A friendly week in honor of Lag B'omer

Lag b'omer week two

This week we learned about Rabbi Akiva's favorite Mitzvah: Ahavas Yisroel. (loving our fellow Jew)

It is actually the most important Mitzvah in the Torah and we are told that everything else is considered commentary. 

Our entire year of curriculum is filled with social skills and team work but this week we over emphasized it, in the spirit of Lag Baomer.  

Menachem and Leah acting out with puppets how we can care for eachother.

Our centers were intentionally set up with having team work in mind.

Shua and Yakov, learning how to mix colors by holding each others hand.

We had no chairs to encourage movement and spatial awareness.

Clean up time is a great time to learn about team work and caring for our friends. Menachem, communicating with his friends that some needed dry paper towels.

Yakov, making sure there was enough play dough for all his friends.

Not having the exact amount of the same toys invited the children to take turns and tell their friends with words how many minutes they needed.

Drawing art can be very personal and require their own space. 

Having a big box to draw on helped us have those conversations since the boundaries of their own paper wasn't present.

Singing a lot of friends songs this week.

Drawing each others faces :)

Heart experiments using baking soda and red vinegar.

To help see a visual and get one on one attention for their sweet friendship moments we wrote on puzzle pieces of some of the special events that took place.

Some of our friends have siblings in the older class, was sweet to watch how they can care for them too!

 

A New Student in the Classroom

On Monday we got some exciting news!  A new student was coming to look at our class today. 

We were so excited to meet the new boy.

Suddenly Rabbi Lang walked in and sat down at the circle! What was he doing here?

He told us he came to learn Aleph Beis.

Everyone looked at him with funny looks- you are too old to be learning in our class!

We learned about Rabbi Akiva, he was a simple shepherd who didn't even know the Aleph Beis when he was 40 years old! Rochel promised to marry him if he would go learn Torah, but he didn't think he could. Until one day he saw how little drips of water had made a hole in the rock, if water can make a hole, surely I can learn Torah!

So he went to a cheder to learn Aleph Beis and Torah with the little children.

Sensory Aleph Beis

Creating negative space art with drips of water and the letters of our names

Rabbi Akiva learned so much Torah, he became a leader of the Jewish people, with 24,000 students.

We are all trying to be leaders who teach others about Torah and Mitzvos.

We created a Shabbos Party box so we can practice being a leader at home!

Creating a game to play, a story to tell and a treat to make!

Working on Story Guides to help us remember the story 

Mina shows Mendy what they will do by the house!

Rabbi Akiva's students were missing one thing, Ahavas Yisroel, we gave each student a stick to break. They were able to do it in less than one second. But no one was able to break the sticks when they were together. That is what happens when we have Ahavas Yisroel, we become so much stronger!

We have been working on our Ahavas Yisroel and working together in our classroom

We are working toward 700 Mitzvos all together! 

We made it to one of our milestones and enjoyed a special activity!

 It is so sweet to see the kids in our class running to tell the Morah the mitzvos their friends do!

Morah Davina's car was sparkling!

Everyone was definitely feeling that summer is coming!

Using some fun summer manipulatives to create words and our names!

 

Learning Alef Beis with Rabbi Akiva

With Lag Baomer around the corner we focused on a holy Rabbi named Rabbi Akiva. 

We learned about how he started his journey at age forty. 

We took this opportunity to surround ourselves with the holy letters of the Alef Beis and learn the first few. 

Yakov, brought the Rabbi Akiva puppet with a Torah to circle time. Chana, wanted the Rochel puppet (Rabbi Akiva's wife) who fully supported Rabbi Akiva's journey to be coming one of the most famous Rabbis. 

Alef beis play dough.

Menachem, made an alef beis pointer.

Shua, using his atzbaot (finger) with adom (red) paint on the Alef.

Buttons on the Beis.

It's always great to bring our learning outdoors. Our friends found chalk beis they could paint with water.

Geshem (rain) inspired art on the gimmel.

Yakov, figuring out how to make his play dough snake into a gimmel.

Creating the letter gimmel with manipulatives and working together.

Painting the letter Daled with devash (honey)

Was fun to taste as well! The hebrew letters are sweet and pure!

We are told that letters of the Alef beis are extremely holy. Hashem contracted his infinite light multiple times in order to create the letters. 

Our Hebrew names are an extension of our holy soul. We took this opportunity to focus on each child as an individual and talk about what letter begins their name.

Ben proud of his letter Beis!

Seaing is Believing

 This week we dove into an ocean experience.

 Everyone was fascinated to learn about the ocean and the animals and fish that call it home.

We read books that showed us all kinds of cool animals and talked about which ones we wanted to see.

Shmuel told us he wanted to see sharks! Morah Davina said, "No thank you!"

We learned that some animals need to live in warm ocean and some need cold.

Even some animals that live on land like seals and polar bears need the ocean to live.

Enjoying an ocean sensory experience, Sholom and Batya work together on an ocean sticker match, building their spatial awareness and shape recognition.

Ocean "Go fish"

 Practicing our animal words, Chanie finds them and writes them in the classroom.

Everyone remembered that the ocean tastes very salty. 

Regular lakes and rivers are not salty. What is different about salty water?

When we put the egg in freshwater it sunk, but with salt water it floated, salt made the water heavier and stronger.

Scientists record their experiments so they can remember.

Sweet friends working on number recognition with a coloring dice game.

Some classmates decided to make an ocean art project.

Our highlight of the week was when we went on a field trip to a tropical fish store.

We saw some really interesting fish and ocean animals!

One lesson we took from the Parsha this week was how to use our words. When the Jewish people were in the desert , with the mishkan (mini Beis Hamikdash) accompanying them, they were very sensitive and had an allergy. 

Meir told us how his brother is allergic to peanuts.

The Jewish people were allergic to Lashon Hara, when they said Lashon Hara a rash came on their skin called Tzara'as. Now we don't get tzara'as when we hear or say Lashon Hara.

To help the children understand the power of their words, each Mitzvah Mentchie received a tube of toothpaste and had to squeeze out as much as they could on a plate.

Then each child was given some tools and had 5 minutes to put as much back as they could.

Afterwards we checked to see if anyone had gotten all of it back in. 

Nobody had gotten even close! Lashon Hara is similar to this. 

Once it's said, people remember it and it's very hard to fix.

Chess is a very popular game right now in Mitzvah Mentchies!

Happy 5th Birthday Mina and Arik! Keep learning and growing!