Gan Camarillo Preschool: A Daily Thanksgiving

A Daily Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving approaching, we decided it was a nice opportunity to zoom in on the fact that we, as Jews have an opportunity EVERY DAY to articulate our feelings and express our gratitude to Hashem for all that we have.

(Next week we will touch on the historical story of Thanksgiving and why the founding fathers of our country were thankful to G-d.)

As Jews, we recite words of thanks to Hashem every single day when we "Daven-Pray." This actually begins the moment our eyes open in the morning with the prayer of Modei Ani.

(Thank you Hashem for restoring the little portion of my Nesahma- soul, into my body.) We never take for granted who is giving us life every moment of the day!

Before our davening routine we did a little role play with a doll going to sleep, illustrating how Hashem takes a tiny bit of our Neshama and restores it, then returns it in the morning. Wow! this gave new meaning to the words we cheerfully sing each morning!

Shua showing us what he looks like when he wakes up from his sleep!

Devorah Leah showing us how she says Modeh Ani (in her bed) in the morning!

Personalizing the message

To take it on a deeper level, before we started our routine davening, each child drew on a little sticky note what THEY felt thankful to Hashem for!

Their honest and precious responses were posted on a Siddur (prayer book) poster on our wall for them to look at before davening.

More opportunities through out the week to document and draw their feelings of thanks to Hashem!

The more we learned and talked about this, the more meaningful and thoughtful their responses became!

Our circle times were definitely giving Hashem a lot of pride and joy! So much to learn and aspire to be from watching pure little children sing praises to Hashem with their full heart!

GIVING thanks!

Another daily ritual we wanted to add meaning to, was the mitzvah of Tzedaka!

Now that we are so THANKFUL to Hashem what can we DO with these feelings? A Mitzvah!

By taking our own money and giving it to someone less fortunate: that is how we can light up this world with goodness and appropriately put our thankfulness into practical ACTION!!

In the dramatic play area we set up a little store and included a Tzedaka box on the counter by the cash register. We encouraged the children while purchasing their items to stick some of their money inside, which will go to poor people. Was a great hands on lesson.

Dovi giving all his money to Tzedaka ;)

Even the cashiers were giving Tzedaka!

Tzedaka Sensory Fun

For some Tzedaka sensory fun we hid lots of coins in the play dough and when the children found the coins they placed it in the Tzedaka box!

Learning the names of the coins and a math lesson

Each little round tray was labelled with a picture of a different coin: Quarter, Dime, Nickel and Penny. The children were invited to divide the unsorted pile of coins in the middle of the table and match the correct coin while learning its name.

Proud of all the quarters he found!

Hypothesizing on our Penny Experiment

We took three really dirty pennies and three different ways we would try to clean them.

Water, a lemon and ketchup.

We asked the children "which do you think would clean the penny the most, making it the most shiny?"

Majority of responses: "water!"

Now it was THEIR turn to find out the result of their hypothesis.

Max tried the water. Did get a little off but not too shiny...

Muka the Lemon

Shua tried the ketchup. The children found this humorous but the element of surprise was that it actually WAS the most effective of getting our penny shiny!

(We read the ingredients together and figured out it was probably the vinegar!)