Sensory Simanim

Sensory Simanim (Symbolic holiday foods)

Preparing for Rosh Hashana -Pre-K took a very hands on approach to the holiday, by having a very sensory focused week.  Sensory play and experience involves smell, touch, sight, sound and even taste. By incorporating our learning into these simanim, the children become familiar and excited about these holiday objects. 

Moshe uses small objects to visualize the three different shofar sounds.

Last week we started to discuss how the shofar sounds like a baby crying. We are crying to Hashem to forgive us and have a sweet year full of mitzvos!

Baby's cry because they need something. To eat, to sleep or.... a diaper change!

Experimenting to see how full a diaper can get.

Guessing how many drips it will take to fill up the diaper.

Eventually it was taking a long time so we all used droppers to fill it up.

Emma was surprised at how heavy the diaper got, 

but she said her sister's diaper is sometimes heavier :)

Cutting open the diaper was a fun sensory experiment!

Batya told us it felt like snow!

Apples and Honey

Mina reads the recipe to see what step she needs to follow

 to make her apple scented playdough.

Spencer measures out the apple conditioner

Emma helps the bee's find their number home in the hive.

Tamar uses pins to give the bee a smiley face.

Using hex-nuts to create the shape of a pomegranate.

Mendel creates a fish using pattern blocks.

Buzzing like Bees and landing on the right Aleph Beis Letters.

Looking in the Mirror

We played a game, where 2 children were invited to participate: One was the leader and one was the follower. The leader had to do movement and the follower had to copy the leaders movements, as if the follower was the mirror of the leader. (Working together as partners was special.)

When we do what Hashem wants, He gives back to us and fulfills our needs. Like a great partnership.

 

Here Menachem is following Emma M

Batya is the Mirror of Mina.

 

We learnt all about the symbolic foods we eat on Rosh Hashana. These foods remind us of many things...

Apple dipped in the honey: yummm! Sweet for Hashen and sweet for us. 

We ask Hashem to be sweet to us and to give us only good things. 

What are the sweet things that Hashem wants from us?

Round Challah: It reminds us how we circle back and start the year over each Rosh Hashana. Just like a smooth round shape. We like it when things are smooth for us! What Mitzvah can you do smoother for Hashem?

Pomegranate: Wow! There are so many seeds in a pomegranate! For so many mitzvahs! When we do SO MANY Mitzvahs Hashem want to give us SO MANY toys, fun times, sweets, goodies and friends just like the seeds of a pomegranate. 

 

Counting pomegranate seeds...

Bela Riva shakes the dice and then takes that many seeds.

A head of a fish: we all want to be ahead, at the head and do our best! Just like a leader.

Hashem gives us the Koach, the energy! I can use all of my energy that Hashem gave me to be my best-- at the head.

Menachem is leading our morning exercise. 

Carrots: In Yiddish carrots are called "meren" it's also means "more." We ask Hashem for more goodness! The same way Hashem wants our kindness

 

Batya was excited she had carrots like one of the Simanim (symbolic foods)!

Doing mitzvah's tips the scale for us and Hashem wants to do more good things for us!

Rozie rolls seeds to fill up the pomegranate

Dovi blows the Shofar for his friends.

Mendel and Moshe love to work together 

Faiga sorts the holidays according to her 5 senses

Crying on a Holiday?

After spending some time discussing and singing about  apples and honey, we brought a new fruit in. A pomegranate another fruit we customarily eat on Rosh Hashana.

Some friends got very passionate about how much they like pomegranate and some didn't know what it was.  

Sholom came up to show us which he thought had more seeds.

Discovering and dissecting apples and pomegranates. This answered a lot of questions of how they were different. This was a great fine motor activity using tweezers to get the seeds out.

During our morning center activity we found a seed that was sprouting. 

Getting to taste both and differentiating the different flavors.

Giving our bearded dragon some apples to taste too!

 

What do we learn from a pomegranate?
Esther creating her pomegranate project with A LOT  of red pieces and learning how there are so many seeds inside!
To bring this lesson home each child was invited to put their mitzvah notes inside their pomegranate.

Shofar- the sound of a cry

A baby doll came to visit us at circle time and started crying. What can we do? How can we care?

Esther came up to show us what she would do to help. 

A shofar is like a cry out to Hashem. We are talking to Hashem who loves us and will take care of us.

Adelle helping her baby doll blow the shofar :)

Sholom drawing 'His tatty's shofar"

Visual shofar sounds

Learning happens visually for some children. 

While learning the different types of sounds. 

A long sound- Tekia, three medium sounds- shevarim, nine short ones- Teruah.

We placed black tape and misc. objects to invite the children to 'create' the sounds.

Chanie sewing her shofar!

                                                        

Shofar audio center

We found friends coming over and blowing the shofar along with it.

Arik using his thumb to make a bee on his Rosh Hashanah mat.

Making round Challahs

Eitan getting excited about his Rosh Hashana projects!

How do Babies Talk?

Who's Who?

Everyone had fun guessing who was who 

when we looked at the baby pictures of ourselves.

Tamar loved looking at herself as a baby.

Emma couldn't believe that Morah Davina used to look like that as a baby!

Learning how to take care of a baby.

This unit provided a valuable lesson for the children in practicing patience and sharing!

At first it was hard to share the dolls because there wasn't enough, but after talking and discussing our ideas with the class, Emma P. shared, "We could just play together and share!"

We tasted some baby food and talked about why it's so soft.

We realized it's because babies don't have teeth yet.

 Fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination at work to glue the beads to the baby bottle.

Our motto for glue is "Just a dot, and not a lot!"

Tie-dying baby wipes with markers.

Look at the beautiful colors Mendel used!

 Moshe and Mina worked together to circle the words that start with a B

Inviting babies into our classroom was such a treat!

Mina showed everyone Yakov Mordechai's teeth.