Newsletter Week of November 18-22, 2019
Room 8 spent this past week focusing on two main concepts to further our growth. First, through a variety of activities, tasks, and discussions, we emphasized strengthening our gross motor skills. The first few months of school, we put a greater emphasis on developing our fine motor skills. Although the children in Room 8 have an affinity to doing activities that require more fine motor ability, such as building with Legos and table-top puzzles, we want to make sure that we are strengthening every aspect of child development. In order to work on our gross motor skills, the first activity that we introduced was Simon Says. It might seem like a simple game, but it took a few rounds for the children to comprehend the importance of listening very carefully. This game gives the children the opportunity to move their entire bodies. From touching their toes to running to the door to pushing chairs in and out, each child was on the move and had to exercise all of their body parts. Rather than the teachers being “Simon” each time, we gave the opportunity to the children. We loved seeing each child come up with their own creative set of movements. For instance, when Lennon acted as Simon, he used a pattern of movements consisting of stand up and sit down. Daniel and Jacob, on the other hand, loved mixing up the tasks. They both had their friends moving around the entire room using all of their gross motor skills. We are continuing to work on understanding that in order for people to get “out” of the round, whoever is Simon must drop “Simon says” and just say a movement. We notice that they insist on saying “Simon says” throughout the entire round of the game. Another gross motor activity we conducted was a game of over and under. The children lined up in a single file line, and we taught them to stretch their arms out to be “arms-length distance” from each other. Before getting started on over and under, they stretched their arms in front of them and above their head as straight as they could. Then, the first person in line received one large stuffed dice and was instructed to choose whether they wanted to pass it over their head with straight arms or through their legs (under) to the next person. Based on the first person’s choice, the children began a pattern of passing the dice over and under. The gross motor skill that this activity emphasized was the large movement of reaching over and under. In the process, they also learned to differentiate between their right and left side of their body. While one might think that this is a simple activity, it requires enormous skill and is incredible practice for children of this age. In addition to moving our bodies and strengthening large range of movements, this activity gave the children the opportunity to practice and grow their attention span and ability to listen and comprehend multi-step directions. In addition to a week filled with various gross motor activities, we also spent time having a few large group discussions about the upcoming holiday of Thanksgiving. We began this conversation with a question and inquired, “Does anyone know what Thanksgiving holiday is about?” Alexandra volunteered her idea of what Thanksgiving is when she stated, “It is a holiday where we have love.” Wyatt explained that the holiday makes you feel special and good. We went on to explain that there are two words that make up the word Thanksgiving. Ask your child if they can tell what each of those words are. Also ask them to tell you how many syllables are in the word, “Thanksgiving.” We followed up by asking, “When do you tell someone ‘thank you’? We were quite impressed by the answers we heard during this first conversation on the topic. Lilah was the first to contribute when she said, “You have to say, ‘thank you’ when someone gives something to you.” Then, Dylan explained how he thanks someone when they share a toy with him. Rian says she always says thank you when someone shares a snack. As the children demonstrated an understanding for the concept of the word ‘thank you,’ we decided to take this a step further by asking what it means to be thankful. This turned out to be a little more difficult of a concept for the children to understand. Rather than focusing on being thankful for gifts or toys, we want them to be able to think a little deeper and understand how important it is to be appreciative of the things we don’t notice every day. For example, we asked the children, “Who is the person that buys you those toys or the person that is buying and preparing your food?” As we continued to discuss this concept over the course of the week, we noticed that the children were getting a better grasp on the importance of being grateful and saying thank you. During the second conversation on Thanksgiving, we heard creative answers to the question, “What are you thankful for?” Jacob shared that he is thankful for his garden because it gives him fruits and vegetables, and Lorne explained he is thankful for his mommy and daddy because they give him cuddles and kisses and likes when they give him love. Our goal is to teach the children the importance of appreciation and gratitude, and we are thrilled to see that they beginning to develop a true understanding. We are so excited to celebrate Thanksgiving with the entire Pre-K grade level next week, and we are even more excited to prepare our special carrot cake dessert to share with all of our friends. Monday will be a busy day of shredding carrots, mixing ingredients, and baking our cake to make sure it is perfect for Tuesday’s feast. We hope everyone has a great weekend, and we will see you Monday for our short week! Shabbat Shalom, Mari and Aaliyah REMINDERS:
EC BOOK FAIR SING-ALONG Wednesday, December 4 8 a.m. - Breakfast in Udko 8:30 a.m. - Community Sing-Along/Book Reading with Rabbi Sari in the Sanctuary ***Come dressed in your favorite character from a book!***
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