January 25-29, 2021

Garinim: 
This week we focused on Tu B’Shevat; the birthday of the trees! Morah Sherri did Tu B’Shevat yoga with us and we made so many fun crafts.
We made handprint trees, cherry blossom trees, and apple trees.
We learned a new song:
See lyrics attached
We ready Sammy Spider’s First Tu B’Shevat
We discussed the seasons and how trees change their appearance depending on the season.
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Alim:
We started discussing the celebration of the birthday of the Trees for this Thursday.  We continue our Winter art.  There was a nice buzzing atmosphere in the classroom this week that is lovely to see.  Our Sound of the Week was Mm.  We read the Alphatale book: Monkey's Miserable Monday.  The children were shown the Animals of North America.  There is a worksheet to go with this.  Also,  the children were shown a new felt Continent work with labels.  This work is to help them learn the names of the continents. During story time we read some Elephant and Piggie books.  The children were laughing and enjoying these stories about these two animals that are best friends.  
Judaics/Hebrew: We had fun learning about Tu B’Shvat. We did a silly dance while learning the parts of a tree. We talked about the many fruits that we enjoy that grow on trees. We continue our learning of the alef bet and focused on ל. Some of the words we reviewed were לחם(bread), לב (heart) and ליצן (clown). Many of the children had an amusing time creating their ליצן faces.  
 
Anafim:
The theme this week was Tu B'Shevat, the celebration of trees, and more specifically, trees in Israel.  We spoke about the benefits of trees, for people - oxygen, providing shade, fruit, and a home for insects, small animals, snakes and tree frogs.  We read The Giving Treeby Shel Silberstein, Netta Plants a Tree, a TuB'Shevat story and The Story of a Tree, which tells the life cycle of a tree from seed to tree to forest and what happens when large forests are cut down to make room for cities. We talked about the byproducts of trees, including wooden furniture, the pencils we use each day, and paper.  On Wednesday we did Tu B'Shevat Yoga with Morah Sherri and balanced like trees, and then sang Happy Birthday and lit candles - yoga style lying on our backs with legs in the air and little feet flickering flames. We've been singing 
Hashkediah porachat v'shemesh pas zorachat, 
tziporim mirosh kol gag, mevarosh et bo hachag.  
TuB'shvat higiah, chag l'ilanot,TuB'shevat higiah, chag l'ilanot!
(Almond trees are blooming.  The sun is shining and the birds are on all the rooftops announcing that it's TuB'shevat, the holiday of the trees.) Ask your child about Reduce, reuse, recycle. We save drinking yogurt lids and apple sauce pouch lids and reuse these as counters for our Bingo games. Ask about landfills. 
On Thursday Dror brought in all the fixins' to make 'Mr. Grasshead' and demonstrated how to add grass seeds and soil to create a googly eyed character, who should soon require a haircut.  Remember 'Chia pets'? The children loved this and some added a moustache to theirs, others wanted glasses. So much fun!
 
Keshet:
In art the children broke branches and created winter trees covered in snow.
Math included more money facts and exchanging pennies for nickels and dimes.  Number games on Thursday took the form of shopkeepers (store owners?) and shoppers. 
The Reading A-Z program with little readers and corresponding activity sheets keeps everyone busy. Journal writing continues daily, and games this week included 'doing words' also known as 'verbs' picked from the mystery bag and acted out for others to guess the word/action. 
We continued with the theme Earth Science.  A fundamental part of Earth Science is to understand the Water Cycle.  I asked the students to think about how the oceans get full of water and how it stays like that.  We talked in detail of how the water cycle works. It's the continuous movement of water within the Earth and Atmosphere.  I showed them diagrams of how it works and they all seemed to enjoy this very much.  We started discussing the PHASES OF THE MOON.  This is important as it affects the Earth.   We discussed how the moon orbits around the Earth.  The phases are the changes in the amount of sunlight reflecting off the moon.  There are 8 phases.  It takes about 1 month to cycle around.  Ask your children how we role played being the Sun, the Earth and the Moon.  It was super fun!!!!!
 
See this week's pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mcnTmx1hqmNYVFQt8

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