Gan Camarillo Preschool: December 2015

Teaching Healthy Hygiene Habits!

During this time of year there are often little viruses sneaking around. We felt it a good time to review our hygiene and how to get rid of germs.

We talked a lot this week about the right technique of washing our hands.

It is very hard to visualize the passing of germs since they are microscopic. We wanted to make it really understandable for our children, so we did a few different GERM EXPERIMENTS.

Glitter sprinkled on hands was a great way to pretend they are little germs and as we shook each others hands we saw the little 'germs' get passed around!

For another hands on experiment we mixed pepper in water, which we pretended to be the germs. Sticking our finger in soap and placing it back in the little 'germs' it scattered.

Germs DO NOT like soap they RUN away!

Blow Germ Art

Using a straw or their mouth :) the children were able to watch their little puddle of water paint turn into a little 'germ monster' .

Mommy's had fun too :)

Max had fun placing little eyes on his germ monsters.

Play dough germ monsters

Placing little eyes on them was definitely the high light.

Hannah, who came to visit us one morning used a lot of hand and eye coordination trying to fit a lot of eyes on hers!

'Sneezy Boy'

Our famous "Sneezy boy" who has a spray bottle through his nose was a very fun way to learn how to sneeze properly and how germs spread.

Max helping sneezy boy sneeze and Levi catching it in a tissue!

We also learned if you don't have a tissue at hand you can use the inside of your elbow to catch the germs from flying. We heard a lot of practice sneezes through out the day!
It was SO much fun getting 'sneezed on ' by Sneezy boy and helping him by showing the correct way to sneeze!

Doctor's office Center

Oral Hygeine

Painting with a toothbrush, to practice "Brushing teeth"

It was a great surprise to find out in back of our new kitchen set is a beautiful big felt board!

Thank you to Menucha's grandmother for coming to help us out in our classroom!

Lots of love in the Torah Tots classroom!

After our Chanukah break we intentionally left all the Chanukah centers set up, including decorations and the Beis Hamikdash.

This was a great way for the children to be a part of the process of packing everything away and while doing that we had conversations about when Chanukah would come again! This was such a wonderful way to transition into our next theme while reminiscing on all the memories they have cherished from Chanukah this year!

Hard work to take off the Dreidel
hopscotch game!

Yehudis helping us pack way the
Beis Hamikdash pictures.

Shua was very excited to help out
with the Lechem Hapanim (show bread)


Levi removing all the Velcro on our tree					.

This job required great team work
and fine motor skills getting
all the gold paper off the Kohen's table.

Some children helped Morah Michaela start preparing

for the next themes bulletin board.

Our class has been enjoying our new Jewish Home center!

Healthy eating

The next couple of weeks we will focus on the special Mitzvah we have, to take care of our bodies! This Mitzvah is important so we can remain healthy and strong enough to do all the other Mitzvah's!

This week we focused on delicious fruits that we can eat!

We set out a big rainbow for the children to observe, and then invited them to match the fruit to its coordinating color. How much fun to eat a rainbow of fruit!

This also made it so much more exciting for them to taste different fruits and ask questions about them!

Fruits and Math

We learned about graphing.
We placed several different fruits as options and graphed who likes what fruit.

Sensory fruits and color recognition

Different color fruits were pasted on play dough trays to help inspire the children to try to create their own version of that fruit.

Was so great to see the children's excitement when they opened their lunch box to find their fruit!

(hint ;) please send with your child different fruits they will be excited to eat them up!)

My plate

Replacing the traditional food pyramid , we now use 'My plate' .

It is a very visual and real way for the children to understand portion sizes of the various foods they eat. We created our own 'tummy plates!' They each chose what healthy food THEY like to eat!

On top of our tummy plates, each child made their own face to go on top. With a mirror the children checked their features to see what colors to use when drawing the features.