We started off the week with a big all-school celebration for Simchat Torah. We explained to the children that this holiday celebrates the end of the Torah. Over the past year, we have read each section of the Torah weekly, and now, it has come to an end. Lilah asked, “What happens when it ends? Do we start over?” The holiday of Simchat Torah celebrates the end of the Torah, and the start of a new year of reading the Torah from beginning to end. To celebrate this holiday, we take the Torah out of the ark and read the scrolls. After the reading, the custom is to dance around the synagogues and celebrate. The children had a few opportunities to participate in the traditions of the holiday this week. In our all-school Simchat Torah service, we sang songs about the Torah, listened to a story, and ended our service by dancing around the synagogue kissing the Torahs and getting to see the inside of the scrolls. The children were in awe of the scriptures of the Torah and the way the inside looked. Dylan commented that the outside look so much different from the inside.
Later in the week, we continued our Simchat Torah celebrations during Storah Time with Rabbi Josh. Rather than hearing a story in our classroom, we met Rabbi Josh in the Main Sanctuary, where he stood with an unrolled, open Torah. The scrolls were opened on the reading table for the children to see. Two by two, all of the children had the opportunity to stand at the reading table with Rabbi Josh and view the Torah up close. As each child held the yad and pointed to various lines in the Torah, Rabbi Josh explained that part of the story. We loved seeing the children light up when it was their turn to read the Torah. Ask your child why we use a yad when reading the Torah. We talked a lot about this concept in our class. In addition to all of our Simchat Torah celebrations, Room 8 had a special drawing lesson this week. We have conducted a few drawing lessons over the past couple weeks to teach the children how to draw a complete picture. We noticed that they loved this activity and continued to ask us when we would do another one and what would we learn to draw next. In light of Sukkot and in continuance with learning to draw shapes, we decided on a Sukkah as the focus of the drawing lesson. Ask your child if they can tell you the shape of most sukkahs. Lennon showed particular excitement for this activity and when we began the lesson, he stated, “A sukkah is a square, you know…?” We showed the children step-by-step how to arrange the lines on the page to create a sukkah equipped with a background, foreground, and decoration. Rian pointed out that to be a sukkah there has to be branches on top. Some of the friends chose to draw the branches on top, while others wanted to glue a real branch, or more like a small piece of a branch, to emulate the roof of the structure. Next time you are in Room 8 take a look at their incredible works of art. While it has only been two months of school, our entire class has grown immensely in their ability to sustain their attention, follow directions and complete a realistic drawing. We will continue to listen to the interests of the children as we move forward and see how we can further develop the topic of drawing and more broadly, art. Through listening to conversation amongst your children and questions they ask, we are here to help guide and support their interests and learning. We hope you have a great weekend, and we look forward to starting our lesson on potatoes next week! Shabbat Shalom, Mari and Aaliyah REMINDERS:
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Week of October 14-18, 2019
This week in Room 8 we began to discuss the holiday of Sukkot, the celebration of the harvest. We were excited to introduce this holiday since we knew that the children had already shown an interest in the topic of fruit. We began the conversation by reviewing the various fruits we talked about in the past couple weeks such as watermelon, apples, plums, strawberries and more. Ask your child what kind of fruits we use to decorate the sukkah. In light of the interest in fruit and our emphasis on learning to draw a complete picture, the children had the opportunity to learn to draw the fruit that they would want to put in their sukkah. In small groups, the children sat at the table with a view of a fruit basket consisting of a banana, orange, lemon, peach, pomegranate, Granny Smith apple, Red Delicious apple, and red grapes. This set up gave the children the opportunity to take a closer look at each fruit and notice some of the finer details. Without the distraction of a large group of children, each student was able to spend more time observing, touching, holding, and smelling all of the fruit items in front of them. The children discussed what they saw and felt as they passed the fruit around the table. For example, Wyatt liked the peach because of its’ colors, red, yellow and orange. Lennon loved the look of the pomegranate and said he wanted to draw this fruit because he loves eating it. Then, each child chose the fruit that they wanted to draw. They put the item in front of their paper and began by drawing the shape that they saw. Dylan knew that he had to draw a circle to make the Red Delicious apple, and Jacob knew that he also had to draw a circle to resemble his fruit choice, the orange. Each child took their time drawing realistic images of the various fruits. This activity helped emphasize the importance of details. Not only is it important to recognize details during discussions, but the children also learned that details help them draw a realistic picture. If we didn’t notice that the apple had a stem and did not include it in the picture, someone might think that the drawing is of a peach. Our goal is to introduce the children to this topic at a young age so that it will help change their way of thinking. Being aware of the importance of details and the ability to recognize these elements in all areas of our lives teaches the children how to learn. They will enter Kindergarten with this knowledge instilled in their brains and be able to look at items and stories in a different way. In honor of Sukkot, Room 8 spent time a lot of time in the sukkah this week! First, we had music class with Maestro in the sukkah. Then, we spent time learning about the Etrog and Lulav with Rabbi Josh in the sukkah outside of our classroom. Ask your child if they can tell you which fruit the Etrog resembles. Each child was able to hold both significant Sukkot items. Rabbi Josh explained how we are supposed to shake the Lulav in the front, right, back, left, up and down, to show that G-d is everywhere. Then, all of the children had the chance to shake it! Next week, we will begin to discuss the next holiday, Simchat Torah. We can’t wait to see what area of the holiday will interest the children and where our discussion will go from there! We hope you have a wonderful long weekend, and we will see you on Tuesday! Shabbat Shalom, Mari and Aaliyah REMINDERS:
Newsletter Week of 10/7-11
The short week flew by in Room 8! We have been busy learning all about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, while also finding time to build intricate structures with our engineering building blocks and paint with the primary colors using Q-Tips. We also introduced a new structure of learning known as small group activities. We want to explain a little bit about this concept and want you to know that we will dive deeper into the importance of this learning in next week’s newsletter. We split the class into 3 groups of 4 children. Each group begins at a different center set up with various activities. Some tables contain student-directed activities, while others have teacher-directed tasks. The children spend about 10-15 minutes at each center and rotate through each activity. This allows an inclusive learning environment and promotes social interaction and cooperation. The children are encouraged to communicate throughout each activity and are able to develop comfortable relationships with their peers and teachers. Small group learning helps children strengthen their self-confidence and willingness to share ideas. There are several more benefits to small group learning, which we will touch on more next week. Room 8’s plans for next week include:
REMINDERS:
Week of September 30 - October 4, 2019 While it was a short week at school, the children in Room 8 were quite busy! When school resumed on Wednesday, we continued with the theme of Rosh Hashanah. Last week, we discussed the importance of the holiday and the symbols that are associated with it including apples, honey, pomegranate, shofar and the round challah. After our unit on watermelon, we observed that the children in Room 8 seemed to show a great interest in studying another fruit or vegetable. We conducted large group discussions to connect Rosh Hashanah to our unit on details. First, we compared and contrasted a variety of apples. Ask your child if they can remember any of the specific apple names. Some of these included Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Fuji, and Honey Crisp. We spent time discussing the details and using describing words to talk about each apple. For example, Wyatt said that the Red Delicious was a dark red, and Rian explained that the Fuji was more pink-ish and yellow. Lilah explained that the Granny Smith was green, which was different from all the other apples. We also used details to describe other traits of the apples including taste, touch, and smell. Jacob loved the smell of the Red Delicious, and Lorne described the taste of the Granny Smith as very sour. Nixon loved the taste of the Granny Smith and compared it to the taste of Sour Patch Kids! To expand this discussion from only fresh apples, we also tried apples prepared in different ways such as dehydrated apple rings, freeze-dried apples, and air-dried apples. The children described the dehydrated apple rings as chewy, soft and sticky. Wyatt said they tasted like a pear. Then, we experienced the major crunch of the air-dried Honey Crisp apple chips. The kids were not a fan of this version. Compared to the freeze-dried apples that had a nice crunch and then became soft, the air-dried apple chips were crunchy all the way through. Alexandra said that the freeze-dried apples tasted like a cracker, and Lilah compared them to chips, “soft ones.” This large group discussion is beneficial to the children for a variety of reasons. First, learning to sit on the carpet helps teach patience, body self- control and personal space, how to wait for your turn, and strengthens our ability to pay attention for longer periods of time. In addition, we teach the children how to identify basic and specific traits of an item so that they can see the importance of details in learning and in life. Attention to detail is a crucial skill that will help all children thrive in school and in adulthood. Teaching this at a young age will allow the child to think in a different way and enhance their ability to learn and remember. By discussing the specific details of various apples, the children learn to pay close attention to be able to understand their differences. We also love a detail-themed discussion because it allows us to experience new things! The children were able to try new foods with new textures and tastes, which in turn helps to expand their vocabulary. The children were in amazement with the differences between the various types of apples and wanted to do another discussion just like this one! In light of their interests and the upcoming holiday, we conducted another large group conversation about pomegranates. Ask your child if they remember why the pomegranate is symbolic to Rosh Hashanah. They might tell you something about how the 613 seeds of this fruit represent the rules of the Jewish people, or “commandments.” The children were able to experience the taste of pomegranate seeds and pomegranate juice. They were both a hit! We loved the enthusiasm during these conversations. The children demonstrated interest and eagerness as they learned about Rosh Hashanah, apples and pomegranates. We finished up this discussion by asking if they wanted to learn about another fruit or vegetable. We made a list of various fruits and veggies and took a student vote. Stay tuned to find out what the next item is that we will dissect! We want to wish you all a Shanah Tova. We hope your New Year’s celebrations were filled with family, friends , laughter, joy and love. We can’t wait for you to see all the hard work and beautiful fine motor ability your child has put into creating a card to wish their family and friends a ‘Happy New Year.’ Shabbat Shalom, Mari and Aaliyah REMINDERS: ● EVERY Monday, Wednesday and Thursday Room 8 has enrichment activities at 9:30 a.m.We ask that you drop-off ON TIME every day, but especially on these days! ● 10/8- 1/2 Day- 12 PM Pick-up Erev Yom Kippur ? try to arrive by 11:45am due to parking ● 10/9- No School - Yom Kippur ● 10/14- No School - Sukkot ● 10/21- No School - Simchat Torah |
Pre-K Room 8Mari Greifer Archives
March 2020
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