Garinim

This week we continued to talk about animals, this time adding farm animals to the mix! We read some great stories about animals on the farm, including the classic Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown, and sang some classics too, like "Old MacDonald." The children loved getting to choose an animal for Old McDonald's farm when it was their turn to be called on. Interestingly, we found out that there are some animals which are pets but who can also work on a farm, like the sheepdog! 

On our language shelf, the children continued to work with the picture cards for the pets, this time matching them to figurines of the same animal. We also added a similar activity for our farm animals. That one was tricky because some animals, like goats and sheep, can look very similar!

A big barn floor puzzle was also a popular activity this week. The children worked hard together as a team to put it together section by section. It was very satisfying to finally get the final product done!

On Thursday we enjoyed some extremely unseasonably warm and sunny weather by spending lots of time outdoors, and we also had our music lesson with Morah Dawn, who taught the children the first three notes of the scale- do, re, mi- and a dance move for each of them. The children practiced together and then had the chance to perform it on their own, and many were really excited to do so!

Judaica:

On Monday we had fun singing songs about farm animals in both English and Hebrew.  We had some leftover mushy bananas from our TuBishvat seder, so we made some yummy muffins.

Our ongoing craft of the week was making abstract owls(in Hebrew nesher doah) using  a variety of collage materials. Each one is quite unique!

On Thursday we planted more parsley seeds (in Hebrew garinim petroseeleyah) and spent a good portion of our morning playing outside. It was such a gorgeous day!

Friday we always have fun in the Chapel welcoming in Shabbat with the lower school and then back to our classrooms to enjoy some challah and juice! It was a fun morning with David’s parents joining us this Shabbat.

Anafim

This week was spent talking about pets.  What is a pet? We defined this as an animal that can live in our house.  This got a bit confusing when some of our books included horses as a pet!  We enjoyed looking at lots of pictures of animals and sorting them into rows based on if they are a pet or not.  We also did another sorting activity with matching pictures of different dogs, cats, fish and birds to their respective columns.  This activity really showed us how different animals with the same name can look different.  

We spent some time looking at the letter sound “f” this week.  The children loved going through the sound pouch and exploring all the objects included for “f”.  They also had fun coming up with other words they know that have the starting sound of “f”.  We used the “r” sound pouch as well to focus in on the starting sounds and got a bit silly deciding if a word was faisin or raisin, fish or rish and putting the objects under the correct starting sound.  

Wednesday we enjoyed a special food prep treat.  Sophie and her parents sent in all the ingredients for us to make guacamole for snack.  Many of the children were quite excited to try out some new kitchen techniques.  We used a fork to mash up our avocados, used a cutting board and knife to dice the tomatoes, and used a citrus squeezer to juice the lime.  We mixed it all together, and enjoyed dipping our carrots into this tasty treat.  

Thursday was a very exciting day; it was so beautiful we spent a little extra time outside, we had music with Morah Dawn and learned all the notes of a c-scale, it was pizza day for many of the children and we got to bring pictures or stuffed pets to school.  The children were all so excited about this!  Every child stood up and shared about their pet and made sure to show all of the other children.  They also all told a little about their pet including their name, if they make any noise, and what the child likes to do with their pet.  All the children eloquently spoke about their pets and answered any questions that were posed to them.  It was wonderful!

Friday was an incredibly busy day!!  We started with having Oliver’s parents join us for Shabbat in the chapel.  This week, along with our favorite songs, we heard about the Parsha.  This week’s focus is on rules and how to share and cooperate.  Morah Lana brought a couple of children up to demonstrate how we can all work together and ways to share and get along nicely at school.  She talked about asking for a turn when someone is done, using our peace rose to work out our problems, and maybe offering to help a friend make another copy of their work as a way to not fight over a specific picture.  A little later in the morning we welcomed RJ’s parents to celebrate his upcoming 4th birthday!  We had a lovely Montessori Birthday Celebration and then enjoyed some popsicles as a treat.  

It was a busy fun-filled week, hopefully everyone has a lovely break and when we come back to school on Thursday we will dive right into learning about the holiday of Purim.  

Alim

This week we started a new unit about Music and Sounds.  We discussed that sounds are vibrations that one can’t see travel through the air into our ears. We played a game with our vocal cords.  We are starting a project with a musical shaker “groggers” for Purim.   This involves a lot of steps and we started this week.  We will continue the project into next week as well.

Tuesday,  we walked down to the gym and played a game with Coach Oren.  The game was Sharks and Minnows.  It was all giggles and laughter from the kiddos during the game.

On Wednesday,  it was our turn to make challah.  The children love being little chefs and mixing the ingredients together. Also, we started making our musical “Groggers”  with the children.  We begin painting and stuffing them. Next week we will add the finishing touches.  

On Thursday,  Morah Dawn came into our room and practiced sign language musical notes.  It was very sweet.  Also, we talked about Purim a little with the children.  

On Friday we went down to the chapel to enjoy Shabbat songs and the Parsha.  Lily’s grandparents joined our class.  When back in the classroom, wee blessed the challah that we made.  The Shabbat box went home this long weekend with Levi.  

Keshet

We were happy and excited to welcome Ezra's parents to our classroom on Tuesday as we celebrated in our own special Montessori birthday style! Happy Sixth birthday Ezra! 

This week we introduced USA coins, starting with the penny. First we examined the coin, noting Abraham Lincoln on one side and a shield on the other side.  The coin is made of zinc and covered in copper.  We noticed how some of the pennies were shiny and some almost brown and tarnished. We even polished one with a salt and vinegar solution and that became an exciting activity in itself! The children are working in groups of three, playing store with a handful of pennies contained in the wallet (hand sewed last week) and ‘buying’ little objects marked according to their price, ranging from 1c-9c. 

This popular activity went well and followed later in the week with the introduction of the dime.  Now we have price labels from 1c-20c and they are practicing paying with a combination of pennies and dimes.  The store keeper can also ‘make change’ - exchanging a dime for ten pennies. We will leave this game out for a few weeks, changing the objects to maintain interest. 

Alongside this, some children are practicing placing numbers in order from 1-100 (the Hundred Board) others are working on labeling the 1000 Chain, and we continue with the Montessori Golden Bead Material, showing how to add units, tens, hundreds and thousands. (Very concrete experience, handling the groupings of beads.) 

In our science unit, we learned about Saturn, the second largest planet, with its rings made of chunks of ice and rock,and all its moons, including the largest moon in our Solar System, Titan. We tried string painting for this planet and, noting how the wind on Saturn blows at a 1000 miles an hour! 

Uranus, a giant ice planet, is the seventh planet from the sun. Uranus takes 84 Earth years to orbit the sun! Uranus is unique in that it rotates on its side. 

One more planet to learn about before we compile the mobiles!

Emma was so excited to have her parents join us in the chapel on friday and share Shabbat with us in our classroom.

Purim is around the corner and we are just getting acquainted with the story! We will be performing the Purim schpiel for you on Thursday, March 2! 

See this week’s photos here https://photos.app.goo.gl/Y1ht9zdiFfyPXUCm8