January 23-27, 2023

 

Garinim

This week we continued to talk about the sky and space. We noticed the sun or clouds in the sky each day (and of course some of the interesting weather as well!), and continued to practice the ASL signs for these things.

We read It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles Green Shaw, and the children really enjoyed looking at the illustrations of clouds on each page and naming what it looked like to them. Some were very obvious, and others were a bit tricky! We also read A Trip Into Space by Lori Haskins and learned a bit about what astronauts do on the space station! We found it so interesting that they have to use so many adaptations just to avoid floating away when they're trying to do everyday things!

This week saw the addition of some color tablets to our Montessori sensory shelf. The children will work with these tablets to identify colors, match colors, and eventually grade them. Another material that grows with each child as they are ready! We also added to our Brown Stair to make it a complete set of heavy wood blocks. One very interesting thing about the Brown Stair is that the size of the smallest prism (block) is exactly the difference in size between each other prism in the set!

The children were very excited for the snow on Wednesday. Even though it didn't last, they had a wonderful time running around in the snowfall on the playground at Wednesday dismissal, and some even tried catching snowflakes on their tongue! We do hope to eventually have a real winter storm soon so that we can finally build a snowman together!!

Judaica:

As we continued this our second week discovering space we continued to create space in art. We repeated our vocabulary words in both English and Hebrew, moon, stars, sun, sky and clouds. We sang, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a fan favorite.

That tiny little burst of snowfall was so exciting, it made for an interesting retelling of the previous day. Snow,ice ,rain, winter boots, coats and hats, the children became expert meteorologists (possibly better than our own)!

We made challah this week. Our little chefs were covered with flour from head to toe. A great time was had by all.

 

Anafim

This week we continued our unit on space, but focused on our moon and the stars we see at night.  We talked about the different phases of the moon and how the moon is always a sphere, however from Earth it often looks to be different shapes like a crescent or gibbous.  We enjoyed reading The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons and found out so much information about the moon!  The book also led to a brief discussion about telescopes and looking at the moon and stars.   The question was asked if anyone had ever looked through a telescope or been to an observatory and none of the children seemed to have, so here is a link to the Yale observatory that is open to the public on Tuesday evenings and might be a fun family outing! https://leitnerobservatory.yale.edu/

In case your child didn’t share with you, Wednesday was quite exciting in our classroom.  We boarded our anafim rocket ship and took a trip to the moon.  Before the adventure we discussed how there wasn’t a lot of gravity on the moon so we would walk with a float in our step.  We boarded the rocket, strapped ourselves in, put on our spacesuits and counted down from 10.  Thankfully it was a pretty quick flight (those imaginary boosters are quite helpful) and in less than a minute we arrived on the moon.  We quickly got out of the rocket and started bouncing around searching for moon rocks (wherever you go you want a souvenir right?).  The children loved looking all around our classroom for the moon rocks and we collected 57 total! (We counted on our return trip to Earth.)  Upon our return to Earth each child got to bring home 2 of our moon rocks, which they were all excited about.  

Later in the week we talked about how stars are formed and how hot and bright they are.  We also discussed that the closest star to Earth is our very own sun.  We looked at some pictures of constellations and galaxies and the children had a blast working on creating their own constellations and galaxy art.  We also spent time learning how to say stars in 3 languages; English, American Sign Language and Hebrew.  We used these three ways to sing twinkle twinkle little star!

Our favorite song this week was definitely Laurie Berkners Rocket Ship Run and it was so exciting to zoom around the room to it.  

Friday brought another trip down to the chapel, this week joined by Sophie’s parents.  We heard about the last 3 plagues and how horrible they were.  We also learned that Pharoah finally gave approval for the Hebrews to leave but they did not have time for the bread to rise.  They just wanted to quickly leave in case Pharoah once again changed his mind.  

As if Friday’s aren’t exciting enough, later in the morning we were joined by Mark’s parents to celebrate his 4th birthday.  They helped us with our Montessori birthday celebration and brought in some cupcakes to share with the class.  Thank you so much!

Next week we move on from outer space, back to planet Earth and talking about trees and planting to start getting ready for Tu B’Shevat (Jewish Arbor Day).  Have a wonderful weekend!

 

Alim

This week we focused on OUR PLANET EARTH. We talked about fun facts about our Planet.  We read some great stories about Earth.  The kids especially enjoyed the book My First Book of Earth: All About Our Planet for Kids by Stephanie Schuttler.  We talked about the relationship between the moon and the Earth as well.  We read a cute story called MOON! EARTH”S BEST FRIEND by Stacy Mcanulty.  Also,  we made a fun version of the Planet Earth with green and blue paint.  We also added cotton balls for the clouds.  

On Tuesday, we went down to the gym to join Coach Oren.  We played a fun game that involved racing with our classmates.

On Wednesday,  we were busy in the classroom.  Some kids put on their chef hats and helped make the Challah.  Children were busy using the Montessori materials and everyone had a chance to finish our art project of our Planet Earth.  

On Thursday,  the Challah was braided and baked in the oven.  Morah Dawn came into our classroom and focused on Musical Notes with the children.

On Friday,  we went down to the Chapel and enjoyed singing songs and listening to the Parsha with Morah Lana.  The Shabbat box went home with Eli’s family.  We can’t wait to hear about all his adventures with Shual, our fox friend, when he returns on Monday.  Shabbat Shalom Everyone.


Keshet

What have we been up to? 

We learned that e and a right next to one another make the sound ‘ea’. We thought of words that had the ‘ea’ sound, and wrote those words. We introduced the question mark, and how to write it.  The journal entry on Monday had to be a question, followed by an answer / as a sentence that ended with a period. 

Inspired by ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ (which we are loving!) we thought of all kinds of unusual chocolates and Morah Lana shared her Frozen Chocolate Banana recipe. The children wanted to try this at home and many chose to write down the recipe. 

Tuesday started off with great excitement as we gathered all the cards and decorations the children had made and hidden on a shelf behind the easel (!) and set up a very happy birthday display for Morah Verred.  She was very surprised and overjoyed to share her birthday with the Keshet kids. When everything got a little too exciting, we sang Happy Birthday in sign language. 

Inspired by the recipe on the board, Morah Verred brought in bananas, chocolate chips, vanilla chips and sprinkles and the children took turns making there own chocolate frozen bananas!

We continue learning about the clock; this week focusing on half past, or thirty minutes past / after, on the analogue clock and also as a digital clock (11:30). I think they’re getting the idea now and we’ll continue through next week. 

We learned about our moon, Earth's partner and read ‘Neil Armstrong’ by Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara, (part of  the Little People Big Dreams series). (Thanks Noa for donating this book on the occasion of your birthday!) Later in the week we learned planet Mercury, the smallest planet and the one closest to the sun. The third planet we explored was Venus, a planet much warmer than Mercury. Maxwell Montes is a huge mountain chain on Venus, over seven miles high - the tallest mountain chain in the whole solar system. The children decorated their planets as they learned about them (Venus is colored with swirls of yellow and grey (representing the clouds) and swirls of yarn showing the winds on Venus that are stronger and wilder than any hurricane on Earth!

This week during Shabbat in the Chapel we learned about parsha Bo, which continues the story of the plagues in Egypt. Emma and Ezra were the Shabbat Helpers this week and led us as we recited the brachot for challah and grape juice.


See this week’s photos here https://photos.app.goo.gl/xxcGpUquV9yVzGvt5



 

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