Gan Camarillo Preschool

Home sweet home

Our Home is a comfortable place where we can be ourselves and with the people we love. We brought out this love by printing pictures of each child's home. Through talking, drawing and "driving" to our friends homes, we were able to help the children realize how special each of their home's are to themselves.

Menucha felt so good finding HER home

We created '3D' models of their homes and movable roads so the children can have experience driving to each others homes.

Max parking his car in the garage.

The next day we offered the children a different perspective, by placing all their homes on the floor with a road puzzle. We also printed out a picture of the Beis Hamikdash "Hashem's home" to add to their imagination and to visualize what it will be like when we have the third Beis Hamikdash!

Levi L. commented, "When we get the real Beis Hamikdash I want my house to be right next door!"

Beis Hamikdash Center

Building on the children's innate love for their home, and understanding of what a "home" is, the children at Gan spent this week exploring "G-d's home." The Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple)!
To allow the children to fully appreciate the story and miracle of Chanuka, we began our unit with a full blown focus on life in Israel prior to the Chanuka story.
Life was good for the Jewish people.

A life size, interactive Beis Hamikdash allowed our class to experience what life was like for the Jewish people BEFORE the story of Chanuka! What a beautiful time it was, when Jewish people from all over the world came to see Hashem's miracles happening daily in His home.

The Kohanim (priests) had a lot of important jobs in the Beis Hamikdash. One of which was to light up the golden Menorah everyday! We placed pictures on the mirror of the special clothing they would wear and costumes to get into role.

Motty admiring himself as the Kohen.

Before the Kohen would do his service in the Beis Hamikdash they would wash their hands and feet by the Kiyor. (wash basin)

Menucha and Dovi helping Motty the Kohen to get ready to light the Menorah.

It was HARD work getting enough olive oil for the Menorah. The children experienced this themselves by crushing olives.

Chani as the Kohen lighting the Menorah

Dovi concentrating on pouring the pure olive oil into the Menorah.

Giving Bikurim

There was a special Mitzvah called "Bikurim" that the Jewish people would observe during Temple times. They brought the first fruits from their trees, to give as a gift to the Kohanim.

Elizabeth copying the picture of a Jewish woman carrying her fruits on her head.

Menucha enjoying a fruit from the gift basket after lighting the Menorah that people brought to the Beis Hamikash.

The Levites Orchestra

The "Leviyim" (Levites) had a special job in the Beis Hamikdosh. They would play beautiful music and sing praises to Hashem. We placed a harp for the children to role play the musicians of the Leviyim.

Lechem Hapanim.

The 'show bread' was a stack of 12 challah's that miraculously stayed fresh all week long and the Kohanim would eat them on Shabbos.

challah party ;)

Aron Kodesh

The "Aron Kodesh" was the holiest of the vessels in the Beis Hamikdash. It contained in it the Luchos - which include the entire Torah. To help the children understand that, we made peek holes on the sides of our model, that depicted images of a Torah scroll and an image of the Ten Commandments on Stone. The children could interact with it, by peeking in the holes on either side, to see what was in it!

Chanuka story

With all this love and excitement towards the Beis Hamikdash, it was now time to introduce the Chanukah story. King Antiyochus came to our class and announced some very unkind rules about not thinking our Torah is so special and not keeping Kosher anymore.

Yehuda, one of the special Jewish people during the Chanuka story quickly came out and told them we must stay BRAVE and the children all screamed out "Hashem is with us, we're not scared!"

We had a dilemma though! The King told us he is sending out his soldiers to make sure we are not hugging our Torah's! The children quickly climbed into our cave in our class and sang Torah songs.

As soon as the Greek soldier knocked on our cave, Yehuda reminded us, "ok, be brave... take out your dreidels and play." The children quickly hid their Torah's and showed the soldier their Dreidel!

Finally with Yehuda, we became Macabees and chased the Greeks out of our classroom!

The children were so excited to go back to our Beis Hamikdash BUT it was destroyed.

The looks on their faces was devastating! :(

THEIR Beis Hamikdash was a MESS!!!

Quickly they all decided together to clean and organize the whole center. Exactly what happened thousands of years ago when the Maccabees worked REALLY hard to clean everything up!

After everything was organized, the children were excited to light the Menorah!

"Where did all the jugs of oil go??" They quickly connected it - 'those Greeks!"

Right away, the children started searching for any sealed oil!

Shua finally found one hiding and it was sealed! The children jumped for joy!

The miracle that took place was that the one jug of oil lasted for 8 DAYS!
After experiencing the story hands on, the children are super excited to get to light their own Menorah for 8 days!!

At the end of our Davening circle we danced in our Beis Hamikdash center for Hashem to send us the third REAL Beis Hamikdash!

A Daily Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving approaching, we decided it was a nice opportunity to zoom in on the fact that we, as Jews have an opportunity EVERY DAY to articulate our feelings and express our gratitude to Hashem for all that we have.

(Next week we will touch on the historical story of Thanksgiving and why the founding fathers of our country were thankful to G-d.)

As Jews, we recite words of thanks to Hashem every single day when we "Daven-Pray." This actually begins the moment our eyes open in the morning with the prayer of Modei Ani.

(Thank you Hashem for restoring the little portion of my Nesahma- soul, into my body.) We never take for granted who is giving us life every moment of the day!

Before our davening routine we did a little role play with a doll going to sleep, illustrating how Hashem takes a tiny bit of our Neshama and restores it, then returns it in the morning. Wow! this gave new meaning to the words we cheerfully sing each morning!

Shua showing us what he looks like when he wakes up from his sleep!

Devorah Leah showing us how she says Modeh Ani (in her bed) in the morning!

Personalizing the message

To take it on a deeper level, before we started our routine davening, each child drew on a little sticky note what THEY felt thankful to Hashem for!

Their honest and precious responses were posted on a Siddur (prayer book) poster on our wall for them to look at before davening.

More opportunities through out the week to document and draw their feelings of thanks to Hashem!

The more we learned and talked about this, the more meaningful and thoughtful their responses became!

Our circle times were definitely giving Hashem a lot of pride and joy! So much to learn and aspire to be from watching pure little children sing praises to Hashem with their full heart!

GIVING thanks!

Another daily ritual we wanted to add meaning to, was the mitzvah of Tzedaka!

Now that we are so THANKFUL to Hashem what can we DO with these feelings? A Mitzvah!

By taking our own money and giving it to someone less fortunate: that is how we can light up this world with goodness and appropriately put our thankfulness into practical ACTION!!

In the dramatic play area we set up a little store and included a Tzedaka box on the counter by the cash register. We encouraged the children while purchasing their items to stick some of their money inside, which will go to poor people. Was a great hands on lesson.

Dovi giving all his money to Tzedaka ;)

Even the cashiers were giving Tzedaka!

Tzedaka Sensory Fun

For some Tzedaka sensory fun we hid lots of coins in the play dough and when the children found the coins they placed it in the Tzedaka box!

Learning the names of the coins and a math lesson

Each little round tray was labelled with a picture of a different coin: Quarter, Dime, Nickel and Penny. The children were invited to divide the unsorted pile of coins in the middle of the table and match the correct coin while learning its name.

Proud of all the quarters he found!

Hypothesizing on our Penny Experiment

We took three really dirty pennies and three different ways we would try to clean them.

Water, a lemon and ketchup.

We asked the children "which do you think would clean the penny the most, making it the most shiny?"

Majority of responses: "water!"

Now it was THEIR turn to find out the result of their hypothesis.

Max tried the water. Did get a little off but not too shiny...

Muka the Lemon

Shua tried the ketchup. The children found this humorous but the element of surprise was that it actually WAS the most effective of getting our penny shiny!

(We read the ingredients together and figured out it was probably the vinegar!)