Moments from today...

Over the past two days Shirel and I have noticed a significant shift in the children's level of play and cooperation. They are building more complex structures such as a Zoo (Mendel and Elet), a Bird's house (Sara), a Butterfly's house (Sara), and a pyramid (Nechama Leiba). The other children contributed to building these structures as well. Today Hilary and some friends created a train using many different sized boxes and masking tape. 

Their ability to sustain their play, solve little problems without adult help and listen to one another is at a new level. Today Nechama Leiba asked that I let her do her job (sharpening the pencils) without helping or watching her. "Morah Anne, you don't have to watch me, I really know how to do this now!" And she did. In fact, she taught Jacob how the new battery operated sharpener worked.

 Also a new game has developed. When Shirel steps out of the classroom for a minute, all of the children hide in the rug area under a large sheet. It is so funny to watch them try to hold still and not make noise! Morah Shirel asks me "where are the children?"  When she walks in. When she picks up the sheet,  they shriek with laughter. We've done this three times now and they still love the surprise! 

                    Of course, we continue to play out different aspects of the Pesach story. 
Today we compared the texture and other differences between challah and .matzah We didn't eat the matzah so that it would be special when Pesach arrived. They really seem to see and understand the differences. They are very excited for Pesach to arrive!

On Monday we had a visitor who led us in a very fun dance/drama activity.  

 

The children used their imaginations and pretended to be different animals.

They moved in different ways with and without musical instruments.

They tried things that they had not done before and they were proud of themselves!

A PESACH UPDATE:

So far our study of Pesach has included:

• listening to the story with great attention
• acting out the story.... several times with rotating roles 
• reading many books from the library and from our homes.(many thanks to the parents who lent us your books, pictures, cards, recipes, seder plates and puzzles!)
• looking at different charoset recipes and noticing the differences. 
• making charoset/charoses ourselves and eating it for snack.  
• seeing pictures of Egypt
• learning new songs and re-learned old ones
• working on making a Haggadah

Today the children began re-telling the Pesach story to us in their own words. We wrote down their thoughts and took pictures.  We acted out some their favorite highlights.. 

 Other happenings:

Lot of play in the block area.... they started out making large pyramids and then there was lots of designing with triangles,

 Hilary made this beautiful design.

After lunch, Morah Shirel made some new, purple playdough with the children.

Pretend, experience and learn..

An important part of Pesach is to experience the exodus as though 

it was happening to us personally. 

When young children play pretend games they are trying on different roles. This type of play is seen as an essential way that children develop empathy, 

social language and cognitive flexibility. 

Today, we took turns pretending to be different characters from the Pesach story. We were all Jewish  people who experienced being slaves...

Mendel and Chayla took turns taking on the role of King Pharoah.

            

 It all started when the Jewish slaves were woken up very early to 

work very hard for Pharoah, the ruler of Egypt. 

Without stopping for breakfast they loaded up their backpacks with heavy blocks and took off for a hard day's work at Pharoah's building sites.

                         

       

 
 It was very hard work and they became tired!                                        
They became very hungry and thirsty.......

(After having a snack we resumed playing -- the children were totally absorbed).

We started with Yoheved, (Sara) and Miriam (Nechama Leiba ) taking baby Moshe to the river in a basket! They didn't want him to grow up to be a slave. Pharoah was a very mean man!

Our story will continue tomorrow....stay tuned!

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Ready or Not, Spring is Here and Pesach is around the corner!

We began talking about the holiday of Pesach/Passover.  In order to set the context, we talked about today being the first day of Spring. Passover always occurs in the Spring (at least in Maryland and in Israel!) Spring symbolizes new life and the continuity of life. 

We went outside and noticed new buds on the trees. We saw early blooming flowers already out in full color, We made a chart identifying some of the differences between winter and spring. 

SPRING PAINTINGS

Sara and Elet were engrossed in their work.

The children helped us mix the paints to create lighter colors.  They saw that the shade of blue depended on the amount of white paint that we added. 

We had blue, lighter blue and the lightest blue. 

Commenting on their Spring paintings, Nechama Leiba said: 

"It's A Butterfly with the Queen."

Hilary made a "Spring Design". 

Chayla said: "I'm making A Sunshine, A Big One."

 Mendel was proud of his work and said: "I've worked on this for a long time."  Morah Shirel and I have also noticed a significant change in the children's level of focus and attention.

 Peretz's comment on his painting: 

                    "a Person with the Sun Shining Through Him -- A Spring  Person."

READING ALOUD

 During Rest Time the children choose a book to read on their own. We often hear the children "reading" aloud based on the pictures and their excellent memories. 

              Many children are now aware that letters make words and that the words tell the                                     story. This is a huge step in literacy development. 

Fun over the past few days.... Art and More!

Despite the cold, we have gone out every day -- sometimes we stay out for only 5 minutes, while other days they children love the freedom of running, playing and pretending together.

 Time for Self Portraits. The children are beginning to understand that our faces are made up of different shapes. "My eye is like a funny circle"

 Chayla explores with using a ruler to make straight lines. Gaining control is very exciting!

We are recalling our process of the TreesUnit through our interactive documentation board.

The children want to re-experience making the swirly shapes on gold paper. Sara makes an entire Klimt tree with a silver marker on gold paper.

Today, we sat in a circle holding hands - Sara wanted to be in the middle of the circle. 

What can we do for exercise on these freezing days?

 Play with cars indoors,

Figure out new and funny ways to go down the slide one inch at a time (only with a Morah helping!)

Spraying the snow with watercolors to make fantastic color combinations.

Hanging out with friends

Exploring and playing games in the Aftercare room. We played Dominos the "real way"

Getting Ready for Purim!

We baked Hamantashen with Morah Shirel......this included: measuring, mixing,
cutting circles and forming the (mostly) triangular shaped treats. We used parve chocolate chips instead of fruit filling!

We also used our artistic skills to make beautiful groggers..... 

Throughout Center time when we worked on making groggers and hamentashen Elet, Remy and Mendel kept returning to their elaborate train 

set up using all of the tracks and the trains. 

They figured out how to share the materials 

and build with very little adult help.