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!