Rosh Hashana continues

This week in the Green Room we continued our Rosh Hashana unit. Here are some of our highlights this week.

Group Projects

This week our friends worked on creating their own keepsake honey jar! First our friends covered their jar in glue and then used tissue paper to cover the outside of their jar. This created a stained glass collage look. Our friends really enjoyed the getting sticky with glue and working with a new medium.  Each child will be sent home with one next week. 

On Friday our group project was a still life shofar painting. Still life drawings are valuable because our friends use something that is real and meaningful as a guide for their own creative expression. This activity challenges our friend's ability to look at the finer details in the everyday objects that are familiar to them.

Another group project this week was apple stamping. Our friends created apple prints while following a two step direction and using eye/hand coordination. Moving their hand from the paint plate onto their paper requires our friends to focus and coordinate their hand movement with their eye movement.  Lastly, this activity teaches cause and effect - demonstrating to our friends the plain apple and what happens after dipping it into paint to create a print on their paper.  

This week we conducted our first science experiment. We made apple eruptions! First, Morah Felicia cut out the core of 3 apples leaving them whole. We mixed some watercolor in vinegar and took out some baking soda. Each friend poured about 2 teaspoons of baking soda into their apple and before they added the vinegar, Morah Felicia asked the group, "I wonder what will happen when we add the vinegar?" As each child added the vinegar to their apple they discovered the mixture made fizzy sounds and overflowed their apple with bubbles! They were truly amazed saying, "whoa!" and giggling with excitement as they repeated this at least 6 more times. Science should be viewed as thinking and trying to understand how things works and how the world works. It's not the time to memorize facts. Our friends need multi-sensory approaches to learning. Therefore, science experiments involve asking questions, probing for answers, conducting investigations and collecting data. Our job as Morahs is to give children the opportunity to construct their own ideas.

During circle time, Morah Felicia introduced a special prayer book used on Rosh Hashanah called the Machzor. Our friends took some time to explore, flipping through the pages, discovering most of it was in Hebrew and also how the book opened wasn't like what they were used to.  

Looking forward to another great week. Wishing you a restful Shabbos,

Morah Felicia