There has bee non-stop activity at The Gan!

It has been a great week back to school!

After greeting each other with much excitement and joy,

the children quickly became involved in the classroom activities.

Playtime was active and enjoyable.

There were squeals of delight as we entered our back yard and saw that the flower bulbs we had planted had opened up giving us a delightful gift!

And it turns out that all our seeds needed was the SUN!

We can see the tiny sprouting leaves and stems.

It appears the children have made that leap which happens in every class around spring, ideas and concepts begin to "click" and the children can't help but put their knowledge to use.

When the children choose the Movable Alphabet, it is important to straighten the letters.

Now that they are cleaned up, the children can begin to build words.

Numeral recognition and counting have made an impressive stride forward, which opens up the opportunity for addition, subtraction and multiplication in the coming weeks.

We will begin learning about the 5 Senses.

We are starting with Sight.

We use our eyes to see the world around us, and it is a colorful world.

The children are using their eyes to discover what occurs when they mix colors.

We made special glasses for an "I Spy" hunt in the classroom

Flowers and Frogs and Matzah!

We have been learning about frogs this week.

Morah Katie: What is the first stage of a frogs's life?

Tori: They hatch from eggs.

Levi: Then they grow a tail and are tadpoles.

Morah Katie: Do they stay that way?

Tori: No, it disappears.

Morah Katie: What disappears?

Levi: The tail.

Morah Katie: So the tail disappears and then it's a frog?

Levi: It grows legs as the tail shrinks.

Tori: When it's all gone then it's a frog.

Ask your child to sing with you:

"One morning when King Pharaoh awoke in his bed

There were frogs on his head and frogs in his bed

Frogs on his nose and frogs on his toes

Frogs here, Frogs there, Frogs were jumping everywhere!"

We are finishing up our preparation for Passover.

We used different puppets and pictures to sing

"The Ma Nishtana"

Four Questions;

"Ma Nishtana Halayla Hazeh Mikol Halailot?"

Why is this night so different from all other night?

On all the nights of the year, we don't dip our food,

But on this night, but on this night, we dip twice.

On all the nights of the year we eat bread or matzah,

But on this night, but on this night we eat only Matzah.

We are learning the important differences between challah and matzah. We learned of how simple the recipe for matzah is; that the flour and water were all the Jewish people had to make bread, and when they rushed out of Egypt there was no time for their dough to rise.

We prepared Charoset, the apple and nut mixture on the Seder plate.

We ate sweet carrots to compare it with the taste of the bitter maror.

The bitter taste of the Maror reminded us of the bitter suffering of the Jews in Egypt.

Morah Tzive: Who would like to taste our bitter maror?

Kian: I will taste it.

Morah Tzivie: Does it taste sweet like the carrot? or bitter?

Kian: Bitter.

At the end of our tasting, Daniel stated the seder dinner very clearly:

Lots of interesting foods!

Sing this song with your children: (tune of Mary had a little lamb)

Passover is a holiday, a holiday, a holiday

Passover is a holiday, a very special day

On Passover we eat crunchy matzah,

crunchy matzah, crunchy matzah

On Passover we eat crunchy matzah to remember the slaves in Egypt.

The Passover meal is called a Seder,

called a Seder, called a Seder.

The Passover meal is called a Seder, with lots of interesting foods.

At the Seder we drink four cups of wine,

four cups of wine, four cups of wine

At the Seder we drink four cups of wine to celebrate that we are free!

We began to plant some flowers for our outside playground.

We talked about the roots, stems and leaves and made guesses as to what type of flowers we will see bloom.