News for the week of 3-10-08

We had a great week planning for Purim and experiencing all the great things that come with Adar and spring. The foggy day on Tuesday really gave us some great brainstorming ideas. We first took a walk through the fog and let them experience it first-hand. They thought it was so cool! The kids had great questions and comments about the fog, we then used their curiosity to create some beautiful art and writing. I asked them to tell me how they would “represent” fog if they were doing artwork based on it. They told me all the materials they needed, which included tissues, paper, paint, fabric, and “see-through stuff”.
I gathered all the materials and brought them back and they quickly got to work. I told them part of creating something is thinking about it first. What do you want your final project to portray? It was wonderful to watch, the got their materials and made a plan and then finally glued the materials to the boards. I then asked them open-ended questions about their work and attached their quotes to the work. It was an amazing process and really was so meaningful to them, because it was something they experienced first hand. We then wrote about it and they got so creative! It is so nice to have the time to dedicate to this kind of work. I am able to incorporate all of the Kindergarten skills while letting them work on something personal to them.
The kids wrote wonderfully about Purim and what it means to them, they’re starting to make stories with multiple sentences. They then drew pictures about their one favorite part, and we graphed them. They decided how to group the pictures in order to graph them.
We continued with centers that focused on skills such as, time, opposites, writing sentences, story order and creating sentences with separate words. The kids worked hard and enjoyed our added Purim fun too, making hamentashen, creating masks and decorating our room!

With the season’s starting to change and our spring unit starting, I started talking to the kids about sun safety this week. We have outside time EVERYDAY unless it’s raining. We talked a little about how to be safe in the sun and warm weather. One way is to wear a hat, not only to keep you from getting sunburn, but to keep your skin safe and to keep your body cooler. Please send a sun hat with your child to wear outside. Our playground is shaded but they’re not always under the canopies. It’s important to get them into the habit of practicing sun safety early!!

Dear parents,
This week we immersed ourselves in Purim. I told the story with the help of my Purim spoon puppets. The heroine, beautiful queen Ester fighting to save her people against mean and wicked man, a silly king and a wise Jewish uncle all living in a royal palace… Are these pieces of fairy tale? The children were fascinated and brain stormed ideas how to help queen Ester to solve the problem since she was not allowed to go before the king unless she was asked to. I liked Gabi’s idea, she said that Ester should create a problem so the king will come to her.
We pretended to be kings and queens, sang songs, played games with Purim symbols learned the movement for the song La kovah sheli shalosh pinot (my hat has three corners) and danced the dance of Latzan Katan (little clown). The children came up with the movements for this dance so ask them to show it to you.
The children are preparing little puppet theatre so they could act out their own Purim story.

Vocabulary

Queen - Malkah
King - Melech
Mask- masechah
Grogger- (noisemaker) Rahshan
Gift basket – Mishloach manot
Hamantashan—Ozen Haman.

Have a great weekend
Morah Leah

News for week of March 3rd—

First, we want to thank you for the conferences. I hope you all know how much Leah and I care for your children and how much it has meant for us to be able to be a part of their lives this year. We've watched them mature and grow in so many ways and we feel truly blessed to be part of it. We're so excited to see what is to come through the end of the year and can't wait for the adventure to continue.

For a week with a day off, we sure were busy! We started the week celebrating Michael’s birthday with cupcakes they frosted themselves. We worked at centers this week, changing some and keeping some that the kids seemed to really like. We’re getting ready to add new centers for next week in preparation for Purim! Should be a week filled with fun!

We will dress in costume for Purim, Friday, March 21st, which is a half-day.

We finally finished our silly newsletter, the kids were very proud of their paper and enjoyed hearing the stories they made-up. They chose everything, from the layout of the paper to the collaboration of the stories. Their writing has come so far this year, we’re so proud of their growth. They seem to really enjoy writing these days, the light bulb has definitely turned on!

In math this week I combined journaling with graphing. We took our shoes off and put them in the middle of the carpet, then they got their journals and “noted” their observations about the shoes. We got so much writing from just letting them chart their thoughts. We then took their information and made a graph with the results. The next morning we taped-off the floor and graphed our shoes again to see if there were differences in the information from one day to the next.
We continue to work with money and are connecting the combinations of the coins with a puzzle I introduced this week. For example, they are starting to understand that a nickel is made of 5 pennies and a dime is 2 nickels. To continue our work on time we charted the time and weather throughout the day, it was particularly interesting Thursday and it changed from rain to snow and the temperature dropped about every 15 minutes--they loved it!!
Friday was lots of fun and we watched “American Legends”, which is from our generation. It’s narrated by James Earl Jones and shows little stories about American Legends; John Henry, Johnny Appleseed, Babe and his Blue Ox, Paul Bunyan, and Kasey Jones.

We’re going to start our Spring unit next week and all the things that go along with the season.