myGanBlog: They are on our doorposts...

A look at this week:

We spent the week talking about the mezuzah and also houses. These two go hand in hand since we have mezuzot on our doorposts of our homes. The children enjoyed pretending to be the prayer inside the mezuzah by rolling their way to the rainforest/reading room for story!

We started the week out by making looking at a few mezuzot and talking about the differences. Then we used some home made clay to make our own. Later in the week we enjoyed decorating them. We also had the chance to take the words "mezuzah on the door" and make many other words out of the letters. In writing we took the letter of our first names and came up with three more words that also started with that letter. We also played memory with alphabet cards and had the chance to use the letter stamps in art to stamp and recognize letters and words!

The children really enjoyed coloring a class mezuzah, which can be found on one of the bulletin boards. I really enjoyed just writing down what I heard going on while they colored. It was interesting to see who was concentrating so hard on their coloring and did less talking, who was helping others, who was sharing and who was just joining into the conversations that were taking place!

In home living the children discussed that they could pretend to kiss the mezuzah (something we heard about in our main story this week as well as we say when we daven (pray) in the morning) as well as just play in home living as if they were in a house. In blocks the children tried to build houses and even figure out a way to demonstrate a mezuzah on the door!

For math this week we spent time rolling a die. The children then added windows and doors to match the number they rolled. We also put together some mezuzah puzzles.

Listening in to the conversation:

As mentioned, I really enjoyed listening to the children talk while they colored the class mezuzah. That conversation is on the bulletin board with the mezuzah they colored. However, my favorite comment that I heard this week was when Josh was coloring on his writing page. He called to me and said, "Morah Amanda. Look! I got my name!" He was pointing to his picture where there was an "o" drawn on his page. He was very proud of himself as he showed this to me!

Looking ahead at next week:

The next three weeks we are going to be studying different parts of the next holiday, Pesach or Passover.

Next week we are going to focus on the story of Pesach as well as numbers. We are going to be making a number book, building pyramids, talking about the ten plagues. Measuring with our feet and writing about the amount of people in our families!