Gan Camarillo Preschool: Happy birthday to.....

The Trees!

Tu B'shvat- 15th of the Hebrew month of Sh'vat is a day that marks the beginning of a "new year" for trees. CLICK HERE more more on this special day!

The next couple of weeks we will be focusing on how special trees are. How they grow, special Mitzvah's that connect to a tree, as well as how many things come from trees!

Nature indoors

While we spend a good amount of time outside in Hashem's beautiful nature during the week, we chose to bring a lot of nature INDOORS to help make the children more aware of it! By doing this it helped us create opportunities to learn together and hear their knowledge of nature and discuss it.

Branch Beading

Fitting different size beads on the branches was a great fine motor skill and required a lot of concentration!

We love when we set up a learning center, and the children take it to the next level using their own imagination! Yehudis and a couple other friends requested some yarn to add to the decoration of the branches.

Recycling

This was a great hit in our class this week! We placed an assortment of items from our recycling drawer and invited the children to make whatever came to mind! The ideas were endless and was a great way for the children to exercise taking their thoughts/ideas and making them reality!

(An important value we strive to impart in our students: That their ideas are valuable and they shouldn't let things get in the way of making them happen!)

Learning by observation

One of the best kinds of learning that goes on in our classroom is children learning from each other!
Levi Yitzchok for quite some time watched Devorah Leah create a flower out of different materials on the table. He was determined to create his own.. and so his wheels started turning...

He found a pringles container to cover and added grass on top.

At first he asked Morah's to help him make it. We encouraged him to do his own research by asking his friend Devorah Leah, "How she did it!" This was a great learning experience for him as well as his friends observing him figure it out! To be a more effective teacher, educating is many times holding back all our 'answers' and being the one to "facilitate" the learning. We then get to watch the growth happen on its own!

Making the stem

This inspired Max to create something similar...

Levi using hand eye coordination by practicing cutting on a line.

Lilah was so excited to show us what she created, a flower pot and binoculars!

Learning about Tu B'shvat

This week we learned that at this time in Eretz Yisroel, the trees are emerging from their winter sleep and beginning a new process of growing fruit. This was a great opportunity to learn about the Mitzvah of waiting till the tree is three years old to enjoy its fruit.

First, the class had to guess what fruits were on this tree. Levi Lang was very excited and shouted Pomegranates!

.

Muka helped us visualize with little birthday hats for the trees with different numbers on it to show which trees we can eat from and which we have to wait.

Acting it out.

Shua played a small seed in the ground while we all imagined the rain falling and sun shinning while he slowly grew.

Once he turned three years old and started to grow fruit, Aron came and got to enjoy the pear hanging on Shua.

Motti had his first haircut!

This was particularly relevant to our class that day, as our friend Motti came in for the first time with his new hair cut! (Now that he had just turned 3). The Torah in Deuteronomy compares man to a Tree, in the verse "Ki Adam Eitz Hasadeh." One of the ways in which we live with this, is by waiting until a boy turns 3 years old to cut from his hair. (Just as we don't cut the fruits from a tree before it is 3 years old.)