Our letter of the week is "O". We have had an "accidental" number of the week, "8".

We discovered that an Octagon has 8 sides and Octopuses have 8 legs! Connections are everywhere!

At group time we said a chant about olives in an olive tree:

"Way up high in the olive tree I saw 5 fives smiling at me,

so I shook that tree as hard as I could!

Down came an olive! mm mmm good!"

We begin the chant at 5 and chant our way down to 0, I always ask the children,

"Where did the olives (or apples or cherries....) go?" and they respond "We ate them!"

We had olives for snack and they were a HUGE hit. As we ate our way through the container of olives, it was not lost on the children that we began with a lot and ended up with zero,

Morah Katie: Where did all the olives go?

The Children: We ate them!

For a child to refine his/her small motor control, they need to have a quiet and calm body.

Large, full body movements can assist this process.

This is one reason why movement is encouraged in the classroom, from balancing on a string of yarn to sweeping up scraps of paper.

Large, involved movement allows the child the opportunity to refine his/her gross motor and fine motor skills, as well as test and expand his/her capabilities.

Kian took out all the red and blue rods and created a maze.

The big movements of walking through the classroom with the rods reinforce his gross motor control. Walking slowly through the maze reinforces his balance and concentration

Levi and Daniel are exploring what happens when you add the red and blue rods together.

They collect and gather to add.

They record their answers.

The movement involved allows their active minds to stay engaged and challenged.

I would like to begin a sharing circle on thursdays. This provides the children a chance to share something unique and special to them. Each child will be given the opportunity to explain why the object is special; their friends will have an opportunity to ask questions.

Thank you for continuing to make a not e of the mitzvahs your child is doing at home, combined with the ones written about at school, our tree is delightfully pear heavy!

Have a pleasant weekend.