There are many things going on that you don't necessarily get to see...

  

Here are a few things that we've been working on since we got back from Winter Break:

1. Using the theme of Helping Hands,  We started by asking the children to help us with a variety of tasks. Then we brainstormed the jobs that need to be done. We have: a Gardener, Assistant Snack Helper, Table Set-up Helper, Clean up Time Keeper, Keeper of the Materials (sharpens pencils, throws away old markers,etc.), Table Cleaners (2), and the Librarian.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             We find that Helping Hands has helped the children:  

• understand what it means to have a job or responsibility
• feel empowered through helping with real tasks 
• experience the good feelings that come from helping each othe (sometimes they help one another without being asked)
• get gain experience trying new things that they might not ordinarily choose to do

2. A Sign-up List: we started signing-up for one-person-at-a-time activities (ex: painting at the easel, getting the favorite job, etc.) This way they see their names on the list and how many children are ahead of them. Many children can now read the names of every other student in the class! 

3. Encouraging Greater Independence and Self-Help skills:

For example: The children help choose the colors for the easel. 

They pour the paint into the paint cups and pick the size of the brushes that they would like to use. 

 During snack time: they all pour their own water from a measuring cup or small pitcher. 

 3.  The Writing Center
Each week new things are added to the Writing Center. Now the children get to write with  thin markers, pencils, colored pencils and crayons, They also use: scotch tape, masking tape, a stapler (with supervision), scissors, envelopes, clipboards and a huge collection of stamps and inkpads.  A favorite job is sharpening pencils. They love to use different types, sizes, colors and textures of of paper.

Parents: If you have access to any extra or left over paper (any size or type), card stock, envelopes, greeting cards, food magazines, etc. PLEASE bring them in. They will be put to good use! 



Yesterday, they printed with a cucumber, a sponge and various other found objects.

 An observation: 
We are seeing the children enact scenes that are inside and outside of the Home and Family Living Center. In this photo, they were pretending that they were on a train to New York City. Hilary was the train's engineer and Peretz was the conductor.  

We had a fun, relaxed day today:  the children "signed up" for a turn painting at the easel. They now can understand the idea of a list. They see how many others are before them on the list. They loved printing in the Writing Center using all sorts of new objects such plastic letters, marker tops, a cucumber, a bottle top and sponges. The results were beautiful. (Photo to follow).

Also, we had time for some dramatic play with the Dr.giving an exam with a stethoscope. 

At our Morning Meeting, we reviewed the picture-word schedule for the day and recalled what we did for the first hour of the school day. The children realized that it was time to go outside on the playground or for a walk. Several friends went to see the weather situation.

After checking it out, they were able to give lots of good reasons 

why it wasn't such a good idea to play outside.

Mendel, who was determined to go, gave convincing answers to each concern listed by the others. Unfortunately, he was the only one wearing rain boots! 

Instead of going outside, we played with the cars in the lobby. They loved getting to ride around. It wasn't so easy to take turns and share the fastest 

and coolest vehicles but they figured it out. We also got to play with the parachute.

Shabbat Shalom; Good Shabbos!

Today, the children's play centered around two basic themes.
1) Creating beautiful paintings at the easel. The easel affords the opportunity to make big strokes and paint things on a larger scale. Many enjoy the experience of easel painting so we've added it in for three days a week. 

What are they doing?
It is typical of this age to experiment with the paint and the brushes without having a thought towards creating a specific thing. They are just enjoying the experience of figuring out how to use and manipulate the materials.  Others in the class are beginning to go beyond the initial experimentation stage into the next phase of trying to represent something.  This can be painting an actual thing such as a house or it can be painting as a way to represent an idea, For example, Peretz described that he was "making patterns with the different colors and rows; blue, orange, red...." He was experimenting with a goal in mind.


2) The second theme was one of creating a family scenario preparing a meal and eating it together.  We had two separate family groups going on. One group was in the home living area of the room and another group was on the rug where the family was having a picnic. 

At some point everyone was involved with one family or the other. It was fun to see them assign themselves and others roles. They were deeply involved in this play and many were sad when they were asked to clean up and move on with the day.

 

We celebrated the arrival of Shabbat.  

We pretended that it was night time and the sun was going down.

We lit the candles and wished one another a Shabbat Shalom or a Good Shabbos! 

A Wonderful day!

We started the day with the art center quickly becoming the place to be

as the children mixed colors. We mixed them by adding white to the basic colors. 

They were surprised to find out that pink was really a mixture of red and white. 

This activity went on for a long time.

We had snack -- they children were all very hungry!  Many thanks to Nechama Lieba's family for bringing in delicious fruit for snack!

Later we went on a Bearhunt which was very exciting now that we have our very own cave! Two brave girls volunteered to be the bears waiting inside the cave for us to arrive.

We went outside and played happily on the playground. We all decided to go for a walk since it was such a great day. On the way back, we met a beautiful, friendly dog on the walk named Kiki. 

The day went so quickly as we had several fun adventures.

Our 3's AND 4's class (two children were not in the photo..)

Our class -- one child reminded me today that we are not the Three's class because he was now four! So we are officially the 3s and 4s class!

We started the day by making portraits of ourselves or in some cases, our families. The children have definitely grown in their fine motor skills and their ability to draw and actually represent people, things or events.  Each child made a portrait which we hope to share at your child's Parent Conference.

During morning meetings we make up different ways to greet one another as we go around the circle saying hello to each friend, (examples: saying "hello Dalya" with a wave or saying "Shalom" with a special hand signal, etc.).  Today Peretz made up a fun way to greet one another: putting thumbs in our ears, waving and saying..."hi!" This made us all laugh!

Another big event today was pretending that a large box in our classroom was a bear cave with growling bears and a few cubs inside. This type of imaginative play looks very simple, but actually, it is a sign of developing higher level abstract thinking through the ability to symbolize and stick with the group's social norms. 

 We have some very protective momma and papa bears!

In a quiet moment, Jacob was overheard telling the story of The Very Hungary Caterpillar  as he pointed to the pictures. 

Your children are all growing in leaps and bounds! It is a pleasure to get to see this unfolding.

TODAY'S HAPPENINGS...

The children were delighted to see their friends who weren't in school yesterday.  It is surprising how much they track one another's attendance! Today someone said, "where is Jacob?" Another child piped up and said, "he doesn't come today."

  

Everyone was happpy to welcome back Dalya, Remy, Chayla and Peretz.  They all "sign in."

During CENTERS the children were drawn to different areas.

Remy and Dayla experimented with a gooey mixture to create a snowy scene.

Chayla adds plastic sparkle to the mix.

Many friends were drawn to tracing shapes from plastic stencils.

 We introduced the hexagon to the collection. 

                           Sara used magna-tiles to make a dog house for the classroom's puppy.

The most exciting part of the day was finding tiny worms on the playground

 that we brought back into the classroom for closer inspection. 

Elet observed from a distance at first but later on, he became very curious about the worms and how they were doing in their indoor home. 

 Despite how busy we are with other things, we plan to take on a brief investigation of the worms that we found. We will release them in a day or two after some careful observation and gathering more information.