Day five of creation was a busy day. Hashem filled the ocean and rivers with animals, as well as the sky. The children have been creating fish for our ocean and butterflies for our skies. We are creating birds, from Flamingos to toucans to populate our mural.

A lot of collaboration is going into the creation of the mural. Daniel cut out our great white shark, Levi gave it the color.

A pre-school classroom is a special place. At The Gan, the environment is set up to embrace and nourish the child, helping the child develop life skills. Socialization is an important part of a child's development. Social relationships surround the child in all aspects of their lives. These relationships involve kind manners and politeness, as well as how the children interact with other people. Play is a key opportunity to help the child create and sustain positive social interactions.

The development of social play is age related, and as a child grows and is offered social experiences, a particular sequence of play can be observed.

• Unoccupied Play, during which the child watches but stays in his/her spot.
• Onlooker play, during which the child will move around to watch the other children and ask questions, but refrains from joining in the play.
• Solitary Independent Play occurs when the child engages and is active, but plays on his own.
• Parallel Play, during which the child plays independently but is next to other children, often using the same materials or toys.
• Associative play, during which the child will play with other children using the same materials and toys and talking with them, however still acting on his own.
• Cooperative Play, the child plays in a group with the specific goal of doing a particular thing.

Encouraging cooperative play, sharing, and respect for our friends is an essential aspect of our classroom.

This weeks Peace Makers circle focused on our purpose in the world. We talked about how we can and need to be creating peace for all people with kind deeds and words. We brainstormed ideas about mitzvahs to do in the classroom with friends, and at home with our family.

The following conversation occurred:

Morah Na'ami: Why did Hashem put us on the world?

Levi: To live

Morah Na'ami: We need to live and do mitzvahs. Can you think of a mitzvah?

Levi: Sharing

Noah: No grabbing

Morah Na'ami: Mitzvahs help make the world a peaceful place.

We began this week reviewing the first 2 days of creation, and began talking about the third day. On the third day, Hashem created the rivers, seas, trees and plants. The children created a pear tree, and coffee filter flowers, and added a tissue paper river.

On thursday we began to create the Sun and the Moon and stars for our mural. Hashem created the "big bright sun, the moon and the stars for the dark of night." (a verse of our song)

We talked about living and non-living.

Living things grow. Non-living things do not grow.

We have living things in our classroom,

a plant, fish, children, teachers.

We have many non-living things in our classroom,

tables, chairs, books, pencils, toys.

On tuesday, November 2, our class did took part in some voting. We had apples and oranges for snack. I asked the children to think about what they liked about each fruit, and what they did not like. Then we took a vote, which fruit is tastes better? Oranges won by an overwhelming majority. Some of the reasons it won were:

juicy, sweet, and fun to peel.

One of the ways I help the children learn vocabulary and concepts is with a technique

called the 3 Period Lesson.

First, I give the name of the object or symbol.

Kian is tracing the sandpaper 1 and saying "1".

Secondly, I ask the child to touch the object or move it. The child doesn't need to tell me anything, but to show me. Step 2 takes more time than either step 1 or 3. In step 1 and 3 the vocabulary is being given or recalled. It is during step 2 that the child begins to connect the vocabulary with the object or symbol. This is done with repetition and fun: Please place the 2 under the table/please place the 1 on Morah Katie's head/Please place the 2 on your head, etc.

Kian is pointing to the 1.

Kian has already moved the 2, and is getting ready to put the 1 under the table.

Lastly, I ask the child to name the object.

If the child correctly identifies the vocabulary, we move on and add more. If the child mis-identifies the vocabulary, I thank them for working with me and we put it away for another day.

This is a process. All 3 steps can occur in one lesson, or over a few lessons.

One of the things I find most fun about the Montessori method

is that the teacher provides the tools and the opportunites for the

child to explore, discover and utilize. For example, once a child has mastered a certain group of letters, he/she can be introduced to the idea of blending sounds, and building words. Sounds continue to be added to what the child knows, more words can be built and soon we have writers and readers.

The red and blue rods, also called the number rods, are a very concrete tool for helping children learn 1-10.

The 1 is 10 centimeters long, the 10 is a 1000 centimeters long. The children can hold the 1 in one hand, whereas they need to hold the 10 with both hands and often with full arm extension.

These very real things help the child form the connection between the realness of something and the symobls given to communicate that something.

Morah Katie: Daniel, which is longest? the 1 or the 10?

Daniel: 10

Morah Katie: Which is longer, 2 or 7?

Daniel: 7

Morah Katie: Which is the shortest? The smallest?

Daniel: 1!

Thursday we spoke about what Peace Makers can do if they are getting teased. We read the book Yoko, by Rosemary Wells. We paid attention to her face through out the book, the sadness on it when she was feeling bad and the happiness we saw when she made a friend.

We used a toy swing set to role play what we can say if we experience teasing or see one of our friends getting teased.

The wonder of Creation is our theme for the next few weeks.

On Tuesday, we experienced dark/light. We shut our eyes tight to experience total darkness. We opened them and had light. We spent our class time tuesday with the lights off and on.

When the lights went off it was delightful to hear "It's DARK!!!" and likewise when the lights came back on, "It's LIGHT".

The children are creating a multi-media mural to represent creation. So far we have a sponge painted sky and land, cotton ball clouds and tissue paper grass.

Each child also made their own styrofoam earth sitting in a dark sky.

This coming tuesday, we will begin talking about the third day of creation, the trees and plants and flowers. This will also begin our discussion of living and non-living things.

We are learning a song to help us learn and understand how Hashem created our world, it begins:

"Hashem created a world so fine, he did it all in 6 days time."

It is sung to the tune of This Old Man. Ask your child to sing it for you.

We will be adding a verse as we add a day, and will be singing it at circle and during class time.

Thursday was our first Peace Makers circle. We learned a song about friendship and played with puppets. One puppet, Joe, was not very nice and grabbed a toy from Sally, the other puppet. Sally was so sad. I asked the children what could Sally do?

Levi: She could take it back

Tori: She can get another toy

Morah Katie: Very good ideas, let's see what Sally chooses to do.

Well, sadly Sally chose to hit Joe. The children raised their eyebrows at this.

Morah Katie: What do you think of Sally's choice?

Dena: Not good.

Morah Katie: How do you think Sally felt if she hit Joe?

Kian: Mad

Morah Katie: Let's see what could have happened it Sally tried to be a peace maker:

Sally: Joe it makes me mad when you take my toy.

Will you give it back to me please?

Morah Katie: What do you think Joe should do?

Kian: Give it back.

Levi: Sally spoke nicely.

The children decided that Sally spoke kindly enough that Joe should give the toy back.

The puppets are in the classroom, they are available for the children to play pretend with, or to use as a way to solve their conflicts.

Through out the rest of the day, if I saw an angry face appear, or heard an angry voice, I acknowledged the feeling I saw on his/her face, and I asked the child to think about what a peace maker would do. It was heartwarming to hear, "I am angry you took my swing, I would like it back."

This is a process which will involve offering suggestions, mediation by a teacher to help a dialog begin, and repetition.

The children continue to review the past letters of the week, in addition to learning

the current letter - R.

We are practicing our writing with connect the dot sheet, and learning our colors and color words with matching.

We are counting daily and building on what we know. The children are working on recognizing the numerals and counting quantities to match the numerals.

We do this first a few numbers at a time, adding more as the child is able to recall.

There are layers to this matching:

1. quantities and numerals in order

2. quantities in order, numeral mixed up

3. quantities mixed up, numerals mixed up.

4. numerals and quantities mixed up.

Daniel is working with bead bars, 1-10.

Quantities are first because they can be held in the child's hand, it is real and concrete. The numerals are symbols and require memory.

To add to this, we can spread the numeral and quantities across the classroom, which is always a fun memory game.

I will be writing observations I make of the children in their writing notebooks and updating them every few weeks. I invite your to please take a look at your child's notebook the next time you are in the classroom.

It was an exciting week at The Gan.

It was delightful to create the apple tree.

We have received some Montessori materials for the classroom. I feel that one of the benefits the Montessori method offers is the multi-sensory approach to learning. Maria Montessori often said the hand is the instrument of the mind. As the child traces the sandpaper letter or numeral, they are sensorially experiencing the texture as they look with their eyes, and say the sound or number.

We used rice to hide objects, which began a discussion about the roughness of the sandpaper letter versus the smoothness of the rice in our hands. We then sorted the objects by their beginning sounds.

Levi: Sandpaper tickles me.

Dena: Silly, it scratches.

Levi: Rice is sliding.

Tori: It's not scratchy.

We made rubbings of sandpaper numerals and sandpaper letters. It was as exciting for me to watch the wonder on the children's faces as it was for them to make the letter or number appear on the paper like magic, "Hey it's a C!" or "Wow 2!"

At Snack time, the children noticed the circle shaped pretzels looked like the numeral zero.

Levi: I have a lot of zeros.

Daniel: (holding a pretzel) ZERO!

Levi: (picked up his pretzels from his napkin) There are zero pretzels on my napkin!

Tori: Zero means nothing.

Dena: No more pretzels, all done.

This coming week we will begin having a "peace makers" circle as part of our thursday group time. Children are naturally affectionate, caring and loving. Peace makers are people who express these qualities through kind and helpful deeds. Peace makers also use kind words to solve disagreements. This by no means requires giving up one's point of view, but rather expressing what we are feeling with respectful, kind, yet firm words. We may feel like screaming and pushing our friend when they take our bike, but a more successful approach may be to say:

"When you take my bike I feel mad. I would like my bike back."

Over the course of this year I hope to help your child learn the vocabulary for him/her to fill in the following blanks:

When ____________ happens, I feel ___________. I would like _________.

We will accomplish this by looking at facial expressions in books and asking the question - what do you think they are feeling?Why do you think they are feeling that way? How do you think you might feel if (_____) happened to you? Stories are a fun and safe way to discuss feelings, and offers the children a chance to practice using feeling words. We will talk about the difference we feel when we are laughing and happy versus mad. We will practice making and recognizing facial expressions with games and songs.

Beginning this week we will begin the theme of the Creation of the World. Over the next few weeks we will be talking about how Hashem created our world. We will create a paper mural as we discuss the 7 wonderful days of creation. We will also begin our science studies as we look at ideas such as living and non-living and the differences between plants and animals.

Mock Shabbat

The classroom is becoming a very active place. The children are familiar with our routine. They know that we begin our day with free choice activities. We have group time, snack and playtime. They can count on story time as we transition from play to group and individual lessons. When we sing our clean up song, they know lunch is next and then we say our good byes for the day.

Children benefit from a predictable classroom and routine. They feel secure, which fosters independence.

Freedom of choice also builds independence. I encourage the children to look at the activities, what catches their eye? What looks fun? What do they want to try doing today? If one of my friends is very interested in cutting, it is my job to be sure I have papers from him/her to cut.

Once this skill is "mastered" the child feels they have accomplished a goal and are ready to move to other areas with increased self confidence.

Likewise, if a child is not particularly interested in doing an activity with me, I will not push the issue at that time. I will do the activity or play the game with their friend, or discuss it at group time. The child will be exposed to the concept indirectly. When the child becomes interested, we will get that activity and play. When the interest is there, learning happens easily and quickly.

Every child has something to offer in the classroom. The classroom is designed to be an environment where the children can fully realize their potential - as individuals and as members of the community.

Children learn in a variety of ways, some need to do, some need to hear, some need to see.

A child maybe building with blocks, and at the same time be listening to his/her friend play a rhyming game. When the block building child moves on to the rhyming game, it is always fun to see just how much was absorbed simply by listening. I do my best to observe the learning styles of the children and meet those needs.

This week we celebrated our friend Levi's birthday. We talked about how this is the day Hashem decided the world needed Levi. We made him a book describing why he is such a special friend, and talked about all the things he can do now that he is 4.

The children have recieved writing notebooks. In addtion to the writing work they will be bringing home, the notebook will stay at school. It is always a big treat at the end of the year to see the progress in letter and number writing.

We will be constructing our Torah inspired feather painting next week, if you happen to go through another roll of paper towels, I will gladly take the inner tube.

We have been enjoying the great fall weather! The train is a highlight of our day, the slide, the engine, and of course the kaboose!

This week at the Gan we had fun with the letter M. We made monkeys, mittens, even a maze with our blocks.
We planned to have a mango at snack. Sadly, our mango was not ripe despite it's very delicious aroma. We decided to try another mango next week, as long as it is ripe.


At group time on monday we discovered that Mitzvah begins with M. We talked about what a mitzvah was and I challenged the children to see how many mitzvah's we could do this week. We wrote them on a slip of paper and posted them on our board. It was very exciting to see all the kind deeds being done. Giving tzedakah at group time is a fun way for the the children to experience doing a mitzvah, please send your child with a few coins for this important part of our group time gathering.


This conversation occurred at lunch one day:
Dena: I saw a girl crying.
Morah Katie: Was she sad? Was she hurt?
Dena: Sad
Morah Katie: What can we do if we see a friend or someone sad or crying?
Tori: We can ask them to play or we can ask them to have a little snack with us.
Dena: That would be a good thing.






We reviewed counting and name writing. As an extension of rhyming we payed close attention to rhymes we heard in our stories.



At snack one day we had a spontaneous lesson in subtraction.
Each child had 8 pretzels.
Morah Katie: Levi you had 8 pretzels, you ate one, how many pretzels do you have?
Levi: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Morah Katie: Daniel, you had 8 pretzels, you ate 2, how many pretzels do you have?
Daniel: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
We continued taking away/eating/subtracting the pretzels until we were at zero.


The children are actively involved in creating the environment. The classroom is slowly filling up with the children's art work and creations. In addition to creating the letter of the week poster, the children also help set the tables for snack and lunch as well as replacing the tables for class time. One of my goals is to create an environment where the children can test their capabilities, refine their skills and become independent members who also contribute to the group. Watching two children carry a table, while two other children bring chairs to the table is a great sight to see.

On friday we had a mock Shabbat.









We will be making a torah inspired craft next week, please bring two paper towel rolls (or more if you are able) on monday or tuesday.