What should "Sweet new year" mean to your 3 year old? VIDEO included!

 We chant the song, "Dip the apple in the honey....have a happy, sweet new year!"

We are constantly wishing everyone a "Sweet new year"... But what does that mean in the mind of our preschoolers?

Most of us are familiar with the traditional symbol of honey with apples... but what is a 2, 3 & 4 year old taking in?

Are they connecting the concept of the taste of honey and what the new year will look like? What should a sweet new year look like for a preschooler anyway? 

 

These are all questions we asked ourselves, as we prepared the curriculum for Rosh Hashanah.

Chanie tastes the sweet sticky honey on a slice of Apple.

We began our circle time by allowing the children to TASTE the sweet Honey. 

Every child had smiles on their faces as they tasted the delicious honey.  

 

The next step for us, was to help the children connect the sweet taste of honey- to a year filled with SWEET THINGS ...

Ie: Mitzvot...Good Deeds!

 

 

To make this connection- we created a "We do SWEET things" center.

It consisted of a grand Honey Jar on a white board.

  Above the white board was a dry erase marker and honey stick! What we did throughout the first week of school, was keep our eyes open for SWEET things the children might be caught doing. As soon as one of us saw something SWEET  (kind, thoughtful, caring) we called the children involved in the action- to the white board, and began drawing as we retold the SWEET action that they did.

After we "relived" the sweet story, the child received a drop of honey on their fingertip to enjoy ;-)

 

Check out this short video of one such episode! (Wish we could have video footage for each child...so you could see the beaming faces and joy in doing SWEET things!)

 

 

We were very intentional all week long to use the word SWEET to describe Mitzvot and nice things that we caught the children doing- so they would associate SWEET NEW YEAR---with a year filled with MITZVOT!

Here are some examples of sweet things we found....

Yitzy & Shua & Yaisef shared toys in the kitchen corner! Yaisef patiently waits his turn.

 Rochel, Mendel and Noach were playing together.....pretending they moved into a new house!  It was so sweet to watch them as they LISTENED to each others ideas, giving each other turns to be the one to decide what will happen next in the game!

Morah Shira draws a picture of what she noticed while we were playing outside. While lots of friends were taking turns on the roller coaster car ride, Jacob went over to his friend Yaisef and asked him if he would like a turn, and then saved his friend a turn!

 

By the third day, the children had totally caught on to what it means to HAVE A SWEET NEW YEAR!  A year filled with Mitzvot! (True happiness :-)

 

 

To the point that some of the older ones began asking to use the marker themselves, to draw their own sweet scenarios while the other children watched!

 

Here are some of the many sweet things our class did!!

Ellah- "I helped my friends I gave them water!" 

 

Jacob: "I played trains with Yaisef"

Noach: "I gave Menucha a ride on my back"

Mendel- "I was nice to Noach when he wanted to play with the car I wanted"

Rochel: "I let Mendel have space on the Couch.

 

Ilan- "I play hide and seek, see I covered my eyes so I cant see "

Levi- "put away my lunch box"

Menucha- " I helped Morah Lisa sweep the floor after lunch!"