Kindergarten Monthly Update #1

The Living Letters - Hebrew Alef Bais 

At Gan Camarillo, we follow the chassidic instruction to teach the children the names and kaballistic meaning behind each of the holy letters of the Alef Beis. The Rebbe teaches that each letter is holy, and through the children learning the name of each letter PRIOR to blending and reading, we cultivate a special "Yiras shomayim" (fear of heaven) in the hearts and minds of our students.

With this in mind, the children have just completed learning each of the names of the letters. Here we share with you a peek into some of the ways it was introduced to the children.

Clay figures reflecting the shape and message of the letter.

The letter Ches. The Ches is a Chupah, a wedding canopy. We have the bride, groom and Hashem in their marriage. 

The letter Lamed is a teacher teaching a student. When you learn something new you can teach it to someone else that doesn't know. Then you become a teacher!

                                                  

The letter Ayin is an eye. Every time we do something our eyes takes a picture and stores it in our brain. The letter Ayin reminds us to do good things so our brain will be full of good pictures.

                                                             

The children were invited to create their own shapes!  They loved creating, and felt full of pride when they see what they made and this is exactly what we want them to feel!!

Working in Pairs:

Each pair had to build and represent the secret story of their letter. 

Peek A Boo Alef Bais. 

We played a game to help us remember the differences of letters. Guess until you see the full letter. 

What's the difference between a צ and a ץ?

Next week we will begin the Capit Hebrew reading program which will help the children blend the letters to become fluent hebrew readers!

STEM Bins 

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

These bins are a new addition to our class this year. Each bin has a different material, for example; magnetic tiles, lego, wooden blocks, domino's, popsicle sticks, straws and many more...

The children use these materials to build their task. We added this to our class to give our children more constructive time to express their creativity and problem solving.

The STEM bins are a tool that can be used in all subjects.

Here we are using it for our Hebrew letters. 

Each letter has a secret story and a deeper meaning to the shape and name of the letter. We have a demo set of the letters that are made of clay. 

Another addition to our class is woodworking! 

Yes real tools and real wood!! When I brought out the wood and the tools they knew exactly what to do. When it was time to put it away the children did not want to stop.

Here are some of our friends exploring and trying to create different things. We are planning on making some cool projects this year.

                                   

English Language Arts

We are almost done learning the sounds of each letter. We also started arranging combinations of 3-4 letters to spell a word!

     

The goal is for the children to understand that writing is fun and is an amazing way to express and share their thoughts and feelings.

I try to make it real, funny and interesting for our children.

We are thankful and grateful 

 

This time the exercise was in honor of Thanksgiving. The children were asked, " If you had to pick one sense, what do you think is the most important one from all five and why do you think it's the most important one?"

Faiga wrote: I am thankful for my eyes. I think my sight is the most important sense because if I can not see I will not be able to drive.

Sight words

To help the children master sight words, we have a sight word wall in our classroom! We play different games to help us remember the words. Bela Riva and Dovi are searching for the right word.

The children that already know how to read are reading books to our friends and Morahs.

Math

We are so lucky to have Montessori math materials in our classroom. These materials give the children a hands on math experience of sorting, stacking, and manipulating. The visual and manipulative component helps the children master the foundations of math in a more effective way!

 

The golden bead material is building numbers into the thousands.
For example a single golden bead represents 1, a group of 10 beads are strung together in a straight line for 10, and 100 beads are affixed into a flat square. The thousand cube is as large as 1,000 of the original single ‘1’ bead.
Dovi was so excited when he understood that 2 cubes are 2000 and 3 cubes make 3000 beads.

Learning math in our class is a self directed process where each child in their own level can gain a sense of independence and confidence.

         

Science

Our children did an experiment with Mrs. G.
The children were invited to hypothesize (predict) what might be the outcome of the experiment.

Each child was given 2 ice cubes. The experiment was to see how fast ice melts, and what might affect the speed it melts.
They were invited to put one ice cube in the shade and one in the sun.

Which one melted faster?
The children wrote down their answers!