"May you have a SWEET NEW YEAR!"
The phrase we hear and say again and again in the weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah- the Jewish New Year.
As educators, we are always asking ourselves:
What does that mean to our students? How is it relevant to the life of a 2 or 3 year old?
Here is how we made it meaningful and turned it into an empowering lesson for the children in our class.
Since we already loved our Sarah puppet, we took out more puppets and acted out a typical scenario of one child playing and another wanting the toy. In the puppet role-play, one grabbed the toy from the other, and upon seeing the sad expression on the puppet, (and my face)- all the children mirrored the unhappy, gloomy face.
How can we fix this? I asked the children!
Together we problem solved ways to make it work out, for both puppets to be happy! When the puppet demonstrated appropriate turn taking- we started using the words:
"That was such a SWEET mitzvah you just did!"
SWEET = Mitzvah's!
Mitzvah's make us happy and Hashem happy!
The big idea: We want a year filled with many sweet Mitzvahs! A year filled with those happy feelings, like when someone does something sweet to us and us to others.
Infusing the Traditions of RH into the lesson:
Now it was time to take the tradition of dipping apple or Challah into sweet honey and connect it to this theme!
SWEET BOARD: A taped honey jar to our white board and some pictures of bee's making honey was our center to teach this.
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| note: we put out a real piece of a bee hive in a jar to observe. |
We started with our dear puppet who shared and did a sweet thing! Using dry erase markers we drew the scenari, while commentating on what a SWEET thing it was. Sweet = Mitzvah = honey!!
Then the best part: Our puppet got to 'taste' some honey! mmm... sweet just like honey!
The children were so excited to tell me all the Mitzvah's they did!!
I offered the children each a drop of honey to help them make the connection to honey/Mitzvahs and a sweet year!!
Through out the day each child came up and proudly drew what sweet thing they just did. It was so powerful for them to have their friends gather and see.
It was quite a SWEET WEEK! :)
and VERY catchy!
Even during our regular daytime routine, we used this concept to point out sweet things to the children. For example: "Look everyone, Muka is being so SWEET by helping Elizabeth clean up her spill!"
Sweetness of Team work
Sweetness of creating space for our friends
Process of how bees make honey:
We learned a new word: bees finding nectar in the flowers. Here Elizabeth was so excited that she had flowers on her dress!
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| Bumble bee pretended to suck the nectar from the flowers on Elizabeth's dress! |
Using an Eye dropper- We demonstrated the proboscis (of the bee) that sucks in the nectar ! We put yellow water in flower cups, and went on a hunt with our bee puppet to find all the flower cups in our classroom.
Bee sucking 'nectar'
squeezing it into the 'bee hive' (Just as Bees take their nectar back to their hives to turn it into honey!)
Morah Keren pointed out a real bee hive outside! (Dried out, no longer operating, with no bees!)
"Thank you bees for honey!"
Love when the children take the information and do their own research:
Here Evi found a flower bush outside and was checking it out!
Later in the day we found Shua reviewing what we learned using the bee puppet on his own!
Fine Motor skills: Bee beading
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| Black and yellow pipe cleaners and yellow pool noodles as a base. |
Some children divided the beads to the matching pipe cleaner color
others enjoyed pouring
Requires a lot of concentration.
One of the ways our classroom is inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy, is by using the environment as the third teacher.
To help our class give each other space during washing line up we placed apples on the floor. This assisted the children in defining their space while waiting for their turn on the washing line!
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| Rosh Hashanah discussions while waiting your turn makes it go faster too! |
