthday.  The children enjoyed his birthday celebration as well.. We gave him warm wishes and enjoyed special cookies.  

On Wednesday,  it was a fun day again.  We painted suncatcher snowflakes in the classroom.  We helped prepare homemade potato latkes. The children used a grater to shred the potatoes.  Then we had some parents come in to help fry them.  Thank you to all the volunteers that helped - the children enjoyed eating them at lunch with applesauce.  It was delicious. 

Finally on Thursday,  we enjoyed singing songs in the classroom and had a normal classroom day.  

Have a wonderful Holiday and Happy New Year!!!!!!

Keshet

The highlight of course was the Channukah Production on Monday evening! The Keshet kids were the best!! They all loved being up there on the stage and the practicing and excitement was well worth every second! 

We celebrated each morning this week, ‘lighting’ the Channukah candles and singing! On Wednesday we enjoyed the delicious latkes prepared by our very own Montessori Parent Latke Making Chefs! We sang as they prepped and fried and then all enjoyed delicious latkes! We voted on whether we would prefer applesauce or cinnamon and sugar ( South African style ;), tallied up the votes and then tasted and recorded those results … Hands down, cinnamon and sugar (no need to even count;) 

The students pin- pricked the continent puzzle pieces over a period of time ( as we explored the different continents) and finally cut out the hemisphere circles, glued the continent pieces in place and assembled their ‘globe of the world’ - Earth. You can ask your child to name the continents. 

Wednesday we celebrated Lior’s birthday, all fully participating in the ceremony and Lior’s parents filling in the details. Happy 6th Birthday Lior! 

Happy New Year from Keshet  - see you all back in 2023!!!!!!!

See this week’s photos here https://photos.app.goo.gl/JmdursBCeSiNTMq87