A 40 year old student?

In preparation for Lag B'omer we learned about the famous sage, Rabbi Akiva whose passing, this day commemorates. Click here for more about Lag BaOmer

We chose a portion of his life story  to focus on with the children. How he went from not knowing much Torah as an adult, to becoming a most sought after Rabbi.  Our main goal this week was to show the children how even though he was a grown man- he started with learning Alef Beis in a preschool setting-- NEVER GIVING UP!

A Rabbi Akiva puppet joined our circle time this week to learn with us just like he did many years ago.

Teaching Rabbi Akiva the Alef Beis by circle time!

We spent a whole week creating many different Alef Beis experiences.

We are intentional at Gan Camarillo Preschool not to place  a heavy emphasis on letter recognition at this young age, because we believe there are far more developmentally appropriate goals to focus on- such as the soft skills of self control, conflict resolution, daily living (self help skills) and ensuring their sensory needs are met all around. Much research has been done in this area, and the results have shown that when the focus is on a playbased/sensory rich setting- it lays a stronger foundation for academic success (with reading etc..) when introduced at a later age.

Moshe and Yanky matching bottle caps with Hebrew letters to the chart.

Decorating the Alef with 'Adom'- red.

Chanie using water to practice tracing the Hebrew letters.

The Hebrew letter 'twins'. Beis and Veis one with a dot and without. We placed bean bags to encourage our friends to try to get it on the dot of the Beis. Sholom was excited to use his ball from home to bounce it in the Beis.

 Adelle "Beis has a belly button." Decorating buttons on the letter 'Beis'.

Emma practicing the vvv sound by placing Velcro on the letter 'veis'.

As we talked about different Veis sounds, volcanos came up and we watched what a real volcano looks like inside our taped Veis on the carpet.

Batya was quite fascinated with the black lines of the letter Hey bleeding as she water painted.

Sensory Hebrew letter fun. We placed popsicle sticks to help practice the shape of the letters however fingers were definitely more fun;)

Hebrew blocks on top of the Hebrew letter gimmel. Adelle worked very hard to line up her blocks to make a gimmel.

 Mendel making the letter vav with marbles in his play dough.

Eli found some letters in his name and was quite excited about it.

Arik practicing with a car the shape of the letter Hey.

We can learn a great lesson from Rabbi Akiva, to never give up! 

We asked our friends what they wish they knew how to do that still cant.

Emma, "I want to cook like my mommy."

We encouraged her to ask her mommy if she can help her to keep practicing her cooking skills.

Mendel, "To climb like my brother Yehuda."

Even if we cant fulfill these dreams yet we can still keep trying!