Documentation for the week of September 26-30, 2016
Completing Our Tzedakah Project
Our first field trip of the year was a huge success! Before we left for the grocery store, we needed to make sure we had enough money to pay for our apples. Morah Tara and Morah Mirele helped the children place enough coins onto the correct pictures so that we could count how many dollars we had. We then put $1.00 worth of coins in each ziploc bag. We counted nine bags, which meant that we had $9.00 to bring with us.
Thank you to Morah Shternie for joining us! We went over field trip rules at Morning Meeting on Monday: hold hands, listen to instructions, look with your eyes. We have started our safety commitments as children come into our classroom in the morning. This has been a very nice change for us, because our time spent davening has been getting too long for their attention spans. Please feel free to assist or watch your child commit to being safe with their safe keeper card. Asking the children to commit to being safe each morning and reminding them of their commitment throughout the day has been extremely beneficial. It allows them to feel responsible for the safety of our classroom and the choices that they are making each day. We repeat to the children regularly: It's your job to be safe. It's our job to keep you safe. This practice definitely influenced their excellent choices on field trip day! When we got to a stop light, Morah Tara reminded them: It's your job to be safe. It's our job to keep you safe. Then she asked, "How can we be safe crossing the street?" Lucy told us to wait for the hand to go away and cross when it turns white. Morah Shternie also taught the children a song about stop lights!
We walked together to Albertsons, and then we stopped for a drink of water outside the store. Once we walked inside, we needed to stop and wait for Todd, the produce manager to show us around. The children were also great at waiting: a challenging task when you are so excited to be out of school and surrounded by interesting items! Morah Mirele led the children in Rosh Hashanah songs while we waited for Todd. Here are the lyrics to the songs we have been singing over the past few weeks:
Dip the apple
in the honey
make a bracha
loud and clear.
L'Shana Tova
Oomisukah.
Have a happy
sweet new year.
_________________________________
Ani l'dodi
v'dodi li
I love Hashem
and Hashem loves me.
This is what the month of Elul
is all about:
to greet the king in the field
when he comes out.
Once our new friend, Todd, came to greet us, we started to look for apples. We found them in a few different places! We eventually made our way to the apples that were in bags. Before we bought our apples, Todd let each child choose an apple to take home with them! This continued to happen throughout our time at the grocery store: every time we saw a new employee they had something to give to us! We took our apples and were shown into the back of the grocery store to the break room. Everyone was able to eat a snack that they chose earlier to bring along. Once we finished our snacks, we went back to the bags of apples to see if we had enough money to buy them. The bags of apples were $3.99. We asked the children if they wanted to donate red apples or green apples. They voted for red apples. When we explained that we could buy two bags of apples we asked them to vote again about the second bag of apples. They chose to buy two bags of red apples. We took our two bags of apples to a very kind checkout employee who patiently counted out our bags of pennies. Each child was able to give her one bag of coins, and she counted out the money to make sure that we had given her the right amount. The children were also very patient as they watched her calculate. Then we were ready to take our bags of apples and walk back to our school!
This trip was a challenge to the children's attention spans, and the morahs were so impressed with their hard work. It is truly difficult to control your body, pay attention to rules, and focus on walking together for such a long time as a four-year-old. It was a huge workout for their frontal lobes and executive functioning skills. This is the part of their brains that are growing the most between the ages of four and five, so it's a great opportunity for them to experience these types of challenges. When we returned to our school, though, the morahs knew that the children needed to run around outside and move their bodies. After that we returned to our classroom and brought our apples to Rabbi Deitsch. We shared with him our new word: donation. He was very grateful to receive our apples and told us that he would put them out for families for Rosh Hashanah.
When we got back to our classroom, Morah Tara showed the children that we still have Tzedakah money. She asked the children if they would like to choose a new group to help with our Tzedakah money, since we continue to give Tzedakah each day. The children agreed that we should, so we will start our Tzedakah Project provocation again after the high holidays!
Later in the day, we reflected on our field trip during play story drawing. What the morahs discovered was that the children were most interested in the walk from our school to the grocery store. Almost all of them drew about the walk itself, as opposed to buying apples or their experience in Albertsons. After reflecting upon the children's reflections, we hope to begin taking the children for walks more often in the future.
Thank you to Morah Shternie for joining us! We went over field trip rules at Morning Meeting on Monday: hold hands, listen to instructions, look with your eyes. We have started our safety commitments as children come into our classroom in the morning. This has been a very nice change for us, because our time spent davening has been getting too long for their attention spans. Please feel free to assist or watch your child commit to being safe with their safe keeper card. Asking the children to commit to being safe each morning and reminding them of their commitment throughout the day has been extremely beneficial. It allows them to feel responsible for the safety of our classroom and the choices that they are making each day. We repeat to the children regularly: It's your job to be safe. It's our job to keep you safe. This practice definitely influenced their excellent choices on field trip day! When we got to a stop light, Morah Tara reminded them: It's your job to be safe. It's our job to keep you safe. Then she asked, "How can we be safe crossing the street?" Lucy told us to wait for the hand to go away and cross when it turns white. Morah Shternie also taught the children a song about stop lights!
We walked together to Albertsons, and then we stopped for a drink of water outside the store. Once we walked inside, we needed to stop and wait for Todd, the produce manager to show us around. The children were also great at waiting: a challenging task when you are so excited to be out of school and surrounded by interesting items! Morah Mirele led the children in Rosh Hashanah songs while we waited for Todd. Here are the lyrics to the songs we have been singing over the past few weeks:
Dip the apple
in the honey
make a bracha
loud and clear.
L'Shana Tova
Oomisukah.
Have a happy
sweet new year.
_________________________________
Ani l'dodi
v'dodi li
I love Hashem
and Hashem loves me.
This is what the month of Elul
is all about:
to greet the king in the field
when he comes out.
Once our new friend, Todd, came to greet us, we started to look for apples. We found them in a few different places! We eventually made our way to the apples that were in bags. Before we bought our apples, Todd let each child choose an apple to take home with them! This continued to happen throughout our time at the grocery store: every time we saw a new employee they had something to give to us! We took our apples and were shown into the back of the grocery store to the break room. Everyone was able to eat a snack that they chose earlier to bring along. Once we finished our snacks, we went back to the bags of apples to see if we had enough money to buy them. The bags of apples were $3.99. We asked the children if they wanted to donate red apples or green apples. They voted for red apples. When we explained that we could buy two bags of apples we asked them to vote again about the second bag of apples. They chose to buy two bags of red apples. We took our two bags of apples to a very kind checkout employee who patiently counted out our bags of pennies. Each child was able to give her one bag of coins, and she counted out the money to make sure that we had given her the right amount. The children were also very patient as they watched her calculate. Then we were ready to take our bags of apples and walk back to our school!
This trip was a challenge to the children's attention spans, and the morahs were so impressed with their hard work. It is truly difficult to control your body, pay attention to rules, and focus on walking together for such a long time as a four-year-old. It was a huge workout for their frontal lobes and executive functioning skills. This is the part of their brains that are growing the most between the ages of four and five, so it's a great opportunity for them to experience these types of challenges. When we returned to our school, though, the morahs knew that the children needed to run around outside and move their bodies. After that we returned to our classroom and brought our apples to Rabbi Deitsch. We shared with him our new word: donation. He was very grateful to receive our apples and told us that he would put them out for families for Rosh Hashanah.
When we got back to our classroom, Morah Tara showed the children that we still have Tzedakah money. She asked the children if they would like to choose a new group to help with our Tzedakah money, since we continue to give Tzedakah each day. The children agreed that we should, so we will start our Tzedakah Project provocation again after the high holidays!
Later in the day, we reflected on our field trip during play story drawing. What the morahs discovered was that the children were most interested in the walk from our school to the grocery store. Almost all of them drew about the walk itself, as opposed to buying apples or their experience in Albertsons. After reflecting upon the children's reflections, we hope to begin taking the children for walks more often in the future.
Morah Tara and the No-Good-Very-Sticky Week
Rosh Hashanah brings many opportunities to explore with all of our senses! Morah Tara does not like exploring food through touch, but this week, we made it available for the children anyway! On Monday we used apples as paint brushes and honey as paint! This was so messy we did it outside of our classroom. The children made great observations about the honey: Lucy said that she was drizzling it. Imie said that it was sticky. Bayla said that she was covering her whole page in honey. Oree said that she liked using a smaller apple slice more than a big, big apple slice. Ariel S. said that she liked touching the honey. Leah started singing the apple song, and all of her friends joined her. Eliya chose to skip the project.
On Wednesday, we worked with pomegranate seeds. Lucy, Eliya, Ariel F., and Ariel S. took all the seeds out of the pomegranate and put them into a bucket. We were going to stain paper, but our pomegranate seeds were clear, so we squished them on paper instead. Oree joined her friends to squish the seeds, and they all began counting seeds as they squished together.
Shana Tova Cards
Everyone worked very hard on their Shana Tova cards for bubbies, zaydes, sabas, saftas, popsies, grandpas, grandmas, and gigis this week. Several friends completed cards last week and the week before. Morah Merele worked with the children to stuff their cards into envelopes, write addresses, and place stamps onto the envelopes. Our friends in the Green Room took a field trip to the mailbox to mail them for us!
More on Risk Assessment and Child-Led Learning
The children had two amazing types of work happening on Thursday morning of their own making. Eliya and Oree built an airplane with full food service and tickets to board while several other friends decided to use chairs to climb onto one of our shelves and jump off. (Did we mention it was a challenging week for Morah Tara??) The morahs watched them as they chose how much risk each child chose to take as they got to the top of the shelf. At first Ariel S. was afraid to stand up on the shelf and Imie was afraid to jump off. Imie sat back down and slid off the shelf. Eliya and Lucy went straight for a big jump, both landing on two feet. This game evolved over about thirty minutes and the children continued to change the rules about how to wait for their turn. A few conflicts came up, and the children were able to problem solve with each other to find a solution together. This kind of work is important, again, for the executive functioning skills in their brains: the ability to assess risk and control impulses. It is also very good for their bones: jumping from 2-4 feet off the ground allows their body weight to create an impact on their bones allowing them to grow denser. This type of exercise prevents bone density issues such as osteoporosis as they age.
When the children were finished with their jumping game, they returned to the airplane that Eliya and Oree had built. Oree chose to be the captain, and asked that Leah: her baby, sat next to her. Ariel F. told Oree that Leah could sit on Oree's other side, but then they saw that there were things on the floor next to Oree's other side. They pondered if they could move the items off the floor, but they decided that they were part of the plane, so Ariel F., Leah, and Oree sat in a row together to fly their airplane.
Observational Drawings
Please take a look at the beautiful observational drawings and paintings that your children made in the preschool hallway. They all chose different symbols of Rosh Hashanah to recreate on their paper.
L'Shana Tova!
Have a wonderful Rosh Hashanah! The Rainbow Class wishes you all a very sweet new year!
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