News for week of 9-24-07

Chag Sameach wishing you a wonderful Sukkot! We celebrated this week preparing for Sukkot, on Monday, during our class meeting the kids decided we needed to build our own sukkah…and we did. We went through the planning, moving, moving again, building and rebuilding; all of those details involved in a project. They knew immediately we needed “Bob the Builder” one of our campus maintenance personnel, and he was on the spot helping with the “structural engineering”, it was really such a wonderful thing to be a part of their collaboration and work. The outcome was a wonderful sukkah in the school courtyard. The kids added schach by finding branches and leaves around campus, and brought from home (as you know). It was also so great to see the pride they took in the finished product, we’re going to invite children from the preschool next week to come have snack with us, and of course you’re all welcome as well!
On Tuesday we combined Hebrew and Math time to make vegetable soup. The discussion started with Leah asking why we use fresh vegetables during Sukkot, through this they learned more about Sukkot and the harvest. We talked about using fresh foods and predicted some outcomes. They cleaned, cut, and yes they did EAT the vegetables, and we have the pictures to prove it. Some even asked for more! I know for some this must be an “away from home” phenomenon, but it was great. There was so much discussion that came from this process also, like discovering that white potatoes are easier to cut than sweet potatoes.
We did a lot of writing this week documenting our work and necessary steps. We used “First, then, next, last” to explain the steps in our projects. These are great to also use when reading to your child at home, have them recreate the story and tell you the order of events. It’s great comprehension work!
We worked on learning our home addresses to the “Muffin Man” tune, the kids liked the music and it helped them remember. We talked briefly about safety and the importance of knowing your home address. Ask them to sing you the tune and rehearse with them, we’ll continue singing the song in class also, so everyone will know their home address!
We had tribes again on Wednesday and it went wonderfully! The tribes all built paper chains for the school sukkah.