Happy Shabbat!

This week has flown by! We started our week off with our wonderful dedication to our new playground and having a special person or grandparent come to join us! It was wonderful to see everyone enjoying the morning with the children. It was so fun to see everyone at our orange juicing booth. We have a lot of children who loved juicing!

In the dramatic play area this week, we shut down oour flower shop and changed it out to celebrate Shabbat. We have a lot of soup making, challah making, setting the table and cleaning the classroom!

The block area has been busy with creating ice bergs and different cold lands.

Our light table was a busy area this week with tracing our letters using the light. We also worked on our Hebrew sounds with Mora Devora using paint to dot our letters.

We continued this week talking about The Artic and Antarctica Animals, mainly the penguin. We had our “northern lights” up inside the loft. And the children enjoyed laying down and looking up at it. It, of course doesn’t do justice to the real thing!

Our books for the week were-
“Animal babies in Polar lands”, “Way up in the Artic”, “Recess at 20 below”.

The children loved reading about children going to school in Alaska and how it’s so different from our school! We don’t get to sled on a big pile of snow for months!(in my opinion, Thank Goodness!)

Coming up next week- Talking more about Shabbat, with many projects for us to do and explore!

Have an amazing weekend!
Morah Amanda and Morah Devora

Parsha's Yisro:

In this weeks Parsha we learned about Matan Torah, the very special moment when Hashem gave us the Torah.  The Jewish people were getting ready for 3 days, and Moshe went to the sky for 40 days to learn and get the Torah from Hashem.
Hashem chose the mountain of Har Sinai, to give the Torah on, because it was a humble mountain, and Hashem wanted to teach this lesson to the Jewish people to be humble.
We also learned that Hashem gave us the 10 commandments, and it was a very special moment, that we remember it until today!!
Shabat Shalom

Happy Tu B'shvat!

This week has flown by with so many items on our Tu B'shvat list! The children enjoyed talking about the trees and the new life it brings for us as well.  They talked about how trees provide us with food, air, they are beautiful to look at, it is homes to many animals and it gives us much needed shade in our hotter months.

In the Dramatic area we turned our area into a Flower shop named Green Room Flowers. The children loved taking turns being in the front of the store, taking the orders.  We had quite a few orders for a variety of colors to cheer everyone up.  It turned into a math lesson as well with "I would like 5 pink flowers and 3 red ones" which we heard daily! The children (especially the girls) loved the arranging part with vases and bottles that I brought in.  The boys took our bottles to a new level!  The bottles are empty coke and pepsi bottles and when they saw them, I heard one boy say to the other,    "Would you like to have a beer with me?" I looked up and sure enough they had sat at a table and were pretending to "have a beer". :o)  We had a talk about the labels and introduced Pepsi and Coke! :o)

We have read several books this week about Trees and their parts. The children really enjoyed learning the parts of a tree and some were amazed about how large the root system can get.  One reference we heard, " They are like an iceberg, small on the top and bigger on the bottom!" I love seeing the amazed look of discovery when they can associate different ideas! We also read Apples and talked about who likes sour apples or sweet apples.  I was amazed that so many like the sour kind! :)

The children have been doing a lot of exploring on the playground and love for me to take their picture!  This week, we had a lot of slide fun and running around just playing together. Gross motor skills were high in the making in the Green room this week!:)  Please look on our Facebook page to see these wonderful events!

We brought in a tree branch and had the children decorate it with string and scraps or tissue paper.  It is turning out so beautiful!

Yesterday, our children made the Challah dough for Shabbot with Morah Devora for all of the classes.  They loved mixing and pouring the ingredients.

In parsha with Morah Devorah the green room has been learning about Parshas Beshalach.
We talked about:
-The big miracle of Krias yam suf, when the ocean split into two, and the Jews crossed the whole ocean on dry land, yet when when the Egyptians were crossing it, the water "closed" on them.
- all of the Jewish people sang a special song together to thank Hashem for this big miracle.
-how excited were the Jewish people when they were walking in the desert for 40 years, to get the Torah, and all the miracles that happened, the clouds that protected them, the fire that showed them where to go, and the "mann", that was the food they ate in the dessert, and on Fridays the got double portion, one for Friday and one for shabbat. That's why every Shabbat at the Shabbat table we have two challash, to remember the double portion of mann.  Ask your children about what they learned, I am sure they will be happy to share!

We hope everyone has a wonderful Shabbat and weekend!

Morah Amanda and Morah Devora

Happy Friday Everyone,

This week has been a getting to know each other week.  The children are adjusting very well and have enjoyed showing me where things are in the class.  As you may have heard, I have been changing the environment around a bit to enable a little more room for different work around the classroom.  This will continue as I add more items here and there through my observations of the children.

The theme this week has been Antarctica, The Artic and the Aniamls that live in each area.  It's been cold here but of course not like in these cold places in the World. Today we did an experiment to see how penguins can stay in the frigid water and survive. Please ask about it and how long your child could keep their hand in the water!

The Dramatic Play area is a lot bigger and we have been seeing quite a few chefs in the kitchen.  We have been seeing a lot of cooperative play with a lot of discussion about the fruits and vegetables the children tried during our sensory tasting on the playground with all of our schoolmates. This next week we will turn the play area into a flower shop!

The Library area has been used this week for "meetings" which we enjoy listening to. It's wonderful to see a few of the children curled up on the couch reading a book.  Morah Devora has been asked by Tzipi, Zoe and Jemma to join them in reading a book.

Mason, Levi, Ava and Jemma have been working on their mathematical minds this week! :) I have sat with them playing a version of shut the box and they absolutely love counting the dice and turning the numbers over.  This game has encouraged the children to want to play it quite a few times and I'm asked to show them more numbers.

The block area was turned into a floating iceberg with some brown land surrounding it. Jemma and Hammond enjoyed the Polar bears cave and we had many friends watching all the fun they were coming up with.  "Look Jemma, the Polar Bear is in the dark Cave so don't put in the penguins because remember they eat them!"

In Parsha, this week the green room learned about Parshas Bo.
We learned about the birth of Moshe, and how Yocheved and Miriam took care of this special baby, by putting him in a special basket in the river.
Years later this baby boy turned to be Moshe Rabeinu the leader of the Jewish people and lead them out of Egypt.
We also learned about how Pharaoh, the king of Egypt was very mean to the Jewish people and made them work a lot, without taking a break.  Hashem sent 10 plagues to Pharoah and Egypt.  The plagues were:
Blood
Frogs
Lice
Wild animals
Death of the farm animals
Boils
Fire and hail
Grasshopper
Darkness
Death of the first born.
After each plague Pharaoh told the Jewish nation to leave Egypt and afterwards he changed his mind.
After the last plague Pharaoh kept his word and he let the Jews leave.
The Jewish people didn't have time to bake the bread as they were running out of egypt, so it baked on their backs and that is why we eat Matzah!
Because of this special story, and the miracles, we celebrate Passover every year.

We are excited about next week and the Exploration of Tu B'Shvat!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
Morah Devora and Morah Amanda