Any guesses what this intricate block area creation is depicting? Answer at the end of the newsletter!

Dear Purple Room Families,

Do you know where soil comes from? The Purple Room knows that plants need soil to grow, which sparked a conversation about where we get soil in the first place. Here are some of the Purple Room’s thoughts:

“Hashem put it there.” -Yehonathan

“You have to spread out new soil if you want to grow plants.” -Jonny

“It comes from the garden.” -Ella

“I think it might be dirt? That can make soil.” -Shepherd

“Morah Shoshi you have some in a bag. We can put it outside.” -Carmel

“You get it in a big bag from Home Depot. Some kinds smell.” -Natan

“If we bought it at Home Depot my papa can bring it in his truck.” -Daniel

“It comes from the ground.” -Rylan

“I think you can make it and it’s called compost.” -Harvey

The Purple Room was fascinated to learn that plants that fall to the ground and decompose make new soil. We went on a nature walk just to look for decomposing leaves. This exploration led to a class decision to try to make our own compost. We decided to start with our celery experiment from last week. We had left the celery stalks in their jars to see what would happen– some classmates thought they would grow roots, others thought they wouldn’t. We discussed why they wilted and touched the leaves. They felt crinkly and dry, not like a living plant!

“It feels crinkly!”

We cut up our celery stalks, gathered more green material, and also gathered “brown” material like bits of cardboard or dried leaves. For compost, we need an even mixture of both. We will mix them together, add water, and see what happens!

We have seed books, with real seeds and seed packets so the children can connect the seeds to vegetables and plants they know. The children have enjoyed looking at the seed books on the light table.

When we return from break we will see what has happened with our compost and the beans we have planted. 

Jewish Learning

We sing the Aleph Bet every day, and do learning activities to become more familiar with the Hebrew letters. This week there has been a sudden explosion of interest in the Aleph Bet, and the children are better able to identify and differentiate between the letters. A favorite game this week was invented by Carmel – matching the letters on our Aleph Bet poster to our Aleph Bet cards. We also made a tiny version with Hebrew Scrabble tiles. 

We hope you have a restful winter break, and we can’t wait to continue our learning when we come back!

Love,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Shaina

PS: The picture at the beginning of the email shows the pickup line at animal school. All the kid animals are waiting for their animal parents to come get them.

Dear Purple Room Families, 

Learning is blooming in the Purple Room! The children’s questions and noticings have led us to our new exploration: seeds and plants. We are planting, taking nature walks, and learning all about how seeds grow and where our food comes from. 

Jewish Learning

As we read parshat Miketz last week and Vayigash this week, we learned about how Yosef predicted the seven year famine in Egypt, and advised Pharaoh to save food during the seven years of good harvests. This led to questions about how food grows, and what a harvest is. We talked about how grateful we are that we do not live in a famine, and have so much good food to eat. The Purple Room began learning Birkat Hamazon (blessing after meals), which we sing after lunch time. 

Science and Nature Learning

As we discussed the concepts of harvest and gathering food, we saw a lot of children exploring these ideas. Some of the children tried to plant branches on the playground, and were dismayed when they did not grow! 

We read about how seeds grow, and planted our own seeds using eggshells as the tiny pots. 

Shaking seed packets to see what seeds can sound like, We guessed the bean seeds would be bigger than the carrot seeds, because they made a louder sound.

Some children asked how we make seeds, so we did a cooking project to find some seeds. We made Israeli salad, finding the seeds inside of tomatoes and bell peppers. We also noticed that the parsley leaves had “little lines” (veins).

We found the seeds in the pepper!

To learn about how veins work in a plant, we put some celery in colored water. The next day, all the veins were colored too! We examined them with magnifying glasses to see how the veins move water through the plant. 

We went for a nature walk around our campus, finding examples of parts of plants– bud, flower, stem, leaf, seed pod, bark, roots. We even found a plant with tiny seeds that floated and blew in the wind when we gently shook the branch, just like in the book The TIny Seed! Each child gathered parts of plants that he or she found interesting. When we got back to class, we touched, smelled, and looked at our plant bits. The children then created art works by gluing their collections to paper. The plant collages are hanging in the hallway. Below are some of the conversations we recorded during this activity:

Harvey: The leaves are fuzzy and the seed pods are fuzzy too.

Carmel: This plant smells so good! It feels fuzzy.

Jonny: The seeds went flying everywhere! There was a seed in my hair!

Shepherd: I found a leaf that has lots of tiny leafs in it.

Ella: These seeds can fly like they have wings but they’re not actually wings.

Natan: If you plant the leaf it won’t grow. It has to have roots.

Daniel: I found lots of red flowers that look like feathers.

Yehonathan: I love these purple ones so much. I found so many purple flowers.

Rylan: I like the purple too. It feels good and soft. 

Nature explorers

Flying seeds!

Gluing our collections

As the children learn more about plants and seeds their questions are becoming more complex. For example: “How does bark stay on a tree?” “If plants have veins, is water like their blood?” “Why do seeds need to fly?” We will be delving into these ideas next week!

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Shaina

 

Dear Purple Room Families,

Happy Chanukah! It has been an eventful week. It is so nice to be in school on Chanukah, so we can celebrate and deepen our understanding of the holiday together.

Chanukah Learning

There has been so much Chanukah fun this week! On Monday, we enjoyed a music and movement party with special guest teacher Morah Marina. Each day, the children take turns to “light” our classroom menorah while we sing the brachot. We have been telling and re-telling the Chanukah story each day, using picture books and puppets. The story of Chanukah offers lots of opportunities to discuss big questions: Why was it not okay that King Antiochus wanted everyone to be Greek like him? What does it mean to be brave? How did Hashem help the Maccabees? 

Dancing with Morah Marina

Lighting the menorah 

Hiding in our Maccabee cave while we play the story of Chanukah

Playing dreidel

Graphing dreidel rolls-- which letter did you roll the most?

Social Emotional Learning

We are working on learning to tell how much energy you have and what to do when you really feel like you need to move. We don’t want to stigmatize a preschooler’s need to move. It is an important part of learning and completely developmentally appropriate to feel the need to jump, push, and run. But we need to learn safe, socially appropriate ways to do this! We start our day with an obstacle course around the classroom. As each child enters, he or she signs in, puts away snack, hangs up belongings, and then does at least two rounds of the obstacle course. This is full body movement that also requires some focus and attention. During the day, if someone is feeling big energy, he or she can choose part of the obstacle course to do instead of careening around the classroom.

This week’s obstacle course consisted of:

Using big steps to walk over chairs

A latke hopscotch

Giving two high fives to fabric patches on the wall

Crawling under two tables, back to the beginning!

Child-Led Learning

Much of what we do follows the children’s interests, but it is always fascinating to see a new, unanticipated idea take hold. This past week the children have developed an interest in building tiny houses out of bits of bark, rocks, and shells. It started as a few tiny structures, and now each day more elaborate houses are being built, with roads running between them. This has also sparked new interest in our class sensory bin, currently filled with sand. We have looked at pictures of sand castles online, and the children are experimenting with how much water and what containers work best for building sand castles. This entirely child-led interest is encouraging cooperation, planning, spatial reasoning, fine motor skills, and testing hypotheses. Sometimes unplanned learning is the most compelling!

We wish you a joyous last few nights of Chanukah and a Peaceful Shabbat!

Love,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Shaina