What grows from the ground?

A look at this week:

The week started on Tuesday with a question about what Jewish holiday was coming up next. And when we got the answer of Tu B'shvat, I then asked what this holiday was all about and I was informed that it was the birthday of the trees! And this is how our conversation started as we talked about things that grow from the ground. Throughout the week we found out that items, such as the grass heads we made, start as seeds. They are planted in dirt and then need water and light to grow. Hopefully, over the next week or so our grass heads will grow their hair so we can give them a quick haircut and then they can be enjoyed at home!

On Tuesday the children enjoyed making special flower pots where they wrapped yarn onto the pots to help decorate them. Over the next week we will be making some flowers (and maybe planting some) to put into these pots! On Wednesday we introduced the seed activities. The children looked at five different seeds. We talked about their similarities and differences and then put them all together for the children to sort, which is an activity that continued throughout the week. We also had the chance to do a writing exercise about items that grow from the ground. In home living the children pretended to plant a garden and then used their grown vegetables in the kitchen to make food. And in blocks the children tried to build trees and gardens. In art we used tree stamps to make a tree mural for our world wall. Overall, we had a nice introduction to how things grow from the ground.

We also spent some time working on word/picture recognition. The children, as a group, took words and tried to match the words to the pictures. They had a lot of fun working on this.

What the children have been saying:

Once again, it is just so nice to hear when the children ask for others to sit next to them or when someone is hurt the children ask if they are ok. The nice thing is the answer is normally that the person is fine. Although there are times when the children do argue, they are really learning how to get along with each other and be nice to each other!

A look at next week:

We will be continuing to discuss ideas about Tu B'shvat. We will be doing more with dirt, the worms and plants. Next week we will also be reading the book, "Stone Soup." Then we will be writing our own class book about what to put into our pot to make our own stone soup. We also will be attempting to make stone soup as a class!

Decorating the cups to make grass heads

Grass heads are ready to grow

Flower pot decorating

Word work

More word work

Seed sorting

More seed sorting

Getting Ready for Shabbat

A Look at this Week:

We have had a lot of fun getting ready for Shabbat. This week's focus was Shabbat and the items that we use on our Sabbath tables. We did a little writing where we had to fill in the blank to the song, "Put some _____ in the pot. Stir it up, nice and hot...." We made a book about this! We also made our very own song and blessing books and wrote on the inside covers of these as well. For math this week we had to count the seeds on the challot and then match each seeded challah to the challah with the same number on it. For science the children investigated ideas behind volume. They did water play and used different containers to fill and empty. In the home living area the children pretended it was Shabbat. They either got ready for Shabbat dinner or pretended to be enjoying the dinner. In the block area the children became very creative as they tried to build kiddush cups, Shabbat candlesticks and even challah. Everyday this week we had a new art project as well. We started with making Kiddush cups; then we made our song books; the next day we made a candlestick; then we made challah covers and on Friday we decorated the Shabbat boxes to keep our items in!

The kids will all finish their Shabbat boxes at some point next week. YOU ARE ALL (including those who do not regularly attend on Fridays) INVITED to join our class on Friday morning from 10:15-11:15 AM. We will have a "mock Shabbat" and the kids will get to use (and show off) their Shabbat items. Tia (our Kindermusic instructor) will be here as well during that hour.

The conversations that take place in our class:

This week was a very special week for the children of The Gan. We were able to welcome a new friend to the class, Tyrus! It was very nice to hear the children welcome him. Many times I overheard, "Tyrus, come sit next to me." Or other times I head the children say, "Here Tyrus, I will show you!" "Come play with me Tyrus." It was very nice.

And just to show how caring our children really are they were all very concerned about and kept asking where our friend Noah was. They all hope he is feeling much better!

Looking Ahead:

Next week is a short week. We will be closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Day. When we come back we are going to get our hands into a lot of planting, seed exploration (and even some soil and worms:). Tu B'shvat (celebrated on the Jewish calendar as "The New Year for Trees" when plants and trees start blooming in Israel, is coming up soon, and our class will be ready and full of tree and plant knowledge. We will be doing a number of activities from seed sorting to stamping with fruit and vegetables!

Song book cover decorating

Challah seed counting

Coloring Challah Covers

Candle stick making

Mussie's Shabbat candles and kiddush cup

Fingerprinting our pretend tablecloth

Ready for Shabbat!

Using playdough to make challot

Making Kiddush cups

As a special addition, I have included a short video from our Music class that we have been having during our Shabbat party.

Winter Break is over and we are back!

A look at this week:

We jumped right into learning when we returned from winter break! This week we started by pretending to get on an airplane and taking a trip to Israel. In home living we dressed up and got ready for our trip. Then once we arrived in Israel we visited many places. First we exchanged our money (by doing coin rubbings for math). Then, with the book about Sammy Spider going to Israel as our guide, we followed his trip and "visited" different places in Israel. Please read our discussion below to see exactly how the activities fit into our trip as we discussed this after having a few days of doing the different activities. In art we sponge painted bricks onto paper in the block area we built the Western Wall. For writing this week we wrote letters to Hashem and then added them to our wall. We also filled in the blank to "I am going on a trip to Israel. And in my suitcase I packed ________." The children rolled a letter die to get a letter and had to come up with an item to pack that started with that letter. In science we did a special experiement with water and salt. And we even had a chance to make and try humus!

Oh...we also took the chance with the new year starting to measure everyone again so we can see how many apples tall and inches tall each child measures at as well as how many apples and inches each child grew so far this school year!

Talking about the week (in review):
Morah Amanda: Let's talk about our wall again. Tell me what Sammy Spider felt when he went to visit the Western Wall.

Lizzy: The paper.

Morah Amanda: He didn't feel the paper. What did he feel first?

Lizzy: The bricks.

Morah Amanda: He felt the bricks first. And the bricks were...?

Lizzy: Hard

Morah Amanda: They were hard and...?

Mussie: Rough!

Morah Amanda: And then he was crawling around inbetween the bricks and he felt what?

Mussie: Paper?

Morah Amanda: Yes, there was paper but he doesn't talk about the paper. He found some?

Lizzy: Leaves!

Morah Amanda: He found some leaves and some?

Mussie: Grass.

Noah: Trees.

Morah Amanda: Not trees, they don't grow out of a wall. How about some weeds? This wall is so old that plants are growing through it? How do these all feel?

Mussie: Soft!

Morah Amanda: Now, in the story Sammy Spider and Josh and his family went to a kibbutz. Does anyone remember what a kibbutz is?

Levi: (looking at page in book) A big giant watermelon!

Morah Amanda: There is a big giant watermelon. Does anyone remember what a kibbutz is? A kibbutz is a place where many families live together and work on the land. And Josh's family decided to eat together. What did Sammy Spider get to taste?

Mussie: pickles.

Morah Amanda: And how did the pickles taste to him?

Class: sour

Morah Amanda: Sour. That is one of our other sense, taste. What else did he have?

Mussie: Challah

Morah Amanda: Not Challah but Halvah. It is a dessert, how do you think it would taste?

Avery: Good!

Mussie: Yummy. Sweet!

Morah Amanda: What else did he have?

Mussie: Olives.

Morah Amanda: He had olives. How did they taste?

Noah: Sour

Morah Amanda: Not sour

Mussie: Sweet.

Morah Amanda: Not sweet

Miriam: Good!

Mussie: Salty!

Morah Amanda: Salty! Good job Mussie. And he ate two other things and talked about how they tasted. He ate falafel and hummus. And how did they taste?

Avery: I don't know how hummus tastes.

Mussie: Spicy.

Morah Amanda: Right Mussie, they tasted spicy. You know what Avery? You are going to be able to taste hummus because we are going to make our very own hummus.

Noah: Hummus?

Morah Amanda: So in just a few more minutes we are going to have Morah Tzivie help us make some hummus. Why do you think we are going to make hummus?

Lizzy: Because we like hummus.

Avery: I don't like hummus.

Morah Amanda: How do you know if you like it if you haven't had it?

Lizzy: We like it because it is yummy, sweet and sour.

Morah Amanda: That is an intersting mixture of tastes.

Mussie: Cause Sammy spider ate it in Israel.

Morah Amanda: Ok. What have we been doing this week?

Mussie: We took a trip to Israel.

Morah Amanda: We took a trip to Israel. And did we visit the Dead Sea?

Class: Yes.

Morah Amanda: And how did we visit the Dead Sea?

Noah: Salt!

Morah Amanda: And what did we do with the salt?

Class: We put it in the water.

Morah Amanda: We put the salt in the water and what did we try to see? If things would what?

Mussie: Float!

Morah Amanda: If things would float on the salty water! And did we visit the Kotel?

Mussie: Yes!

Morah Amanda: How? What did we do?

Class: With paint. And sponges.

Morah Amanda: So we visited the Kotel, by making our own wall. We visited a kibbutz by working together to make hummus and we visisted the Dead Sea by adding salt to water and seeing if we could make items float!

Looking at next week:

Next week we are going to spend the week talking about Shabbat. We will be making special Shabbat items and doing some math sorting! If you have any shoe boxes at home that we could use to put our special art projects in, we would love to decorate them and use them as special Shabbat Boxes. Please send them in Monday if you have any! Thank you!

We always enjoy having family participation in activities. If you would like to take a moment to write something on a piece of paper and add it to our own special wall I am sure the children would love to share this special display with all of you! Please feel free to participate in our new classroom display!

All dressed and ready for our trip!

Making coin rubbings

Building (or painting) our wall

Adding grass and weeds

Writing our own words to Hashem

Adding our letters to the wall

Our wall

The first ingredient in Humus: Garbonzo Beans

Adding the final ingredient before blending it all together

Come light the menorah...

With the Gan children.

A Look at This Week:

While Chanukah is in full swing, so is our learning at school. This week we focused on the menorah. Most of our activities had something to do with the menorah. On Monday we started the week by making a class menorah out of toilet paper and paper towel rolls (there may have been a wrapping paper roll added in as well) and tissue paper for the flames. Each day we "lit" the menorah just like we lit menorahs at our homes the night before! Then we started our activities. Many of the children enjoyed making pop-up Chanukah cards. The cards either had dreidels or menorahs in the middle (the children chose which one they wanted) and they were required to copy some words into their cards and add their names. These were taken home on a daily basis. We built menorahs in the block area, pretended to light the menorah in the home living area and made playdough menorahs in the art area. All week long, while children were answering the morning question (and signing in) and doing their journals, they also had the opportunity to color on our large menorah that we will be adding to our wall display at the end of the week. We had a large number of math activities to go along with our study of the menorah as candles are a fun thing to count! We sorted candles by color, put menorahs in order by the number of candles that were lit and we also picked numbers and added that many candles to the paper menorahs! It was definitely a fun week full of activities to help us enjoy the celebration of Chanukah. One more activity that was enjoyed (though it had nothing to do with menorahs) was sound song bingo. Some of the children have been learning a song that helps them with their letter sounds. We even used this song to make a word wall in the classroom. We have taken copies of the pictures of the words from the song and have made bingo boards and then played bingo with these boards. It is a favorite game in the classroom right now!

Listening in to the discussions going on in the class:

It was really interesting to listen to one child go to another this morning and ask the other child if they were "going to be a good boy today." The other child answered "yes." The first child then responded saying, "so you aren't going to hit anyone? You aren't going to kick anyone? And you are going to listen? Because I don't like it when you hit or kick me. That is not being a good boy."

Just thought that I should share this conversation since it goes to show that at least the rules are understood if not always followed!

And looking into the future:

Although I normally mention what we will be working on next week, I am unable to do that as The Gan will be closed for the next two weeks for winter break. When we do resume, on Monday, January 4th, we will be spending the week talking about Israel and doing many fun activities that will take us on a pretend trip to another part of our world. And speaking of our world. The children have brought in about 88 mitzvah notes so far this year. They are definitely working on making the world a better place one mitzvah at a time. We hope to continue to see mitzvah notes coming in as everyone is always excited to share their notes and add them to our wall. And one big mitzvah that seems to be the leader of mitzvahs on our wall is many of the children are willing to share their tzedakah with others when the others do not have tzedakah, which is another thing we collect on a daily basis.

Playing sound song bingo

Candle number match

Playdough menorahs

Candle order

Menorah building

Candle number match

"Lighting" the class menorah

Candle color match

The musical performance by the Gan Children at the Clark County Chanukah Celebration!

The announcement of the performing group!

Dreidels, dreidels, dreidels

A look at this week:

We have been spinning around in the classroom, moving from one dreidel activity to another. We have really focused on them. We did start the week by talking about dreidels, getting to spin them and also discussing our dreidel costumes for this coming Sunday's celebration. Then we had the chance to use dreidels in our learning areas. We wrote pages about dreidels in writing. In math we sorted dreidels by color, matched dreidels to numbers to work on one-to-one correspondence and also graphed which letter we landed on when we spun our dreidels. In art we made 3-d dreidels, sparkly contact paper dreidels and bead dreidels. We also had the chance to build a dreidel in the block area (even though cars became part of the building too). We even added in to our busy days the chance to paint our dreidel costumes for Sunday and using a dreidel cookie cutter (along with other Chanukah shapes) to make special snack sandwiches!

Conversations from this week:

I did not document any specific conversations this week, however, it was a pleasure to hear all of the children really wanting to be involved with what their friends were doing. Many times throughout the week I heard "can I do that with you?" or "can I help you?" It was just really nice to hear this!

A look at next week:

With Chanukah being in full swing, next week we are going to focus on the menorah. We will be making a menorah and even "lighting" it each day. We will be doing some menorah number math (focusing on numbers 1-8) as well as building a menorah in the block area. Overall, we hope to really "light up" the week with all of our menorah work!

Building a dreidel

Dreidel color sort

Graphing dreidel spins

Dreidel number math

Sparkly dreidels

Chanukah shape snacks!

Making bead dreidels

Spinning dreidels

Spinning dreidels before graphing

Where's the oil?

A look at this week:

Where is the oil? Ask the children at The Gan! This week we talked about oil and even went on an oil hunt to find a very small bottle of oil. We started out the week by talking a little about why oil is so important. Then we started learning about oil. We went on an oil walk (where we walked on the letters that spell out OIL), we wrote out a recipe for latkes and even played latke letter memory. For math we had a bean bag toss and depending on which number the beanbag landed in we had to add that many latkes to the frying pan. We used forks to paint on latkes in art this week as well as we made oil/water bottles as a science experiment. We saw that the oil and water separated. Then we added food coloring and watched how it all mixed together and then the oil slowly separated and eventually lost the color that was added by the food coloring. And to make sure we got into the Chanukah mood while talking about oil, we made latkes and watched them fry in the oil before we got the chance to eat them for snack!

Conversations from the week:

We took water bottles and filled them about half way with water. Each child had their own. Then we took out the oil and talked about what would happen when we add oil to the water.

Morah Amanda: When I put the oil in the water, what do you think is going to happen?

Mussie: It will turn yellow.

Morah Amanda: Mussie thinks it will turn yellow. Does anyone else have an idea?

Avery: I do!

Morah Amanda: What do you think will happen Avery?

Avery: It will turn orange.

Morah Amanda: You think it will turn orange?

Avery: Yeah.

Morah Amanda: Any other ideas?

Lizzy: Um…red.

Morah Amanda: You think it is going to turn red Lizzy. Any other ideas?

Miriam: Me!

Morah Amanda: Yes?

Miriam: Pink!

Morah Amanda: Miriam thinks it is going to turn pink. Any other ideas?

Jayden: Red.

Morah Amanda: You think it will turn red, Jayden.

Josh: I think it is going to turn in your tummy.

Morah Amanda: It’s going to turn in your tummy? Are we going to drink this?

Class: No.

Morah Amanda: No. Once we are all finished we are going to make sure to keep the lids on all the time! We don’t drink oil. We cook with oil but we don’t drink it. Something special happens when you mix oil and water. Are you ready to see what happens?

Class: Yeah.

Pour oil into the first water bottle.

Mussie: It turns white a little.

Morah Amanda: What happened? What’s this and what is this? What’s at the top?

Mussie: Yellow.

Morah Amanda: Yellow, and what’s at the bottom?

Mussie: White

Morah Amanda: Just like this (taking a bottle of just water). What’s the difference between the two bottles?

Mussie: This just has white and this has yellow and white.

Morah Amanda: This one is just white because it has water and this one has yellow and white cause it has oil and water. And what happened to the oil? Where is the oil? Watch. (Shakes bottle) Is it all mixed up?

Class: Yeah.

Morah Amanda: Now just watch the bottle. Do you see what is happening at the bottle? Do you see that it is turning more white at the bottom? The oil is going to the top. Oil and water don’t mix; they separate. So, if I shake Avery’s bottle it is all the same color cause it is just water. But if I shake Lizzy’s bottle do you see where at the top it is turning yellow again?

Lizzy: There’s oil in there.

Many of the children start shaking their bottles.

Mussie: There’s no yellow in mine.

Morah Amanda: When you shake it they start to mix and then they separate back out.

Noah: Oil!

Mussie: Look. Mine is coming back. My yellow is coming back.

A look at next week:
Next week we will really “spin” into Chanukah as we talk about dreidels. We will be using dreidels in many of our activities, which include making our own dreidels, graphing the spins of dreidels, sorting dreidels and making a dreidel class book.

Oil find

Latke math

Walking on oil

Oil bottles

Watching the potatoes getting grated

Adding eggs to the potatoes

Mixing the latke mixture

Eating the class-made latkes!