Plants and Tu Bshvat

After a wonderful few weeks of learning about Shabbat and preparing our Shabbat boxes we dove straight into Tu B'shvat.
Our purple room friends started learning about our garden and how to take care of it, how to water it and what our garden needs.
Tubeshvat is the birthday of the trees and this is the day where we plant new trees and eat new food that grows on the tree.
In the purple room we went much deeper and learned what plants need to grow, the different parts of a plant, how plants breathe in and out, and how plants eat.
Our friends started by learning and seeing different seeds and how a root grows from a seed. We watered beans and checked everyday to see how the roots come out from the seed. Our friends also learned what stems and leaves are. The root of the plant collects the water the plant needs, the leaves collect the sunlight and the stem turns and bends the plant towards the sun. This process is called photosynthesis.
We learned how important plants are to our life and animals and we are very important to the trees. Trees breathe out oxygen, and people and animals need oxygen to survive. People and animals breathe out carbon dioxide, and trees breathe in carbon dioxide for them to survive. We needs trees just like they need people and animals.  Hashem created the world in such a perfect way!

In this week's parsha of Beshalach we learned about how the Jewish people left Egypt. When the Jewish people got to the sea they couldn't continue, so Hashem made a big miracle and split the sea for the Jews. After the Jews crossed over the sea they had a lot of traveling in the desert, so every night G-D would send maan a special kind of food, so they can collect it in the morning and have something to eat. They also had a special rock that would become a fountain for the Jews to drink from.

Have a good Shabbos,

Morah D 

Gardening and Shabbos

This week in the Purple room we continued learning about Shabbat, and preparing for our Shabbat dinner with the entire CJP family.
Our friends finished making their Shabbat boxes with beads and glitter, so we have a place to put our Shabbat candle, challah cover, kiddush cup and challah board.
To make our kiddush cups our friends first put beads on a wire and wrapped it around the glass cup, each friend picked different colors and patterns to make each kiddush cup unique.
To make our challah boards we first had to sand them down to make sure they where smooth and then paint them. Our friends used tape to spell out Shabbat in hebrew and paint over the tape, once it was dry we peeled the tape off to see the finished result. Making our challah covers was lots of fun, Morah D taped each challah cover to a book and gave all our friends fabric markers to draw everything they loved about Shabbat.
This week we had a very special Morah come to teach and show all our CJP friends how to garden and take good care of our new plants. Each day our friends went outside and watered each and every plant we planted outside and some new plants we were able to bring inside. They were so excited to see a new strawberry turning red. We can’t wait for the rest to grow!

Shabbos is coming!

This week in the purple room we started learning and reviewing what we know about Shabbat and what we don’t know yet.
Our friends reviewed the Hebrew day of the week and learned that Shabbat means rest.
Each friend has been working on creating their own Shabbat box kit. They have made their own candle and a box where they store all of the things we will need for Shabbat in it. We made our candles with rocks that each friend found on our playground. We made our boxes by painting them and decorating them with beads and small stones.

This week the purple room took a trip to the science museum. We spent most of our time in the human body section. We got to feel touch and play with the different parts of our human body. Our friend played in the big stomach and got to see 2 shows. The first show was about liquid nitrogen, this was very cool, we got to feel the liquid nitrogen and walk and run through it. Our friends also learned that there is a moon named titan that is made up of liquid nitrogen. The second show was about the digestive system. We got to see how we process our food, our friends saw how the masher works like our teeth and makes the food smaller, then we saw how the food travels through the esophagus into the stomach and into the intestines. Overall this was a great trip where our friends explored everything we have been learning in our classroom.

Share this week was all about the letter H.
Vella brought in a handkerchief that she will use in the future to cover her baby doll on her new bike.
Shimmy brought in his hulk who was green and mean.
Nechama brought in her hat that glowed in the dark.
Nosson brought in his hockey sticks that he thought had a kosher sign.
Ben brought in his hockey jersey that he wore to a hockey game.

This week's parsha is va’eira, and we learn about Moshe and Aaron going to pharaoh to ask him to let the Jewish People out of Egypt. But even after Aaron shows him a miracle where his staff turned into a snake Pharoah still said no. Then came the plagues, the first one was blood then frogs, lice, wild animals, all their cattle got sick, boils, hail and grasshoppers but still Pharaoh said no I will not let the Jewish people go. We will continue learning about what happened to the Jewish people in Egypt next week.

Reminder: Science Center Trip!

After a long vacation the purple room is back.
This week in the purple room we reviewed everything we learned about our human body, the respiratory system, digestive system, and our hands and feet.  We are very excited to visit the AZ science center next week as a culmination of this theme.  Reminder to wear your CJP tshirt and bring a sack lunch on Wednesday.  Please install your car seats into Shternie's van at drop off on Wednesday morning.

Our friends are so good at recognizing their uppercase letters and writing them, so starting this week we began learning what our lowercase letters look like and we tried to write them. We used rocks, stones, chalk, crayons, and shaving cream to write or make the lowercase letters
In our science center this week our friends learned what a scale is and how it works, we tried to weigh different materials in our hands and then put them on the scale to see if our guesses were correct. We weighed bolts, shapes, magnets, and even small dishes. Our friend also tried to even out the scale by counting how many bolts we need to add so they will weigh the same as the squares.
Our friends tried sewing buttons onto fabric. This was perfect for their fine motor skills, they tried to put the string through the needle, then hold the button in place and put the needle through.

Share this week was all about the letter G.
Vella brought in a big grapefruit that she shared with the whole class. We even tried to use it as a ball, because it was round.
Shimmy brought a giraffe that he borrowed from his baby Daniel. It was squishy.
Nechama brought in a small giraffe, her giraffes tail was attached to its body.
Ben brought in his Gee, his karate suite, it was blue and had a white belt.
Nosson brought in his green helicopter, it had a lot of spinners.

Thank you for a great week!
Morah D