Week of October 1-5, 2018
The children of Room 8 came back on Tuesday ready to take on the week. We are so excited to be back in school and ready to take on the school year. We began the week by celebrating Simchat Torah in an assembly with Rabbi Josh, Rabbi Sari, Cantor Emma, Rabbi Yoshi and more! The children learned new prayers and songs to celebrate the end of the cycle of Torah reading, as well as the start of the new cycle of reading. A special piece of his holiday is dancing around the synagogue with the Torah. Since the Torah is a little too heavy for children, the Jewish tradition says that children parade around with a flag of Israel. Room 8 enjoyed getting the opportunity to see inside a real Torah. Rabbi Yoshi and Rabbi Josh held open the Torah and the children took a good look inside. After getting a glimpse, the children dancing around the temple waving their incredible handmade flags! Last week, in light of learning to draw, the children drew a complete picture of a Torah as the centerpiece of their flags. Ask your child what shape makes a Torah. We are very impressed by the children’s drawing abilities and how far they have come in only a couple weeks. Drawing allows the children to enhance creativity while strengthening their fine motor skills. We began the drawing lesson using pencils. The children had to outline a large rectangle in the middle of the paper. Then, they were instructed to draw two skinny rectangles as the handles of the Torah on each side. In drawing the body of the Torah, Kate asked, “What is the difference between a rectangle and a square?” The children tried to decipher what the difference could be! Some said the rectangle is longer, and some said a square was smaller. To begin this tough concept, we explained how all the sides of a square are the same length or size. We will dive deeper into this topic through hands on experiments throughout the next couple weeks. After outlining their Torahs, the children colored them in using patience and strong grips to stay within the lines. Room 8 began our first lesson in letter and sound recognition. After passing out letter cards to each child, there were 3 parts to the instructions. The child had to say the letter, say the sound that it makes, and think of a word that began with that letter. This exercise proves to be beneficial in numerous areas including letter recognition, early literacy, following directions, listening, attention span, concentration, and memory. First, this activity allows the children to practice and perfect their ability to recognize all 26 letters of the alphabet. They begin to see how letters and sounds are related. Understanding the connection between sounds and the letter associated with that sound is the fundamental principle in learning to read. In addition, this specific activity concentrated on developing the ability to listen, concentrate, memorize and follow directions. Being able to listen, understand and comprehend a list of directions is essential to future academic and social success. In light of this in-class activity, we chose three letters at random, P, S, and K, as the theme of this week’s Share Day. The children brought in a variety of drawings, objects and words. We were so impressed by their creativity and dedication to this assignment. Some examples of what we saw include Julian’s bag of popcorn for P, Scarlett’s toy kitty for K, Cameron’s piece of paper that he wrote with the word “kick” for K, and Jordan’s soap he brought in for S. Grayson brought in a double whammy, when he shared an item for both the letter P and S. He brought in a soccer ball plate! We are excited to continue emphasizing all of these skills through a variety of activities in Room 8. Watch out for an email regarding the Share Day theme for next week! Shabbat Shalom, Mari and Aaliyah Reminders:
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Pre-K Room 8Mari Greifer Archives
March 2020
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