Yom Kippur, Oops I'm sorry!

Rosh Hashana we learned all about being sweet! But what happens when we don't act sweet? what happens when we make a mistake?

This week our focus turned to Yom Kippur. The big idea of Yom Kippur, is that we can always fix things up! Even if we make a mistake, we can ALWAYS make things better!

During circle time our puppet friends role played some scenarios of friends that made mistakes that we are familiar with! 

Bashing down another friends block tower and sitting in a seat that someone else was already sitting at. Our puppet friends showed us how to "fix it" after singing the "Oops i'm sorry song."

TTTO "where is thumbkin"

"Oops I'm sorry, 

oops I'm sorry,

what did I do? what did I do?

I didn't want to hurt you, I want to make it better,

I made a mistake,

I'll fix my mistake"

When we respond to behaviors that are "mistakes" by singing the "Oops I'm sorry song," it helps the children remember they need to "fix" their mistake.

Mini Shule Center

Yom Kippur is a day spent in Shule (synagogue), and in prayer. With this in mind, we set up a mini "Shule" for the children to get familiar with, and learn appropriate behaviors for when they are in a real shule.

                                               

Menachem, Shua & Yossi jumped right into the Rabbi Role, finding a hat, Kittel and Tallis!

Chana was happy to find a siddur and practice davening

WHITE: Yom Kippur Sensory & Art

On Yom Kippur we traditionally wear white, so we chose to use white as inspiration for art and sensory table activities this week! Corn starch and water is so fascinating to experience. It feels hard at first touch, but once our body heat stays on it, it changes its consistency, and becomes soft, and drippy.

My very own Machzor

The machzor is made up of words from our holy Alef Beis. We used our Alef Beis time this week to create our very own Machzor, and reminded the children that Hashem loves hearing them sing the names of the letters !

 

Slipper Match game

As a fun way for the children to learn the mitzvah of not wearing leather shoes on Yom Kippur, we prepared a slipper match game! The children were invited to find the right outline for a matching pair of slippers!

Rosh Hashanah and Alef Beis Chassidus

With all the Rosh Hashanah preparation and business how much more so we need to stop and take a deep breath and get a full amount of air for our brains. 

 It is actually quite difficult to breath in and fully fill your stomach with air when sniffing in from your nose. Esther helped us demonstrate with a rope around her tummy.

The morah is the 'safe keeper' however it has been empowering to have our friends be called our helpers in this job. 

Throughout the day we notice areas we can work on to be more safe. 

Our friends take the pictures to add to our book of how to be safe during circle time.

Yanky, demonstrated when we can rock our chairs and when we keep them straight. 

Visual picture expectations on our safe keeper box.

Making Davening routine meaningful by learning different body parts by Asher yatzar. Mina, helped us learn fun fact about the belly button one morning.

Continuing our Rosh Hashanah learning by practicing writing key words of the holiday.

Esther, creating apple structures using toothpicks.

Arik, hydro dipping his honey dish.

Learning about scales and how Hashem looks at all the mistakes and mitzvahs we have done.

Batya helping us add our mitzvah notes to the scale.

Making honey lolly pops. Our friends learned the ingredients, how to be safe and how to use a candy thermometer. We learned by experience when the temperature got too high it burned really quick.

We brought our goldfish to davening circle and learned about Tashlich. We davened that all our mistakes should go into the water.

Alef Beis review. We have been doing a lot of one on one work and time ourselves to watch the progress.

During Alef Beis chassidus this week we learned how Hashem created gimmel before daled. Gimmel is 'gavir' rich and daled is 'dal' poor. Hashem gives us money to give to tzedakah. Chanie, dressed up as gimmel and with a blindfold tried to find the daled in the room to give him money.

Decorating gimmel with a lot of money and looking to give.

Using our cutting skills to create patches for the "poor" daled.

Hey shows us we can't just use our mind and speech to do a mitzvah but we need our hands to actually DO it!

We role played a friend in need. Esther and Arik first just thought about her and talked about what the friend needed. But what she really needed is someone to help her pass a tissue. Without our hand piece of the hey the 'Daled' can fall over.

A Vav is like a hook that connects us to Hashem.  The Torah is that hook. Sholom playing fishing and trying to just get the vavs.

Being part of the process of wrapping up our Rosh Hashanah crafts. 

Some of our friends got to learn how to curl ribbon. ;)

 

Cry of the shofar

This week we continued to develop our "bee-ing sweet" theme, by focusing on the sweet Mitzvos our friends can do. As we began circle time, Yossi noticed that Leah was sad because she wanted to sit next to Menachem, so he did something sweet, and moved his seat, so Leah would be able to sit where she preferred! We are hanging our "sweet mitzvah's" on our honey jar, to reinforce the connection between Mitzvah's and honey!

We decorated honey jars to beautify our Rosh Hashana tables, and enjoyed lots a fun sensory RH themed water table fun. Squeezing apple and honey shaped sponges in and out of the water. It is so fascinating to see how the sponge can hold so much water, and then squeeze it out!

 

 

Bee Hive building! The children used pictures of beehives as inspiration to build their own!

 

Bee Math and Motor skills fun 

  

Cry of the Shofar

To help the children understand why we blow the Shofar and what it signifies, we set up a baby care center in our classroom one morning.

During circle time we listened to an audio of a baby crying, alongside an audio of a Shofar sound. We noticed the similarities.

A baby doll visited our circle time, and cried. 

What is a baby telling us when a baby cries?  Our friends all knew that the baby wants his Mommy or Daddy to be there with him, and help him. 

 When we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana, we are calling out to our spiritual father, Hashem! We are asking Him to be close to us, and care for us. 

Tekia, Shevarim, Teruah

Children learn best when the learning engages their entire body!

To help them remember the names of the Shofar sounds, we taped visuals of the 3 sounds on our rug.

Using their whole body movements, the children were able to jump to the tune of the different Shofar sounds. We also added blocks to the rug one morning, inviting the children to "create" the sounds with the blocks!

Alef Beis

This week we focused on distinguishing the difference between a Beis and a Veis. The two letters look SO similar! There is only ONE difference! The Dot inside the Belly of the Beis! 

The children enjoyed some fun movement activities with the letters taped onto the floor. When Morah called out the name of the letter, they had to jump in or outside of the letter, to determine if its a Beis or a Veis.

We also decorated letters!