Jewish Heroes become the teachers!

Preparing for the next holiday is a great opportunity to master a variety of life skills. With some time till Purim, we wanted to lay a beautiful foundation to segue into the actual story of Purim and its traditions!

 

Mitzvah's are a special way to connect to Hashem. We do and talk about Mitzvah's throughout our days at Gan. 

This week and next, we are dedicating to learning about the characters of two special Jewish heroes, Mordechai and Esther, who we read about in the Megillah.

Learning about Mitzvah's through their eyes and creating a connection with these characters- will hopefully cultivate the awareness that "we can all be like Mordechai and Esther" and seamlessly transition to the Purim story, understanding it in a deeper way.

Our dramatic play area turned into 

"Mordechai and Esther's Home".

A warm inviting house that was filled with Mitzvah's.

Leah looking at the display of pictures of her doing Mitzvahs. This was a great conversation piece since it was right near Mordechai and Esther characters. They felt just like them!

Ben, discovering all the Jewish items like siddurim, Torah, Shabbos box.

A place of connecting to Hashem through davening. 

Menachem and Yakov loved role modeling their fathers wearing the Tefillin.

A place of making delicious challah just like Esther did all those years ago!

A place for giving Tzedakah. 

We had some fun Tzedakah activities. Chana, practicing drawing circles around coins in salt. Shua, had to find only the pennies to fit in the circle tray.

Ben, wanted to make tzedakah coins using chalk.

We talked a lot about being friends and how important that mitzvah was to Mordechai and Esther too.

Our friends were invited to ask each other what colors they want on their bracelets and made it for them. Chana, worked really hard making for her whole family.

                               

We found Shua tellling our bearded dragon all about Mordechai.

Creating our favorite Mitzvah scenes.

At circle time, we read each child's mitzvah note and they were invited to place it on our Mordechai and Esther characters! This was a great connection for some, a visual of their Mitzvahs next to our smiling Jewish heros.

It was so exciting this week to see our friend Menachem Heidingsfeld proudly coming to school with his new Jewish uniform, his Yarlmuka and Tzitzis. He wanted to say his bracha next to Mordechai.

Mordechai and Esther moments were fun to watch. Yakov, returning Ben's bracelet. Chana, wanted to be dressed like Esther while cleaning the table.

Having fun in left over puddles!

Mini Meteorologists

After experiencing the rain and hail last week, the Mitzvah Mentchies meteorologists were excited to learn about how the weather works this week!

Everyone was so curious about why Morah Davina was wearing this silly hat!

It's an umbrella hat! After guessing what we were learning about by playing Hangman!

We came up with lots of different types of weather.

Moshe told us that in the morning, his Mommy checked the weather and it said that it would be cloudy outside, but not rainy. We were all curious to find out how the phone knew. Shmuel and Sholom guessed that there were special weather machines that told what the weather is.

We found out that Meteorologists are the special weather scientists who know how to predict the weather. We watched a cool video that told us all about it.

Sometimes even with the special tools Meteorologists use they can be wrong.

Hashem is really the true meteorologist!

We invited different friends to take turns being the meteorologist in our class.

Two things that can make weather stronger or weaker are wind and water. 

We used the wind from our mouths to blow some beautiful water colors.

Pre-k conducted some research into seeing which things can blow in the wind.

Recording our data.

Water is a really important part of weather. Any kind of water that falls from the sky is called precipitation. Snow, heat, hail, drizzle are all kinds of precipitation, but how does the water get up to the clouds? We read a super fun book called The Magic School Bus that showed us the process.

When the sun warms the water, it turns into gas and goes up the the clouds, that's called evaporation.

then when it gets colder it turns back into a liquid, once the cloud gets too heavy, it starts to rain! Then the cycle repeats.

Water is so important! We need water in order to survive, 

Mendel S. shared with us that he learned, "That water for people is like gas for a car!" 

But most of the water on earth is salty, people can't drink salt water to survive, we need freshwater.

Having a salt vs. freshwater taste test.

friends roleplaying a hot summer beach scene.

Everyone brought in different weather gear from home. We tested our memory by removing one and seeing if we could figure out which was missing.

creating rainbows with different manipulatives and cloud dough.

Weather word searches and coloring were challenging for both levels in our classroom!

Writing the room and weather go fish!

Thank you Morah Malka for sending us some of your beautiful flowers!

Happy 5th Birthday Esther!

Keep learning and growing!

 

A Tree is Just Like Me!

 

This week our Mitzvah Mentchies scholars delved into Tu Bishvat, and what it's all about.

We learned that Tu Bishvat is the Rosh Hashana for the trees. Hashem decides how they are going to grow and how much fruit they will have. 

Why do we celebrate the trees, why not other animals or the sun or moon?

Because people are compared to trees. Just like I am always growing, so is a tree. It changes through the seasons, and so do people!

Creating winter trees in snow.

                    

  My fruit and leaves are the Torah and Mitzvos that I learn and do!

Sholom holds Mendel's grass head open for the dirt.

Friends working together to build a tree.

 

This Playdough STEAM invitation got our curious scientists to work.

Using different materials to try to build a tree.

 

We were so excited to attempt a long-term growing project in our classroom in honor of Tu Bshvat.

We can't wait to see our grass-heads starting to grow hair!

We learned that Tu Bishvat - means the 15th day of Shvat.

we learned that the numerical value of Tes and Vov equals 15. 

This is the earliest possible day that fruit trees in Israel start to flower.

We also eat the the special 7 fruits of Israel on Tu Bishvat.

 

Adding 9 and  6 to equal 15.

Playing a fun humming game to practice letter recognition in words.

 

Our Fun Tu'Bishvat party! Making a tree out of chocolate!

Working on our art project!

Of course, we had to continue learning about the parsha as well!

Figuring out the name of this weeks parsha with some Aleph-Beis Hangman

 

Paroh chased after the Jewish people until they came to the sea!

The Jewish people were scared but one man walked into the water, Hashem made a miracle and the water turned into tunnels for Bnei Yisroel to walk through!

               

Hashem told Moshe to hit a rock, and water came out for fresh water in the desert. The mun was an amazing food that Hashem provided for the Jewish people.  It fell every day fresh and could taste like anything. It had the perfect amount of vitamins and nutrients with nothing extra, so the Jewish people never had to go to the bathroom. 

An Ahavas Yisroel Umbrella! We learned the "pretzel sound" Tzadik "tz" in Capit

 and our whole class got to enjoy some hot pretzels!