Winter is arriving early at The Gan.

Morah Katie: What type of a scene shall we create for our winter mural?

Ben: Snowy

Levi: Maybe a gray sun?

Morah Katie: What should the trees look like?

Dena: No leaves.

We began learning about Israel, long long ago, before there were cars or grocery stores.

Morah Tzive explained that in Israel long ago some people lived in buildings close to each other in cities, some people lived on farms like our friend Shalom's family.

There were vineyards with grapes to make wine and grape juice for Shabbat.

There were many fruit trees: apple trees, orange trees and olive trees.

Morah Tzivie showed us pictures of Beit HaMikdash.

Morah Tzivie described how people would travel to the holy temple to meet with friends to sing, pray and celebrate.

We are using the pictures Morah Tzive showed us to inspire us to build a temple with the blocks.

Morah Tzivie told us about the special jobs the Kohen did. They put out the fresh challah, they had the privilege of keeping the temple clean and beautiful.

The Kohen also had the special job of lighting the menorah. It is a very special mitzvah to light the menorah. But it wasn't a menorah that would fit on a shelf, it was as big and high as the wall of our classroom!

Morah Tzive explained how the menorah the Kohen would light did not hold candles

but was filled with oil!

Oil that was pressed from olives. In ancient Israel people would ride horses to olive groves, collect olives and press the oil from them.

Rabbi showed us how an olive press is used to collect the oil.

Olives get put in the oil press

The crank is turned

Pretty hard work, also very exciting!

What is that we see?

OIL!!!

The oil is put in the menorah and lit!

We experimented to see how long the small container of oil would stay lit.

It was lit before snack time

and was done burning during class time before lunch!

We are putting candles in menorahs; our menorahs' fit on our shelves.

We experimented with water and oil.

We have discovered that no matter how little, or how much oil is added to water, the two liquids will not mix!

Red water and blue water create purple water; red water and yellow water create orange water; but oil and purple water or oil and orange water will not mix.

The oil slides off the water!! Sometimes it makes a shell over the water!

Even when we mix the oil and water:

Shalom: It won't stay together. It slides away.

Kian: It won't mix!
We used play dough to create water molecules and chains of hydrocarbons (oil) which helped us to see that water is composed of very "excited" charged molecules, while the oil is hydrogen, carbon and oxygen assembled into a "relaxed" non charged chain.

(oxygen=purple hydrogen=blue carbon=pink)

We played Water/Oil, I asked the kids to behave as if they were a water molecule or an oil chain.

Be water: children jumping (charged water molecules)

Be oil: children moving in slow motion in a line (non charged hydrocarbon chain)