We continued our Hanukkah celebration this week by playing dreidel with the children and making dreidels. The children reviewed the four dreidel symbols, Gimel, Nun, He, and Shin. They each got the chance to spin a big wooden dreidel. Daniel, Nixon and Bella landed on Gimel! Unfortunately, Alexandra and Rian were not as lucky as their dreidel landed on Nun both times they spun it. The game of dreidel does not only reflect the holiday of Hanukkah, but it also reinforces the values of patience, teamwork, and sportsmanship. Each must wait patiently for their turn to spin and understand that they might not land on the symbol in which they desire. In addition to playing the game, the children asked the teachers if they could make their own dreidels similar to the ones we made last year. In our Explorers class, the children had the opportunity to spread different colored Plasticine clay over a small wooden square with a small stick. The children enjoyed this project so much that they remembered it and asked if they could do it again! Ask your child to teach you how to play dreidel using their very own new crafty dreidels.
We want to thank you all for joining us in Room 8 for a beautiful Hanukkah party! The children were so excited to perform and did an incredible job singing the Hanukkah songs for all of the parents and family that attended our party. The best part was having Cantor Lam and Alexandra lead us in the Hanukkah prayers! We want to give a big thanks to everyone for making our party so special by preparing food, bringing party items and joining us for the special day. We wish you all a wonderful Winter Break filled with family, friends, warmth, love and celebrations. We also want to wish you all a happy and healthy New Year! The past four months have been an incredible growing journey with all of your children. The development and success we have seen from the start of the year until now is enormous. We are so proud of all they have accomplished so far and cannot wait to see what the rest of the year has in store for Room 8. Thank you to all for being so supportive. We are so grateful for all that you do for the children and our classroom. We can’t wait for more wonderful times beginning in January! Shabbat Shalom, have a great vacation, and Happy New Year! Mari and Aaliyah REMINDERS:
Shabbat Family Schedule January 10- Wyatt January 17- Lorne January 31- Bella
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This week in Room 8 we dissected an onion! After discussing the potato as a root vegetable a few weeks ago, the children have continued to ask which vegetable we would be learning about next. In line with the topic of root vegetables, we decided to dive into the topic of onions. We began with a purple onion and a yellow onion. We sat in a large group circle and examined these two types of onions. First, we looked at the yellow onion, and the children came up with an enormous amount of details to describe this vegetable. Both the skin and the inside offered new textures and smells. The children determined that the skin had white lines in it and that you could see through it unlike the skin of a potato. They also noticed that the outermost layer of the onion was crunchy like a leaf, and the skin became softer and more plastic like as the layers grew deeper. Then, we cut the onion in half. Rian exclaimed, “It looks like a white rainbow inside because it has the same circles like a rainbow!” We noticed that the onion was much juicier the potato.
We wanted the children to understand that there is a connection between our topic of potatoes and onions with the current holiday. We happened to have latkes for snack on the same day of the onion discussion, so we asked, “Do you know what these are made of?” Lilah and Isabella both shared that latkes are made out of potatoes. We went on to explain that people add onions to these potato pancakes to give them more flavor. The children thoroughly enjoyed their latke snack. Room 8 also focused on incorporating the concept of sorting into our daily activities. Getting adjusted to the process of sorting at an early age is important for numerical concepts, grouping numbers, identifying similarities and differences, and recognizing details. By sorting and categorizing, children are also gaining the ability to recognize rules, which is the concept that creates a pattern. One of the activities that emphasized this skill was grouping animal tiles into various categories. To take this to a higher level of learning, we had the children come up with their own categories, which consisted of animals that walk, animals that fly, animals in water, slithering animals, and snow animals. This proved to be a difficult challenge for many of the friends in our class. Some of the animals were new creatures or a different type of the same animal but in a new context. For instance, all of the children were convinced that the picture of the octopus was a starfish. Also, the tortoise tile was thought to be a sea turtle so many thought it lived in the ocean, rather than on land. This was an incredible activity that touched on so many important skills including expanding our vocabulary, learning similarities and differences, making connections, grouping items, the concept of less than and more than, teamwork, understanding the rules of each category, communication, and paying close attention to detail. We will continue to incorporate sorting and categorizing into our weekly activities, as well as emphasize the importance of understanding what rules are to be successful in this skill. We will begin by using sorting to make our hannukiyot next week! We are also excited to talk more about the Maccabees and see which piece of the conversation will garner the most questions from your children. Lastly, we can’t wait to celebrate Hanukkah with all of the Room 8 families next Thursday. We wish you all a Shabbat Shalom and wonderful weekend! Mari and Aaliyah REMINDERS:
Shabbat Family Schedule January 10- Wyatt January 17- Lorne January 31- Bella We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We loved hearing about all of the holiday stories and adventures from your children at the beginning of the week.
Room 8 jumped into the week by beginning with various small learning circles on Monday. Each table was set up with a different activity that highlighted a variety of skills. For instance, one of the centers was set up with a Before and After puzzle. The purpose of this puzzle was to put together a set of three pieces that told a story, a before, middle and after. Another center included tiny pattern tiles set out with graph paper, rulers, and crayons. This was an open center to see where the children would go with this activity. Would they stack the cubes and measure, would they place the cubes on paper and color the graph paper squares in, or would they make a pattern? We love setting up this type of open-ended center. It allows the children to be in control and exert their independence. They are able to make their own choices with how they want to manipulate the items and express their creativity. It also supports the children in strengthening their cognitive, language and social skills. Jacob decided to stack the tiny tiles and then place them on the graphing paper to see different heights. Nixon and Isabella made small figures with parts that formed a bend and other parts that were straight. It was interesting to hear the thought process behind the figurines that the children created. We will continue to incorporate more open-ended activities into our weekly routine to enable the children to further develop their likes and dislikes. Over the course of the past few months, we noticed that the children have shown a great interest in building with Legos. Both small and large, Legos are the number one requested activity in our class. We saw an incredible opportunity to inspire further learning through this popular toy. This is a great example of how emergent curriculum is taking place in our class. Their love for Legos inspired us to incorporate this popular material in an academic setting. We chose this specific activity with Legos to reinforce a variety of important developmental skills. In addition to aiding in the growth of these cognitive, social and emotional abilities, taking into account the interests of the children will foster a love of learning. Concepts that might seem extremely challenging to children become more approachable and exciting when curriculum takes into account their interests. Even though we might be working on letter and sound recognition, fine motor skills and problem solving, the children don’t realize they are practicing these skills when working with Legos. Now that you know the why of why we chose to work with Legos, we will explain a little about the multi-step project. The first step of this project began with sorting. As you might know, we have a ginormous box of little Legos in Room 8 comprised of a variety of different shapes and sizes. Before we explained the project to the children, we started by giving them a basic direction to sort out the pieces into different piles. Once we began to pick through the pieces, we decided what types of pieces would be best to form letters. Some of these pieces included flat, long and skinny lines, short and skinny lines, one-piece Legos, one-piece circle Legos, and the pieces that are flat and little wider. Ask your child how many different piles we had! It was hard to sort them out into different categories being that there were so many different types of Lego pieces, but through patience and teamwork, the children did a great job. They found hundreds of pieces to kick-off the start of our project. This concluded the first step of the project. While we did the first portion of the project in a large group, the second step we would do in small groups of 2 or 3 children. First, we had each child write their name in uppercase letters on a white board. Then, while facing all of the piles of Lego pieces, we asked the children to choose the correct pieces of little Legos that would correspond with each letter of their name. Should they use a long line, short line, little curve or big curve? For letters like I, H and T, it was easy to figure out which Lego pieces to use, but what about the letters that have curves and circles like O and P? This posed as a challenge to the children, which they could quickly overcome being that they were so versed in building with Legos. Wyatt quickly noticed that he would not be able to use a diagonal line for the A. Through problem solving and manipulating the Lego pieces around, he was able to create an A by using two straight lines and a straight line at the top and small line in the middle. Alexandra ran into many challenges along the way in her name since many of the letters include diagonals and curves. She tapped into her creativity and solved the issue of the X by using small 1-piece round Legos that she placed individually on the board in the shape of two diagonal lines. This project emphasized so many important developmental skills such as basic math skills, like sorting and shape recognition, problem solving, fine motor abilities, letter recognition, creativity, social interaction and teamwork. The children had to figure out the proper shapes and how many of each to make up one letter. We are still working on this multi-step project and once they are complete, you will be able to see their creations hanging on our wall. We will also introduce the next holiday that is quickly approaching next week! We wish you all a Shabbat Shalom and wonderful weekend! Mari and Aaliyah Important Reminder for THIS MONDAY 12/9: This Monday night, at 7 PM, The Boulder Journey School will be presenting in the Main Temple Building. Alison Maher and Andrea Sisbarro are presenting "The Path to Kindergarten Readiness and Lifelong Learning," a discussion on the topic of Emergent Curriculum. They are here to help educate all of us and help us gain a better understanding of our incredible philosophy. REMINDERS:
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Pre-K Room 8Mari Greifer Archives
March 2020
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