Week of October 26-30, 2020

Garinim:

This week we are focusing on Noah’s Ark as it was last week’s Parashat for Shabbat.   We have integrated all of our learning and activities around this theme.  We have enjoyed a Noah’s Ark book which we have read a few times and then enjoyed and changed the song ‘The Ants go marching two by two’  to  -  ‘The animals go marching 2 by 2 Hurrah, Hurrah, The Giraffes go marching 2 by 2 Hurrah, Hurrah, The elephants go marching 2 by 2 , the little one stops to tie his shoe and they all go marching ‘onto the Ark to get out of the rain’…..

We also integrated the children into the story as we used our stuffed Noah’s Ark toy filled with stuffed mini animals – each child picked an animal to march into the ark, and be a part of the story.    Crafts have included painting a large Noah’s Ark picture on our classroom easel and ‘animal cookie cutter stamping’ into Noah’s Ark on brown paper,  animal footprints and we will focus on the end of the story which features the rainbow that G-d sent to the Jewish people as a sign that we can begin a new fresh life together.   We enjoyed talking about the colors of a rainbow and where we can find a rainbow in the sky.  We then began a project cutting out strips of different colored paper to create our own rainbows. 

Morah Sherri taught Noah’s ark Yoga a few times this week for added indoor music and movement.  We focused on many animal poses. We enjoyed daily circle times and reviewed the letter ‘t’ and it’s sound ‘tah,tah,tah’.  Then enjoyed identifying many different toy objects that begin with the letter ‘t’.  We looked around the room for objects in the classroom that begin with the letter ‘t’ – such as table, toys, our family Tree (Thank you for sending in your child’s family pictures to be added to our Tree.) , Trucks, and toilet paper. The next day, we reviewed the letter ‘S’ and followed the above outline to reinforce this letter, it’s sound and objects that start with this letter.

Outdoor play time is a big part of every day for exercise, fresh air and time to dig in the sand, jump in the rain puddles and walk along our tree stumps while we focus on our balance. We continued to learn about our bodies through a fun puzzle, books about our Eyes, ears, nose and toes, a book on our 5 senses and even acting out a bit of ‘Head, shoulders, knees and toes’ in English and also learning this song in Hebrew.   We will continue our ‘All about Me’ theme into next week.

Fridays are always fun celebrating our Kabbalat Shabbat with songs, stories and prayers. Friday, we began our focus on Rainbows, with movement and craft through Painting and gluing our own colored strips of paper onto the paper to form our ‘version’ of a Rainbow. 

Alim Classroom:
The topic of discussion this week was Our Family.   We discussed who were the members in our family and the children were able to tell their friends during circle time.   Speaking of families, our friend Bear became a big brother to a beautiful sister this week.  MAZEL TOV!!!!!  We are very excited and happy that Mom and Baby are doing well.   This week we had some new math work taken out on the shelves.  The short bead stair for counting.  They are colorful beads that children count and place alongside the correct numerals.  Also,  another fun math counting work was shown that involved locks and keys.   This was very popular with the children.   In the practical life area,  the children were shown the care of watering plants.   Our Pumpkin scrubbing work is still being enjoyed by many.  The Sound of the week was Yy.  We read the Alphatale book The Yak who yelled Yuck.  It's an adorable story about a young yak who eventually yells yum after trying new foods.   We focused on all the "y" sounds.  
 
The children enjoyed a puppet show starring Avraham and Sara. They learned about the promise they were given to have a child in their old age and of the many descendants that would come from Avraham. The craft helped them to gain a sense of what that would mean by making as many stars as they could from yellow paint. We also focused on Alef as our letter of the week. Finally, our Shabbat celebration was a fun way to end the week with songs, a skit and an amusing twist to the baby shark song.
 

Anafim:

This week we began the theme of 'Me' - what makes me 'me'?  Is it the way we look, the way we talk? The things we like to do?  The children love playing the memory game and so we played a round beginning with 'Morah Lana likes to walk her dog.' And the next child  began...'Morah Lana likes to walk her dog and I like to go to the beach' (Ramona)... Henry likes to go on a date with his mom, Sasha likes to swim in her pool, Audra likes to sew beads, Riley likes to play Hide and Seek, Maya loves to draw pictures...
We spoke about the five senses and focused on sight, how light reflects off an object and enters the eye through the pupil.  We covered our eyes and imagined what it would be like to be blind, reading braille, and took turns leading a blind- folded friend around the room, walking slowly and giving cues so they would not bump into anything.  Talking about hearing and how that works; the outer ear (pinna) acting as a funnel and directing sound waves, or vibrations into the ear canal... We played the Silence game, introduced with a quiet song and movement: 'walk around, walk around, with your feet on the ground.  Listen, listen, what can you hear?' It's amazing what one does hear when all is very still (voices from the adjacent classroom, Morah Sheryl's footsteps, the flushing of a toilet...) We can't really do tasting, but smelling various objects through a mask and guessing what they might be, was interesting.  
 
Keshet:
Math included the 10 frame; playing with colored bears on a ten-frame outline and 'making' the numbers. The children also fished for a domino piece and recreated it on their frame.  The miniature number rods are a good way to demonstrate adding, incorporating number bonds and 10-frames - getting the children familiar with all ways of representing numbers and quantities. Number writing practice is always requested upon completion of activity pages in their math practice book. 
The children completed their globe of the world and flags from the country of birth and are so proud of themselves. 
 They continued to  work on their 'My Family' book, practicing writing and drawing various family members., in English and in Hebrew. And of course, practicing for the HaShem Sheli presentation, which was awesome! It was so wonderful to welcome parents and grandparents from around the USA, and Israel to see their children/grandchildren in action. We'll be sending home their books and world globe during the week.
 
See this week's pictures here https://photos.app.goo.gl/4jVJcwVqqRCGyEfN8
 

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