May 9-13, 2022

Garinim 

The weather is finally warming up! We have been so excited to head out to the yard without having to bundle up.  The children have become so independent with getting their shoes changed so we can head right outside.  

Our caterpillars did indeed form their chrysalides by the time we came back to school on Monday, so during circle time we carefully opened up the cup and attached the fabric piece to the sides of our butterfly garden.  We then hung the whole thing in the middle of our classroom and we are anxiously awaiting their emergence.  The children love to look up at the butterfly garden and point out that there are many chrysalides in there.  

This week we spent some time planting.  We are sprouting three different types of beans (pinto, black and lima) in small bags attached to the windows.  The children enjoyed folding up their paper towel, spraying it with water, slipping it into their bag then adding 3 beans into the bag before zipping it closed and hanging it in the window.  We also planted some pea seeds in dirt that we are busy watering and taking care of.  We enjoy checking on these plants throughout the day to see if anything has changed.  

Shabbat was enjoyed by all, especially the challah and grape juice.  We enjoyed singing David Melech Yisrael at circle time as well as our class favorite Zum Gali Gali.  We also enjoyed reading the book The Shabbat Box.  Have a wonderful weekend  and enjoy the beautiful weather!

Alim

We celebrated Zev’s birthday this week.  It was a very nice birthday celebration.  The caterpillars turned into cocoons officially.  We transferred the cocoons to a large mesh net and soon the butterflies will emerge.  It’s very exciting to see.  We read some really fun stories this week at our circle time.  Next week we will begin our bird unit.  

Alim Judaics  - We continue to count the Omer and have learned ‘esreem’ for the 20’s.  We learned the difference between the Bet vs. Vet Hebrew letters this week.  We learned to notice if the letter has the dot/dagesh (or Belly button) in the middle, it is a Bet and makes the ‘b’ sound whereas,  if there is no dot/dagesh, then the letter is a Vet with the ‘v’ sound. The children traced the sandpaper block letters with their fingers to learn its shape.  There is a ‘Bet’ letter coloring sheet in the art area for the children to work on and get familiar with this letter.  We enjoyed another super-fun Shalom Sesame mini video on the Bet letter and talked about many words that begin with the letter ‘Bet’ like bayit/ house and brucha/ blessing.

Alim Shabbat -  We celebrated Shabbat with ‘Movement and Music’ to Shabbat tunes, wishing all a peaceful Shabbat as we go around the circle singing ‘Shabbat is here, Shabbat Shalom to Emily Tova, etc.  We read The Shabbat Box, by Lesley Simpson - a wonderful story about how Ira longs for his turn to take home the Shabbat box, but when it’s his turn, he loses it during a snowstorm on his walk home from school.  The children were intrigued to hear how Ira chose to resolve his problem.  Emily K. and Paige were the Shabbat helpers this week to bring in the light of the candles, saying the blessings together.

 

Keshet

In Science we are learning about arthropods - mostly ladybugs. Of the thirteen ladybug larvae that arrived, only one has made it through to the mature larva stage and we are calmly watching it move around the habitat and attempt the climb up the wall to hopefully settle into the pupa stage… More on that in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, we are playing ladybug memory games with 40 ladybug species and the children are reading the names beneath each picture!! They are working through the lifecycle stages, recording answers in their Life Cycle of the Ladybug book. Outdoors we spotted some reddish,brown ants and intrigued with their activity, learned more about them. You may want to ask your child what the ants do under the ground, where they live and what they carry as they exit their anthill. 

 

In Math we are practicing number lines - addition and subtraction. We are also working through division stories - collecting and sharing the Montessori golden beads in quantities of thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. Division is probably the easiest concept to understand - presented as a sharing game (ex. 9633 ÷ 3 =    ) ‘ 9633 shared with 3 friends: Molly, Jakob and Ram.  Let’s share out the beads and see how many one’s/unit beads each person gets.  How many tens does each friend get?...’ 

 

In Language we are working with parts of speech - individual words were distributed and the children worked in pairs to create a sentence from the words provided.  It was quite challenging creating a sentence using only the words at their disposal - great teamwork, some frustration, and then using the Montessori grammar symbols for noun, adjective and verb.  

 

Hebrew has the children familiar now with all the letters, and the final letters too.  They are sounding out words, paying attention to the vowels. 

 

In Music this week the Keshet kids focused on rhythm, keeping in time as they drummed to the beat. It was quite impressive watching them drumming together. 

 

Keshet Yoga - The lifecycle of a Butterfly Yoga theme - we learned how many kinds of butterflies exist,how many legs a caterpillar has & the 4 stages of a butterfly- which we acted out through yoga- egg/ Roly Poly pose, Larva/ Caterpillar pose - fold over seated legs, Pupa/ rock pose with arms tucked under for the chrysalis and the adult Butterfly pose, we stretched to some fun butterfly/caterpillar/ladybug music, saluted the sun and enjoyed ‘la cucaracha’- a spanish spin on the cockroach, focusing on our ‘dead bug’ pose, ending with our Cricket rub and a beautiful guided meditation while resting called The Butterfly Hug. I’ve sent home a copy of this with your child - please enjoy it together perhaps at bedtime and while relaxing together.  

 

See this week’s photos https://photos.app.goo.gl/4DDFNpSG6cPMJ2V77

 

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