Math Inspire Play!

Geometric shapes were hung up on the wall near the building center to inspire math themed play.  They used their creativity in building with them too.

 In the picture above our friends were shaping letters and making different pictures out of marbles. Some of the children made the first letter of their names and others made flowers and stars.

   

 The children worked collaboratively to build a Ferris wheel. In just a few minutes it was all put together! 

 Our friends really enjoyed our art center today! We made a tree with our hand as the trunk and glued leaves down as the leaves and branches on top of the tree. Then the children painted the trunk brown. We really saw the artistic talents in each one of them. 

 Our friends enjoyed making book marks in the writing center. They needed to measure and figure out a size that would be helpful to holding the place in a book. 

Working Together!

Our friends really enjoyed making Milkshakes out of the rice and beans! They used the beans as chocolate chips to make chocolate one! What creative representational play.

They used their senses to explain what the clay was like. One friend said it was cold, another friend said it has a smell. We had so much fun! Working with the clay was a whole new experience.

During morning meeting we went around introducing ourselves and banging the drum at the syllable of our names. 

In the picture above the children built a house with a bunk bed for us to sleep on!

First Day

Morah Miriam enjoyed....

Posting continued from Last Week - Part 2: Art and Shabbat Party

Last week we got to meet with Morah Yael, our new art teacher. We all recognized Morah Yael as Dalya's Ima who we see every day! 

We had a wonderful time exploring with and learning about different types of materials that we can use to shape with our fingers and hands.  The first and most familiar material is Playdough.  We explored the playdough and noted all of its properties (texture, softness, ease of use, etc.)  

The children saw (and some children held) chunks of dirt from a construction site, (the orange tray). We learned that the dirt in Maryland often contains a lot of real clay.   When the dirt is removed, we are left with clay!

 The children spent a long time exploring the clay. 

The instructions were open - explore and play using our hands as tools.  They came up with their own ideas about how to proceed; They punched, rolled, banged, smoothed, poked. Peretz made one big flat shape and Remy divided his clay into made many small pieces. 

 They made wonderful designs and representations of real things. The class is very fortunate to have more sessions scheduled with Morah Yael!

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We washed the tables and chairs - the room was extra clean. We pretended to pick out our clothing and put on a special outfit for Shabbos. We set the table in a special way. 

Finally... the sun was setting - it was about to be night time. Nechama Leiba was the Shabbos mommy ~ she lit the candles and said the bracha on her own.  We said "Good Shabbos" or "Shabbat Shalom" to each other.  

Remy said the bracha over the grape juice and 

Peretz said HaMotzi and served the children a piece of challah. 

We had a Shabbos treat ~  special cookies made in a bakery. We were celebrating the end of the week with Shabbos coming soon and we were saying good-bye to Morah Anne. We had a lovely time singing and remembering fun and funny things that we said and did in the past. 

From Yesterday... Thursday, 26, 2017

The children signed-in and checked to see what job they were doing today.

During Morning Meeting we used non-verbal hand signals to say hello to one another.  Several children decided that they wanted to change their personal signals. They amazed us with their ability to remember a new set of hand motions!

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In the Art Center one option was to draw a self-portrait. Elet tells me about his drawing.

                                       Hilary and Sara drew beautiful portraits.                                          They saw some yarn and decided to enhance their portraits.

 Cutting yarn isn't an easy job. It takes hand strength and a lot of patience. 

Mendel decides to include his brother in the portrait. He gives both of them hair.

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                           Jacobs builds a symmetrical bridge for the animals to cross.                             He keeps the dangerous animals away from the others!

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 In our House Center the children have expanded the family. The children have worked hard on including all who want to play and giving each child a turn to be his/her desired part.  

First, Chayla is the busy mommy who needs to make a few phones calls.

Later, she takes turns and becomes the baby. The development of social skills has been remarkable 

More to share tomorrow!

A window into our day:

I 

Morah Miriam...

Morah Miriam visited us during the Morning Meeting. She introduced herself and let the children do the same. The children introduced themselves and shared some information about themselves, their families and what they like to do in school.

They mostly said that they liked: building with blocks, playing in our House area,   climbing outside on the playground, eating lunch, and playing with each other.

Some of the children had time to play with Morah Miriam as well. 

 

2 Amazing Building....

Elet and Jacob created a large beautiful complex. Other children built on other parts -- eventually the trains and tracks were added in for easy access....

 

The building Center has been very popular lately.  Everyone finds something to build. 

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3. Centers
Today after Morning Meeting, the children broke into small groups to either: continue playing where they had been before the meeting, have snack, or listen of one of the new library books. It is wonderful to explore stories in small groups as well as a large group. We have also observed that they enjoy eating snacks in smaller groups.

 Morah Nechama has done an amazing job at facilitating this change and helping them become much more confident about helping themselves to fruit including setting 

and cleaning up independently.  

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4. All Around Us!

Lately we have been talking a lot about Fall. Today we started to delve more deeply by going on walk with the goal of investigating and finding signs of fall.  We used our eyes as the main sense.  

Each child had a bag and a clipboard to collect and record what they found. Tomorrow we will do sight again and add sounds (hearing).

 We noticed that:  the trees are in the process of changing colors, some trees have green leaves and some trees have leaves with mixed colors. Most of the leaves are still attached to the trees.

 One child remembered that some trees are "evergreens" meaning: they stay green throughout the year -  even in the winter! We found an evergreen tree with tiny blue berries that looked like "baby plums."

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