Week of October 5-9, 2020

Garinim:
This week, we finished with our theme of Sukkot, and also focused on one particular vegetable— the pumpkin! We learned how pumpkins come from pumpkin seeds and “watered” our own pumpkins. “I’ll water it. I’ll pull the weeds. Pumpkins come from pumpkin seeds”. The children each took turns pretending to water a pumpkin, and we learned some yoga “pumpkin seed” poses too!
Lots of Sukkot and pumpkin themed activities this week. We created texture pumpkin painting, by using a special textured sponge that made some very interesting designs that the children could feel. We added felt, tissue paper and other fabrics with different textures so the children can feel the difference between “smooth” and “rough”. We then took turns feeling the real pumpkins and gourds that we have in our classroom during circle time, so the children can practice their new vocabulary words of “smooth” and “rough”. We counted our gourds in Hebrew (we got to three), and painted our gourds as well!
Our new song:
“5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate. The first one said oh my it’s getting late. The second one said, we don’t care. The third one said there are stars in the air. The fourth one said we are ready for some fun. The fifth one said let’s run and run and run. Whoooo went the wind and out went the light, and the 5 little pumpkins rolled out of sight.
We had the opportunity to hang some of our vegetable themed decorations in the Sukkah outside.
 
Alim:
We had our first Montessori birthday celebration for our classmate Rafi this week.  It was a beautiful celebration of his life.  It was a very special day for him celebrating with his friends.  Thank you Rafi and family for the Insect book that was dedicated to the class in honor of his birthday. 
 
We introduced the secondary color ORANGE throughout the classroom.  In the Art area there were lots of different mediums.  We did a lot of color mixing activities with red and yellow to create orange.  We experimented with chalk and paint.   Also,  we read a few classic story books like CorduroyBy Don Freeman and Chicka Chicka Boom BoomBy Bill Martin Jr.
 
The sound of the week was "R".  We read the Alphatale book called Rosie Rabbit's Radish.  It was a cute story with lots of sounds beginning with "r".  We also introduced two classic Montessori presentations to the class; the spindle boxes and the binomial cube.  We started discussing OUR FAMILY and we'll continue next week to talk further.  
 
We have been talking about sukkot all week! We even practiced shaking the lulav while holding the etrog which was challenging for some friends. Even though we are sad that the week is coming to an end, we know that there are two more holidays to celebrate.  In honor of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah we made stained glass torahs to hang on the window. Our friends are so excited to show you.
 
Anafim:
We continued with our celebration of Sukkot; shaking the lulav and etrog and singing our holiday songs.  The holiday immediately following Sukkot is the celebration of the completion of the reading of the Torah: Simchat Torah ('celebrating Torah').  Adults and children traditionally gather (not so much this year), waving flags and singing and dancing with the Torah; then roll the scroll all the way back to start the process once again.  To understand this, some of the children chose to depict the first story in the Torah, Genesis - the creation of the world, and created their own Torah.  Incorporating our practice of the Hebrew alef-bet, some cut out the 10-commandment breast plate while singing 'alef, bet, gimel, dalet, hey - vav, zayin, chet, tet, yud'. 
The weather this week has been so, so beautiful.  The children gathered scach (green leafy branches) and dragged them back to our playground sukkah.  They cut and taped together colorful paper chains, added a few sukkot pictures, and stood back to admire our playground sukkah. We shook the lulav and etrog and sang our Sukkot songs. It's a fun and colorful harvest holiday. 
The outdoors and nature has shown us that old wood, as in the wooden logs on the playground from last year are now worn and weathered, much lighter in weight than they once were, and easily broken up to add to the wood chip in that area.  Perhaps we'll make our own paper one day... You may have heard talk about 'Lock Down' or 'Fire Drill.' This week we introduced, discussed and practiced these safety procedures.  Next week we will practice when they least expect it. The children shared all sorts of concerns; there were lots of questions like ' why does the alarm go off when it actually goes ON !?' And 'will the alarm hurt my ears?' ' What happens if we are eating our lunch when we have to go into Lock Down? What will happen if someone looks through the window and sees our lunch?' I was honest and age -appropriate in presenting and answering questions, providing scenarios, and the children were AMAZING with the practices. (We practiced the unheard of... walking outside in our indoor shoes!)
 
Keshet:
The Keshet children were excited to receive their first Kindergarten Math Activity books this week, with careful instruction to listen, follow direction, cut and paste.  The first activity pages included matching - with close observation to detail, noticing that which seems the same but upon closer inspection, is a little different (a different color bow around the neck, animals that look the same, but not all facing the same direction...) The children are learning to ask questions, look for directions, and spontaneously offering to help one another. 
There's a lot to be accomplished in a day; following Math each day is English with additional practice in the Montessori Language area.  Some children are matching pictures by first letter sounds, a few are exploring blended letter sounds (flag, stamp, clip...) others are reading word strips or practicing writing lower case letters.
In Science the children are exploring the continents,  First,  we discussed that we live on our planet Earth.   We reviewed that Earth has 7 continents.  Then we focused on our continent of North America. We discussed how North America has 3 countries;  Canada, USA and Mexico.   Also, North America is surrounded by 3 oceans: Atlantic, Pacific and the Arctic. We focused our discussion further on our country, The United States of America.  We took out the Montessori map of the USA .  We went over how there are 50 states and how we all live in the state of Connecticut.  The children started discussing the towns and cities they live in. 
 
See this week's photo's here photos.app.goo.gl/tQfmJPGT3AhqdPo2A

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