Dear parents,
We have had such an exciting week at Wise beginning out Tu B’Shevat celebrations. We started the week with Havdalah services led by Jen where we welcomed in a new week as a school. We then took a nature walk around the campus and specifically the Shalom Gardens. The children were asked to noticed details about the nature around them, talk about what is similar and what is different between them. We then over the next few days asked the children to draw their favorite tree using various mediums. The children drew with markers at first, which tends to be easier as the ink comes out quickly without much pressure applied. Following that the students used water colors and water color pencils to recreate their tree in a different way. This focused on their fine motor development with the materials as well as artistic expression. We connected our nature walk and drawings of trees to the coming holiday of Tu B’Shevat and discussed how we should treat our environment. We also dove into Tu B’Shevat conversations while gardening in our front yard. The children took out the previous plants, turned the soil, and planted some flowers and soon there will be a succulent garden planted by all of explorers classrooms. The children also got to do a small dried fruit tasting, picked their favorite one, and used that dried fruit in a recipe for honey oatmeal cookies where the sugar is replaced with honey and whole wheat flour is used instead of regular all purpose flour. We discussed what their favorites fruits were and chose which dried fruit would be tasted from that list and spoke about which kinds of fruits grows on trees and which grow on vines or bushes. Lastly in the Tu B’Shevat activities list, we did a science experiment with white flowers sitting in colored water. Over the course of the week, the children have been observing the slow progress that the flowers have made but they are indeed turning the color of the water that they are in. The children went through the process of making predictions and setting up the experiment itself which included trimming the flowers with kids scissors and dying the water. In other news in our classroom, we have switched out the puzzles that the children do often for new ones. We used to have an easy and medium level of difficulty, but now we also added quite challenging puzzles for the children to begin practicing and we are so proud of how all of them are excited to sit and use their cognitive thinking to challenge themselves and solve these at times difficult puzzles. We also did vertical drawing using use boards, which worked on the children’s pre-writing skills as it naturally positions their shoulder and arm correctly for how to hold a writing utensil. Thank you to Sunny Hassid for coming as the library mom this week and reading to the children! Also thank you to Elijah and Sasha’s families for coming in as Shabbat families this week. Reminders: Tu B’Shevat is next Wednesday and we have our celebration on that day. Please bring the fruit that you signed up for any time next week up until Wednesday drop off. Fathers and grandfathers week is coming up February 5th-9th. Shabbat boy next week is Julian. Shabbat Shalom, Room 14 teachers
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