Chag Sameach!! We started off the week so excited that Hanukkah is here! The kids were asking if we get out early though, and wondering why we have school on Hanukkah…we didn’t have any answers they liked.
Our letter this week is “Hh” and it fit perfectly for our first week of Hanukkah. I’m trying to rearrange the letters of the week to fit better with what is going on in the kid’s lives. I think it makes it much more meaningful to them and they are able to internalize the meaning because they can transfer the letters to so many things in their lives outside of school. For example, the letter “P” in the curriculum is supposed to be the week we get back from winter break. I plan to move it to Pesach along with “Gg” and “Ff”. What a better way to reinforce the learning of a letter than to be involved with it in every aspect of your life, Pesach, green and frogs.
Centers-
Science-the kids worked on a “sink/float” experiment. They really enjoyed the idea of making estimates and checking their hypothesis.
ABC-they loved a game called “Creepy Cave”. It reinforces beginning consonant words with color matching. The game pieces are creepy monsters which made it even more fun.
Writing-the children wrote in their “This is” books, once again, reinforcing initial consonant knowledge.
Math-the kids wrote numbers in “salt boxes”
Overhead-we continued working with our word families
Pocket Chart-they sorted pictures based on beginning sounds and matched the words with pictures
Writing we worked on a Hanukkah card for our families. It was lots of detailed folding and following directions. It was a tough activity, but the kids were so proud of the product and the fact that they actually folded paper to make a house!
In Math we worked on money and started counting backwards. Counting backwards seems simple, but when you take a row of objects and cover an amount, you would be surprised to see how hard the concept is. When I present information and ask for input, I always follow-up with asking, “why”. Sometimes a good guess can fool us into thinking they fully understand the concept at hand, when you go deeper and ask them how they got to that conclusion, it’s very interesting. It really shows me what I need to teach more, when asking your child a question, follow it up with, “why”, and let the learning begin. The kids could understand taking objects away in a group up to 10, but many couldn’t answer how they got to the number they ended-up with. That let’s me know, some of them don’t know they are actually counting backwards. Some were counting the remaining objects to get the answer. Some counted backwards on their fingers, it was a good start!

Please continue to work with your child on the sight words, you can now add the second page if they have the first page memorized. These words should come to them immediately or they still need to work on them.
This is part of our “whole language” approach to reading. Some words are known by sight only, they don’t follow the rules of “sounding it out”, some of the words that can be sounded out are taught phonetically. The sight words are just as important as learning the phonetic words, please continue to reinforce this with your kinder, you will see a real difference in their reading.
When you’re reading a book at home, ask them to find a word they know: the, and, or like, in the reading. You will be surprised how much pride the have in themselves, we want to give them as many successes as possible.
Your student will be coming home with paper books to keep. These books are leveled and work on specific skills as you may have seen from the “Dan the tan Man” book. We’re really working on word families and these books reinforce everything they are seeing in other parts of the classroom. You can keep them in a basket by their bed and they can read them over and over again. I know in the past week or two I have seen tremendous progress in their reading with me, let me know if you have seen any changes. I actually got goosebumps the other morning reading with them, it was a real “lightbulb” moment for several of the students, and I was so proud of their progress. I can tell the learning is coming together and they are connecting all of the skills. The best part for me is that they are having fun while learning, and I think that because we try to present the skills in a fun way that is connected to happy emotions, they are really starting to take-off!
Next week we will work with the letter “Vv” and have more Hanukkah plans as well.
Hebrew Circle:
This week we immersed ourselves in Hanukkah activities. We learned the Hanukkah story, talked about the characters and what role they had in the story. The children learned the Hebrew letters on the sevivon (dreidel) and how to play the game. They sang songs and danced to the point that if we just said the word sevivon it was like a magic trigger to start them singing. We played lots of games, made sufganiyyot (doughnuts) and levivot (potato latkes) and decorated the room to get that Hanukah feeling. The children are so excited about the holiday that I am afraid eight days might not be enough.
The letter for this week was “Yud” but now they also know “Nun” and “Shin” thanks to the sevivon.
Hanukkah vocabulary:
· Chanukiyah – menorah
· sevivon – dreidel
· ner – candle
· kad – jug (the oil jug)
· Sufganiyyot – doughnuts
· levivah - latke
Yud vocabulary:
· Yeled –boy
· yaldah –girl
· yeladim – children
· yad – hand
· yadayim – hands
· Yareach – moon.

Happy Hanukkah!
Leah