Cry of the shofar

This week we continued to develop our "bee-ing sweet" theme, by focusing on the sweet Mitzvos our friends can do. As we began circle time, Yossi noticed that Leah was sad because she wanted to sit next to Menachem, so he did something sweet, and moved his seat, so Leah would be able to sit where she preferred! We are hanging our "sweet mitzvah's" on our honey jar, to reinforce the connection between Mitzvah's and honey!

We decorated honey jars to beautify our Rosh Hashana tables, and enjoyed lots a fun sensory RH themed water table fun. Squeezing apple and honey shaped sponges in and out of the water. It is so fascinating to see how the sponge can hold so much water, and then squeeze it out!

 

 

Bee Hive building! The children used pictures of beehives as inspiration to build their own!

 

Bee Math and Motor skills fun 

  

Cry of the Shofar

To help the children understand why we blow the Shofar and what it signifies, we set up a baby care center in our classroom one morning.

During circle time we listened to an audio of a baby crying, alongside an audio of a Shofar sound. We noticed the similarities.

A baby doll visited our circle time, and cried. 

What is a baby telling us when a baby cries?  Our friends all knew that the baby wants his Mommy or Daddy to be there with him, and help him. 

 When we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana, we are calling out to our spiritual father, Hashem! We are asking Him to be close to us, and care for us. 

Tekia, Shevarim, Teruah

Children learn best when the learning engages their entire body!

To help them remember the names of the Shofar sounds, we taped visuals of the 3 sounds on our rug.

Using their whole body movements, the children were able to jump to the tune of the different Shofar sounds. We also added blocks to the rug one morning, inviting the children to "create" the sounds with the blocks!

Alef Beis

This week we focused on distinguishing the difference between a Beis and a Veis. The two letters look SO similar! There is only ONE difference! The Dot inside the Belly of the Beis! 

The children enjoyed some fun movement activities with the letters taped onto the floor. When Morah called out the name of the letter, they had to jump in or outside of the letter, to determine if its a Beis or a Veis.

We also decorated letters!

Buzzing in to a sweet new year!

School Family

We welcomed our friends on the first day by inviting them to find their family photo that was displayed on the table. We chose this welcome activity so the children would have something familiar to connect with, as well as reinforce the school culture of each of our students being part of a school family. 

The children decorated the picture frame with stickers, and found a hook to mount it on our Gan Family Tree wall!

Puppet Friend teaches us about our classroom

For circle time, our friends were introduced to a puppet friend who has never been in school before. She had so many questions about how to use different centers in our classroom! 

We don't assume the children know how to appropriately use all the materials in the classroom, so this was a great way for them to learn.

We had photos of the different centers that were introduced to the children, so we can learn what takes place at each center.  The visuals were helpful for the children to learn all this new stuff! We kept these puppet visuals out for the children to explore/look at/ask more questions!

Bee-ing Sweet

Our big idea for the new year & Rosh Hashana is for the children to make the connection between the sweetness of honey and the sweetness of doing a Mitzvah. 

We created a sweet honey jar to contain descriptions of all the sweet things we notice in our classroom.  We are also using it as a place to keep our Mitzvah notes. 

 

The children enjoyed learning how bee's make honey, with our flowers and beehive center. The children were invited to pretend to be bees, sucking nectar from the flowers in our sensory box, and then use tweezers to take the nectar to the beehive adjacent to it. They used their fine motor skills to fit the "nectar" into the hive.

Another fun way for the children to understand how the bees make honey, was to squeeze droppers (decorated like bees) into water (nectar)), and drop it into hive shaped pieces.

We also invited the children to use thistle blocks to create pretend bee hives.

Our bulletin board invited all of our friends as buzzing bees, doing sweet things! 

On Thursday we had a special Rally with Rabbi Lang, in honor of "Chai Elul", the Birthdays of the Bal Shemtov & Alter Rebbe.

Alef Beis Enrichment

As a way to introduce the Alef beis to our students we shared with them how special these letters are. They are not like ABC or any other language! Hashem created the entire world through these holy letters! So when we learn the names of the letters, it is very special for our Neshama! 

We hid a bunch of letters around the classroom, (just like Hashem is hidden in the world) and the children were invited to find the letters, and then match them to the letters on their page at the table!

We look forward to different games, movements, songs and art this year as we expose the children to the holy letters of the Alef Beis.

Happy 4th Birthday to Menachem Freeman! 

Thank you for gifting our classroom with some new food toys for our dramatic play center!

Fun in the sun

  

Blowing balloons and Shofars!

 This week we have been busy establishing routines and getting to know our kindergarten structure.

Learning how to be independent and organized. Yanky, documenting his project on his own finding his file name.

                                           

There are a lot of routines during the day to remember so during our 'Family meeting' time we breakdown what those routines and procedures look like. This is a great time to ask questions and to visually see what the expectations.

The family meeting time will also be dedicated to our implementation of conscious discipline.  This week we touched our deep breathing. We learned how important it is to breathe through our nose and fill up our belly with air and breath out with our mouth. Practicing our balloon breathing by inhaling as we blew up our balloon and making funny noises as we exhale. 

Watching Mina and Batya's tummy to see how it goes out when we breath in. Batya, balancing a feather on her tummy to really observe the difference.

                    

Rosh Hashanah is around the corner and we started off by learning the 3 different sounds. Sholom and Esther drawing the sounds. 

                  

Sholom practicing with a real Shofar. While being so aware of breathing this week he realized he needed deep breathes to make a long sound. 

After listening to the recording of shofar sounds and baby crying sounds we learned how they are similar. Just like a parent will do anything for a child who's crying. Hashem is always loving us and taking care of us. We played a game of one child going out and a friend recorded on the iPad their crying sound. It was hard to guess who it was!

                 

Arik created the Teruah sound using pretzels. Esther wrote the word king on playdough.

               

We have started our Kria Alef Beis learning this week. Each day we are learning the Chassidus behind each letter. Chana Rochel creating the light on the two hiding yuds on the Alef symbolizing Hashem adn our Neshama. what connects Hashem and us together is the vav representing the Torah.

                                                        

With Chai Elul being this week, we talked about another two lights that were born on this day. Sholom and Chana Rochel wanted to dress up like the Bal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe they safley held flames representing their Torah that lights up the world. Yanky, using blow art to create a fiery flame.

                    

We enjoyed a Chai Elul fabrengen.

                                                     

Beis and Ves we learned how it looks like a house missing a wall. Hashem created a world but not complete . Our Mitzvahs are the missing wall! We taped our friends mitzvah notes on blocks and closed our mini house. 

                                                      

It has been so nice watching our friends just get pick up where they left off and and enjoy much needed social play time .