March 21-25, 2022

Garinim 

This week sure was calmer than last week.  We took a bit of breath from all the holiday excitement and focused on the new season, spring!  We talked about how the weather will be warming up and that we will see flowers and plants starting to bloom soon.  We even noticed in the garden area some flowers have already started to pop up and are opening up to show off their beautiful colors.  A new activity that was available this week was flower arranging.  The children delighted in looking at all different colored flowers and putting them so carefully into the glass vase.  One day during circle time we focused on the parts of the flower.  We identified the stem, petals, and leaves and talked about the different colors that can be seen on a flower.  We also delighted in dancing to “Springtime Dance” by Jack Hartmann. It was so much fun to reach up high like the growing flowers, dance like a bird, and hop like a bunny.   

 

During music on Thursday Morah Dawn taught us how to make a rain storm with just our bodies.  We rubbed our hands together, then tried to snap and even patted on our legs and clapped our hands to make louder rain and thunder.  The children were all so focused on this activity. 

 

Next week we will move on to talking about Pesach (Passover).  We will be busy learning all about the story of Passover and creating many things to bring home for our Seders.  

 

Alim

We sprung into Spring this week with so many new activities in the classroom.  It’s nice and bright with new Practical Life activities and Spring Art.  The Sound of the Week was “Tt” this week.  We read the AlphaTale book…When Tilly comes to Tea.  There were sheets for letter formation and sound association with this letter.  The kids were humming and busy doing lots of Montessori activities in the classroom.

 

Alim Judaics  We are starting to celebrate Passover and enjoying many new books - such as; What is Passover?, and PJ Library Matzo Frogs - which the children thought was hysterical but it had a nice message of ‘1 Mitzvah leads to another Mitzvah’.  We are starting to practice the Mah Nishtana together- all 4 questions -  Some of the children are already familiar with this song. We read The LIttlest Levine where Hannah is the youngest and smallest child.  She doesn’t like being the smallest and not able to reach things or help around the house so much because she’s so small.  Well Grandpa spends time practicing the Mah Nishtana with her day after day, and when it comes time for the Seder, Hannas is so excited and proud to be the littlest Levine and sing the 4 Questions for her whole family! 

Alim Shabbat -  was based on the theme of ‘Mitzvot’.  We sang and danced to the songs, ‘Bim Bam,  ‘Do A  Mitzvah’ & ‘Oseh Shalom’ and read the Shabbat story, It’s A Mitzvah ‘Grover’!    TOO MUCH FUN!   Shabbat Shalom Montessori Families

 

Keshet

We’re now into Passover, with the story of the Hebrews in Egypt, baby Moses, the plagues… Each day we have read a different story book with a slight variation of details, and paying attention to the illustrations and the artist's interpretation of the events. We are painting and creating a Passover mural for our classroom, and the children, amongst themselves, are discussing who will be which character.  They were clearly inspired by last week’s Purim play and are now excited to retell this story!

Math activities included multiplication as in ‘3 taken 5 times’ as they work with number cards, beads on the ‘times board’.  We practiced with money - counting coins, grouping, exchanging pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters ( using the tzedakah which we collected recently, and which will be sent towards efforts in Ukraine). Real experiences are definitely the best learning experiences. 

In Science this week we continue with the solar system, learning about the sun, our biggest star, and the smallest planet, Mercury. Along with information, the children are doing an art technique for each planet which will ultimately be part of their own completed Solar System mobile. 

In Hebrew, the children are almost done learning all the Hebrew letters, and learning words that start with those new letters. They are becoming more familiar with the vowels changing the sound of the letters and sounding out words. This week we focused on the letter Kuf (ק) with the words Kof (monkey) and of course they already know the word Keshet (Rainbow).  Morah Shira always ends the week with Parsha on Fridays.  After the interesting stories in Bereishit and Shemot (Genesis and Exodus) we are now learning about our prophets.  

 

Keshet Yoga -  This week’s theme was Jungle/ Mindfulness (Zaheer in Hebrew) -  we focused on being present and in the moment.  We read a beautiful book called, Mindful Monkey , Happy Panda,  we danced like mashugana monkeys with so many thoughts running around in our heads - we couldn’t concentrate and how if we focus on mindful eating, mindful reading, mindful walking, and mindful sleeping etc. - we can be more successful in Life.

 

See this week’s photos here https://photos.app.goo.gl/XgXVLGm4jMWurvyr9

 

0Comments

Add Comment