Being Hosts, That do the Most!

This week we learnt some important Mitzvahs from the story of this weeks Torah portion!
The first one is the Mitzvah of Bikur Cholim, visiting someone that is not feeling well. Hashem came to visit Avraham after his Bris Mila (circumcision) when he was very weak.

The next Mitzvah is Hachnasas Orchim, welcoming/taking care of guests. Avraham Avinu loved hosting people. He had 4 entrances to his tent, so anyone would be welcome to come in from all directions. He would feed his guests and would teach them about Hashem. When the guests would thank him, he would tell them not to thank him but to thank Hashem who created the world.

We also built a tent and hosted Morah Shiras class.

Our children decorated cups and prepared a fruit salad for our guests.

 

How can we make our guests feel comfortable?
Our children came up with great ideas and we wrote them down.

"Welcome them inside" - Rozie

"Give them cookies and treats" - Emma.P

"Clean up before and after they come" - Mendel.P

"The guests should eat first" - Mendel. S

Here our friends are welcoming Morah Shirahs class. 

Three special guests came to visit Avraham, they were Malochim, (Angels). Even though Avraham was weak he still went out of his way and made his guests feel at home. He fed them a big feast. Each angel had a job. One of the angels jobs was to deliver the exciting news to Avraham and Sara that they will have a baby in one year!

Song:
Avraham and Sarah welcomed everyone they saw,
they had four doors to east and west, the south and to the north
I can be like Avraham and Sarah his wife,
Be kind to everyone for my whole life

Science

The past couple of weeks we've been watching the leaves change color and fall off the tree's. Last Friday we collected some leaves.

We learned that leaves have a secret ingredient inside of them, this ingredient is
called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is made out of water and sunlight. The tree needs chlorophyll to survive.
This time of the year, autumn, the days are shorter and there is less sunlight. The trees need chlorophyll and they take it all in. When the green ingredient goes away the other pigments of the leaf show up, like yellow, red even purple.. then the leaf falls of.

 

Here our students are tracing some of the leaves and coloring them in. Some are with chlorophyll and some are with less..

 

The children also made beautiful collages with leaves and sticks that they picked up.

The Same on the Inside

The Same on the Inside

This week Pre-K delved into a lesson on tolerance. We learned that Avraham and Sarah had an open tent that welcomed everyone, no matter how they looked or acted. When you are kind to everyone and treat them the same, that is tolerance.

Reading our homemade tolerance book to the class. Our children had a hard time grasping the difference between children of different skin colors. "Are they wearing different shirts?"

Then Mina said, "Oh they are different colors."

To make the lesson hands-on each child got the opportunity to be blindfolded and two different colors of clay were placed in their hands. Trying to guess the colors of the clay just by feel was impossible!

They felt the exact same!

They have the same ingredients, just different colors. Just like people!

We learned that Hashem created a special color in our skin called melanin. If you have more melanin then your skin is darker, and if you have less melanin, your skin is lighter.

Comparing the colors of our skin!

While making challah dough, we talked about how bakeries used to have rules that only people with lighter skin could buy from them.

Nobody could believe it.

Using clay and our hand muscles to create clay art people.

We spoke about different kinds of people while we worked. 

Morah Davina was sharing how some people might look weird because they don't have eyebrows, but we still need to be kind, and Moshe said " It's not nice to call them weird!" 

Great example of tolerance!

We read The Crayon Box That Talked by Shane Derolf

a story about a box of crayons that don't like each other, but then a little girl shows them that together they can do so much more!

Before we started, each child got a piece of colored construction paper and a matching colored crayon, each was invited to draw a picture. Right away everyone started to complain, it's not working! Convincing the Morah to let the children use different colors took a lot of work. Because really each color should stay with it's matching paper! Right?

But after we switched colors, we were able to create beautiful pictures!

The children learned that people used to only be able to work, talk and live with those who had the same skin color as them, and if people needed extra help (special needs) they couldn't live with regular people. We decided it's much better for people to mix and create beautiful things together!

This art project needed everyone's help! Each child used only one color, and we needed everyone to create a beautiful rainbow heart! Each child painted a beautiful crayon for a classroom display! Each so unique.

Some children wanted to illustrate the cover of Our Tolerance Book, and their names were written on the front cover! We read it all together, as well as solo!

Moshe needed all the colors to build his beautiful creation!

Using one would not have worked out well!

Eggciting Eggsperiments!

( ok,I'll stop :)

It was so interesting to test the difference between a brown and white egg.

We got to touch them, smell them, crack them, put them in water, and even eat them! (hard boiled)

In the end we realized they were pretty similar, except for the color.

Just like people! We are the same on the inside!

Making birthday cards and practicing recognizing and writing letters!

Happy Birthday 5th Birthday Spencer!!

Be our guest!

This week we learned about the Torah portion of Vayera. 

The first Jewish couple, Avraham and Sara and their famous four doored tent that graciously invited anyone to come eat and recognize the creator, Hashem.

Chanie helped demonstrate how Sara would light the Shabbos candles. 

We learned about her miraculous candles that stayed lit the entire week!

Lighting the beautiful Shabbos candles in our tent this week was a powerful way to realize the unbroken chain of girls and women lighting Shabbos candles all the way back till our matriarch Sara.
We heard the boys whisper amen and Yanky practicing his challah braiding skills while Esther lit the Shabbos candles.

Shmuel and Shalom having fun creating wax candle art. Menachem carefully displaying the candles for a friend to light them.

Avraham and Sara had four doors to their tent to make sure guests could feel comfortable walking in from all different directions.

We had a fun math activity using the doors of a tent with different numbers on it and our friends were invited to place that many items through the door.

 Number recognition and fine motor skills by cutting on the lines.

 Role playing how to act graciously to our guest and Shmuel reminding our friends to say a bracha over their food exactly what Avraham used to ask of his guests.

 Mina asking chana Rochel to be her guest.

 Sara, just like us made delicious challah every Shabbos. We had fun creating challah with brown playdough.

Yanky painting his plate to create his tent project.

We were so excited to hear we would be invited to the Tk and Kindergarten class as guests.
What a great hands on way how it feels to be treated nicely by gracious hosts.

Enjoying a delicious treat their class made for us in their outside tent!

Was such a tender moment watching Spencer from the Tk class make sure Adelle was liking her fruit bowl.

We invited the TK and Kindergarten class to OUR tent for some yummy jello!

 Watching friends role play the big idea. 

We found Esther later on asking Morah Davina to be her guest and she made her a delicious cake.

Enjoying rest time in our tent!

All Fired Up

We started  off our week by discussing the different things that a firefighter needs to wear to be safe.

We discussed air tanks that help us breathe, boots that keep our feet safe, fire extinguishers and gloves.

Role-modeling a firefighter putting out the fire.

Our class got  really excited when we found out we were going to visit a real fire station!

This process art really helped us practice some important steps of fire safety.

Practicing to Stop, Drop and Roll on our picture, to color-mix and create smoke!

Mendel was very determined to cut out his 911 the right way.

If there is an emergency we need to call 911!

Another important aspect of safety is knowing your Mommy and Daddy's  phone number! Some children really wanted to learn their parent's phone number, so we created a class phonebook so people could practice!

Dramatic play held a starring role in Pre-K this week.

Putting out fires, building and riding in the fire truck 

brought out a lot of leadership qualities in our students. 

Firefighters need to take control and make decisions fast.

Sliding down a fireman pole!

Stamping fire colors.

Clipping the right number to the fire with the right amount of letters on it.

Using fire play dough to count and visualize the number in a 10 frame.

Drawing shapes and numbers in fire-colored shaving cream.

Firefighter number and color.

Reading F as in Firefighter by Dori Hillestad Butler

implementing our topic into the classroom literacy!

The highlight of our week was a field trip to Fire Station #54 

Our class got to see and hear everything we had been learning about!

So many concrete examples to learn from.

Firefighter Nyles played a game with us called Toy or Tool 

to reinforce with us which things we should touch and play with!