Books and Bearded Dragons!

Book Hospital:

Books and more books! After talking about the care of our books we decided to put it to the test!

We added some damaged books to our library. (That had been sitting in our supplies room waiting to be repaired.)

Would the children find them?

 

We were so proud of the many children who found a spine that was ripped on one book, a tear on a page of another and placed it in the BOOK HOSPITAL BASKET.

Levi looking really closely for a book that needs some of our help.

There was one book that had been already fixed in the past. This was a great opportunity for the children to figure out what to do with our books in the hospital basket.

They felt it - and figured it out! TAPE!

 

When our "Book Hospital" basket got full, the children worked together and brought the heavy basket to our table.

Carrying the book hospital basket

Each child took out a book and we talked about how we can fix them.

Shua working hard and adding tape to the spine of the book.

After giving Levi a piece of tape he decided he could work better sitting on the floor and he carefully placed it on the book and brought it back to the library with a BIG smile!

After working hard fixing and reading books, some of our friends decided to take nap in the dramatic play area!

Creative minds

Over the course of the week, Rochel and Menucha (with little Devorah Leah's help;) created their own book !

It was amazing to see them combining their imagination stories and putting it into one long book!

Menucha explaining to Rochel whats going on on her side of the book.

Later the other  children looked at their book in the library!

Shua and Chani each took their side of our white board book.

What are you making?

Shua: "My Tatty"

Chanie: "My Mommy" :)

What a perfect book!

More LITERACY:

On this beautiful Montessori piece of furniture, we placed a sticker for each letter in the Alphabet. On top was a tray filled with different letters. The children had to match the letter in the correct draw.

Some of the two year olds had a field day just opening and closing the draws!

Outside we made a trail of all the letters using chalk.

Levi found the first letter of his name and asked me to start him off making a picture of himself next to the letter.

Aron was observing Levi and decided to do just the same!

Parents as Partners:

 

Thank you dear parents for coming in these past two weeks and reading to the children!

Yitzy's Mommy engaged all the children with Rina's Rainy Day!

Keren (Noachs mommy) did it 'Kibbutz style'- outside!

The children were using Hebrew words from the story during the remainder of the day!

Disney Author shares some of her books:

We are so fortunate to have had DISNEY AUTHOR, SUSAN AMERICANER come visit us and read to us books that she had written!

Inspired Book Art: "Spilled Milk"

Shua and Chani's mommy read the book, "It looked like spilled milk" to some of our friends at the Library.

Inspired by the book we chose a page and placed it in a zip lock to protect it from the paint.

  We put out white paint and blue paper.

Morah Lisa demonstrated different ways to create the art. 

One of the neat ways was to create a picture on the table cloth and creating a print on the paper by pressing down.

Rochel used her nails to make the print.

Documenting their words what they think the 'spilled milk' looks like! 

 

Placing their art in picture frames!

 

Learning and playing with our BEARDED DRAGON!

Morah Lisa saying good morning to the bearded dragon!

Willow (Andor's sister) has been helping us make sure we take her out of the cage and give lots of personal attention!

She had a very amusing idea to stick her carefully on one of our airplane toys!

This definitely got a lot of giggles and we talked about how the bearded dragon is on an airplane just like Ellah went on to go to Austin Texas!- We miss her so much!

 

 Team work ! Here the children made a very sophisticated home for the bearded dragon to visit! (can you see her in there?)

There was an eating room, a front door a back door..! What a lucky bearded dragon to have so many friends!

Brave Ilani decided to hand feed her a worm!

(we do make sure each child who touches our pet washes really well with soap and water afterwards!)

Q-tip art:

Welcome Reena Hettena!

Can Eating be Holy?

By reciting a simple blessing before proceeding to eat any food, we can transform the most mundane act, into something holy!

How? 

By acknowledging G-d as the source of all sustenance, using these simple words: "Blessed are you, L-rd our G-d-King of the Universe..." We express gratitude for all that He gives us (even something as basic as food!) 

 

 

(Did you know that Happiness is directly related to how much gratitude one feels? Torah instills the act of expressing gratitude throughout our day- so we can lead a happier life!)

For more on WHY we make a blessing...CLICK HERE

6 categories of Food = 6 blessings!

 

Those that Grow on Trees VS ground:

 We began by listening to the exciting story of the little apple.  We used our felt board to sort and place fruit & vegetables on a tree or on the ground, depending on where they grow. 

This helped us figure out the proper Brachah (blessing) to recite!  Borei pri haetz- for fruit that grow on a tree, & Borei pri ho'adamah for vegetables/fruit that grow on the ground. 

 Noach brings oranges from home:

Noach picked delicious oranges from his tree to share with the class!

This gave us another opportunity to practice sorting fruit & vegetables into different baskets depending on where they grow!

Blessing for Bread:

While learning about the Bracha of Hamotzi (bread) & Mezonot (cookies, cakes, crackers etc...), each of us had a turn to pull an item out of Morah's bag.  We found bread, matzah, hot dog buns, pretzels, pasta, crackers, cookies & more!  We even got to taste some of these delicious treats, after figuring what was the proper Bracha to make on them.  

On Friday, we are looking forward to taking home our Challah's in breadbaskets that we made!

We made pasta neclaces for the Bracha Mezonot -  The children were proud of the patterns they made!

Blessing on Grape Juice & Wine:

 

We decided to make grape juice the old fashioned way.. squishing them with our feet! 

(In ziplock bags ;)

When we were done squeezing the grapes, we poured the juice into cups.  We are familiar with the special brachah for grape juice & wine (Borei pri hagafen),  because we say it every week at the Shabbat party!  But it was even more exciting to drink grape juice that we made all by ourselves!

Can Kindle's & Ipads replace Books for our children?

We don't think so!

This week the Gan Camarillo curriculum shone its light on the value of books! While our library is a cozy and attractive center in our classroom all year round, we chose to spend two weeks shining a light on BOOKS and why they are so important.

From a stronger relationship to improved concentration, basic speech skills and better communication skills, academic excellence and more logical thinking skills...reading books to your children provides SO many benefits! 

 Click here for 10 reasons why you should read to your kids

 

To help foster this love for books in the children, we made some renovations and additions to our classroom for this unit of study! See below...

 
The inspiration for this unit began with our trip to the library for the Chanukah Storytime!
Each child had the opportunity to choose a book at the library, to borrow and bring to our classroom library. The children were SO excited to look at their books!

After just one day we found many of the children spending more time at the library center!

The children feel REALLY at home in our library!

 

To best connect to our children, we like to start with a place that is near and dear to them.  What better place than our kitchen/home/dramatic play center (that houses their precious family portraits)! 

Using a large quilt, cushions and an unused toddler bed- we created a perfect size couch to fit into our "home."

Alongside that we added some extra bookcases and a bunch of new books! Now we had a "House full of books."

Menucha and Levi actually took the book from the library and felt it was more comfortable
to read on the couch!

Mendel was pointing to the words and pretending to read with his own words.

 

Books can teach us things too...

To foster this understanding in our preschoolers, we placed all sorts of "informational" books at various centers in our classroom. We also wanted to help expand their knowledge on those subjects.

Alongside the cage of our pet BEARDED DRAGONS we placed a reptile book. The children did a lot of compare and contrast with our own bearded dragons!

The children requested we take out the bearded dragon to get a closer look, to observe the similarities and learn more about reptiles.

Here Yitzi is comparing an Iguana to our bearded dragon.

Getting a close look.

Jacob wanted to hold one of our bearded dragons while flipping through the pages :)

 

Alongside the PLANTS  we placed a book about caring for house-plants!

Levi was looking at the different plants we can grow indoors.

In the dramatic play area, we placed a book about getting dressed! 

It taught some of the children more words about their wardrobe.

 

 

For Art one morning, we took a book that was displayed by the art center, (covered in plastic to protect it) and placed it on the activity table! 

We actually put out the materials the children needed for the project alongside the open book.

With out telling the children directions (mainly the older ones) they were able to look at the book and follow what to do on their balloon.

 

Audio  book center

Hearing a book about library books.

 

 

Care for our books

 

Clean hands! After circle time we caught Levi Lang checking his hands before opening his book, just precious!

Where do books belong?

Chanie showing us NOT on the floor!

We placed some books in the wrong place to see if the children would realize and take the information we learned about caring for our books and correct it!

 

How to hold a book?

Gave the children their books upside down....to help them learn the appropriate way to hold!

Learning the parts of a book

During circle time, while each child held a book we learned some Book basics:

The cover, back, pages and spine.

(first we felt our spine on our backs and then felt the books spine and how it holds the book together)

Books become the teachers!

Here the children got dressed up during free play, placing their chairs in a line . After asking them what they were riding some said a truck.

This was a great opportunity to take their lead and learn more about trucks while pretending to be on one!

 

After noticing Shua playing with a giraffe, we took a little walk to our library and together found the animal book and asked if he can find a giraffe just like what he was playing with!

He did! He was so excited and learned more about giraffes from the animal book.

I can be the author or illustrator!

To help the children's imagination soar, we tapedthe outline of a book onto our whiteboard. With sentence strips for words on the bottom and magnetic alphabet letters the children practiced their letters and space on top to draw whatever was on their mind.

Chanie  using blank space on the side to create her master piece.

 

This was a cute moment;

Ellah was pretending to be the Morah, teaching her students the letters...

While putting the letters upside down, side ways...she remarked:

"Does it go this way?, No silly!"

After couple times ..

She found the corresponding written letter to the magnetic letter and successfully matched them up!

 

She showed us how the L should go!

Partnering with Parents: Mommies come in to read to the children!

 

Jenifer brought in Andor's favorite books of the "Goblins"

 

Iris (ellahs Ima) read fun stories after lunch time.

Letter Recognition

While learning about books and literacy it was good time to 'upgrade' our sign in center. Taking away their photo and adding their last name the children are learning and recognizing the letters in their full names.