myGanBlog: What is round, flat and crunchy?

A look at this week:

That's right...matzah!

This week we focused our learning on matzah and numbers. We continued to work on our number books. Many children have almost finished their books that talk about the numbers involved with Pesach. And some still have a ways to go. Hopefully they will finish these next week! While working so hard on these and combining math and writing together we also had lots of other exciting activities going on this week! In the home living area the children became bakers by sticking their hands into a bucket of flour and using different measuring cups and spoons to work on the concept of 1, 1/2, and 1/4. They also were able to put paper matzahs into our own cardboard box turned brick oven! Then the children could also take their paper matzahs over to the block area where they were building ovens. In the mean time, they also made matzah rubbings in art and played with playdough, transforming the playdough into matzah. As a group we made afikomen covers while we also talked about taking a whole piece of paper and folding it in 1/2. We also talked about 1/4 when we did this but we did not fold our paper again. After folding the paper in half, we hole punched it and the children used yarn to lace up the covers. On another day we traced paper plates and then cut them out, covered them in brown crayon and with things that are brown to make our own matzahs. We made three matzahs each as that is what we use during the Passover Sedar. On Wednesday we took a little walk over to the Chabad and tried to make our own matzahs. We focused on just adding flour and water together to make matzah instead of adding other ingredients, such as eggs and yeast. The children enjoyed rolling the matzah out and poking it with plastic forks.

Listening In:

It is always interesting to see or listen to what events in the children's lives enter their play. The children decided this week to play that they were riding (or swinging) to the hospital and going on bike rides to get medicine. This was influenced by a conversation by a child.

Of course it is always fun for me to see such great excitement come out of a learning activity that takes place in the classroom. I just loved listening to Miriam exclaim that she "did it!" every time she was able to write a number in her number book correctly!

Looking at next week:

We will be finishing up our unit on Pesach next week. We are going to focus on the sedar (the ritual meal that we have during Passover). We will be trying some of the special foods that we have at the sedar and talking about the sedar plate (and even making one out of a paper plate and writing the words on it). We are also going to be adding to our number books.

Special Reminder:

We are having our dedication ceremony on Sunday at 11:00. The children will be singing a couple of songs during this event. We hope to see you there!