Dear Purple Room families,

    We hope you enjoyed the Shabbat celebration this morning! It was the culmination of so much learning. This month we have explored Shabbat through art, song, and stories. We have updated our Documentation Board with some of this learning, but in case you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, here are some of the highlights.

Learning Through Song

Singing is a wonderful way to build community and learn together! Each week, we sing Shabbat songs and brachot during our Shabbat Party. The Chicken Soup Song is a particular favorite. The children sing it as they pretend to prepare Shabbat meals in the Dramatic Play center. We also like to pretend to make huge pots of soup outside!

The Chicken Soup Song

To the tune of “London Bridge”

Put some chicken in the pot

Stir it up, nice and hot

Get it ready for Shabbat, for Shabbat

Put some…(carrots, onions, celery…)

Learning Through Play

Play is the most important way young children learn. When they play, they are collaborating, testing ideas, and building flexible thinking skills. The Purple Room loves to play Shabbat in the Dramatic Play center. They clean, cook, and set the table, then enjoy a Shabbat meal. They discuss with one another what they should do next, how they should prepare the food, and how to say the brachot.

Some quotes we’ve heard in the Dramatic Play area:

“I’m the challah boy! I say a hamotzi.”    

“Is it kiddush or hamotzi first?” 

“If you don’t know the bracha let’s say it together. I think I know it.”    

“For Shabbat lets have burgers and waffles.”    

“When you set the table each person gets a cup.”    

“Is this fancy for Shabbat? Shabbat should be fancy.”    

“If you pretend to light the candles be careful. It’s a fire. You move your hands slowly like this.”    

“Do you want to have bananas too? And grapes. And corn. And pizza. It’s the most food for Shabbat.”    

“We got to sweep! And mop! It’s almost Shabbat!”    

“Morah, we need a tzedakah box in our kitchen. We are giving tzedakah before Shabbat.”    

“If someone else wants to come they sit here. We put two tables to have lots of seats for all the Shabbat guests.” 

Learning Through Art

Action Art: The Purple Room talked about how Hashem worked so hard for six days to create the world, and then rested on Shabbat. What does it mean to work hard? What does it mean to rest? How does it feel in your body? We moved our bodies in active ways, and then practiced different ways to breathe deeply and rest. 

We listened to energetic music and drew at the same time! Our arms moved fast, and the shapes were big and spiky. We made dots and huge shapes that moved quickly across the page.

We listened to calm music and drew at the same time! Our arms moved slowly, and the shapes were curvy and wavy. It took longer to fill the page as we drew at a calmer pace.

The Shabbat Box

The culminating project for our Shabbat unit is our Shabbat box. Over the course of several weeks, each child created a kiddush cup, challah board, challah cover, candlestick, and a special box to hold these items. We discussed how we use each item and what makes it special. The Purple Room can remember their Shabbat learning for years to come as they use these creations!

 

 

Dear Purple Room Families,

    The children are engrossed in our Shabbat Unit. In the last few parshiot (weekly Torah portions), Terumah, Tetzaveh, and Ki Tisa, we have been learning about how the Jewish people built the Mishkan (sanctuary) in the desert. The people donated beautiful materials, such as gold and silver, special woods, and fabrics, to build each part of the Mishkan. We looked at artistic renderings of what the curtains, ark, and menorah would have looked like. The children were intrigued by these beautiful items, and we talked about why such lovely materials were used. What does it mean to make something special? What does it mean for an object to be holy? Why do we make objects that we use for mitzvot so beautiful? We went on a search for more beautiful mitzvah objects and spaces. In the shul we noticed the gold letters above the ark, the carved wood on the ark, the new tables, and the gold lettering on the siddurim. The children particularly liked finding chumashim (Torah books) with gold crowns on the spines. 

We continued this exploration of using beautiful objects for mitzvot as we worked on our Shabbat boxes.  These boxes will go home with each child next week at our CJP Shabbat Party. The children are busy painting, gluing and designing each part of their box.

 

 

How do you spell “Shabbat” in Hebrew? These students are conferring about where to place the letters.

As we learn more about Shabbat, the children have been exploring Shabbat through play! They enjoy setting up Shabbat meals in our dramatic play area.

 

Have a restful weekend, and see you next week on Tuesday!

Shabbat Shalom, 

Morah Shoshi and Morah Athena

 

“We built a rocket ship! We are blasting off to the moon!”

“These dinosaurs are running away! Let’s set a trap. We got ‘em! Go go go! Back to the Jurassic Jeep!”

Dear Purple Room Families,

    What a busy week! This was a week of teamwork and cooperation as we followed many different interests. 

   

Science Learning

    The Purple Room has turned into a greenhouse! We are growing so many plants. In a Reggio Emilia classroom, we follow the children’s interests. We had moved onto a new science topic, but the children remained fascinated with plants. We had a dish with dried beans out for an art project, and the children started taking them out to the playground to try to plant them. Since the children wanted to plant more seeds, we experimented with how to germinate them. Some seeds we put in cups with wet cotton balls, some we put in cups with soil, and some we put in baggies with wet paper towels and taped them to the window. We discovered that the ones that got warmth from the window germinated the fastest. It was very exciting to unwrap the paper towels and discover tiny roots emerging from the seeds! We now have all sorts of different beans sprouting. We will take care of them in our classroom until they are ready to transplant in the school garden.

Here is a root!

The curiosity about ramps, gravity, and speed continues. A student got the idea to build a “car-run” for his Hot Wheels car using the marble run materials. He and other friends worked on it for an entire work cycle, trying out many different designs. It was very frustrating that the cardboard wouldn’t hold the weight of his car. 

The next day, several classmates worked together to try to make a car-run that would work. They landed on the idea of using wooden blocks and furniture from the dramatic play area to support the ramps. You can see their finished design in the second picture below. Note how their design incorporates a ramp and blocks to stop the car from running off the end. Do you see the triangular blocks wedged under the rocking chair so it remains stationary? This work took several days and a lot of testing and refining of ideas!

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Jewish Learning

This week the Purple Room has really enjoyed a new davening practice– we have been doing our daily davening in the shul sanctuary. The children noticed that the high ceilings make our voices sound stronger when we sing. They feel very responsible when we use the “grown-up siddurs” to daven. This is also a wonderful opportunity to practice alef-bet skills– we go on letter hunts inside the siddur, and look for important words like Torah and Shema.

Literacy Learning

We often use a practice called shared writing to help students develop phonics skills and learn to write. In shared writing, a child comes up with a sentence he or she wants to communicate. The teacher helps the child count the words in the sentence as we repeat it out loud. This helps students learn to differentiate between the concepts of  letters and words. The teacher writes down blank spaces for each word, and then works with the student to write the sentence, identifying each sound in each word. For some students, this might involve identifying letters as the teacher says the sounds, or learning to segment sounds within the word. The teacher writes down any letters or words that are too complex. Then we read our message together! With shared writing, children can express ideas that are important to them.

When your snack makes you mad– write about it! We worked hard on this important message, which helped diffuse some big feelings. 

The Purple Room was concerned that our cart of plant seedlings might get hurt when we put it out on the patio. We used shared writing to create a sign asking other classes to please be careful of the plants.

The sign reads: “Please do not touch. Plants are growing. Please go to the playground instead. Yes: plants. No: bikes on plants. No bikes driving near plants.”

Purposeful Work

Children love to feel needed and engaged in purposeful work. This week we had several amazing opportunities to plan and work together on tasks that were needed in our school. Morah Tara asked if the Purple Room would be interested in helping wash off the old mural in the hall as we prepare to paint a new mural. The children tested different scrub brushes and types of soap, and also worked together to mop the floor as we went. This became a largely child-directed project, as the children conferred with one another about the best way to scrub, what tools we needed, and worked together on writing a caution sign to tape up, warning others of the wet floor. They asked to continue this work for several days, until we had scrubbed all that we could.

On Thursday, we had a very exciting event. Our new, beautiful, durable play kitchen arrived in a HUGE box! We all worked together to set up our new kitchen. 

First, the children helped haul out the old kitchen. This required teamwork as they conferred on how to lift it and get it out the door. 

Then, we unboxed! Everyone got a turn to carry packing materials out to the big dumpster. This was a very popular job.

How can we all help carry this huge piece of cardboard?

The kitchen arrived built, but the handles needed to be installed. We took turns using the screwdriver to attach them.

All that Styrofoam packing material got all over the classroom! The children tried sweeping, but the Styrofoam just floated away. Someone discovered that when it got wet it could be swept, which led to lots of teamwork spreading water and then sweeping. Finally, we got the big mop from the janitor closet to mop up all the water. The mop wringer was a tool of particular fascination. The children came up with a system to ensure that everyone got a chance to wring out the mop. 

And now we get to enjoy an amazing new kitchen! It is even more exciting because we worked together to add it to our classroom.

We hope you have a restful Shabbat!

Shabbat Shalom!

Morah Shoshi and Morah Athena

 

Dear Purple Room Families,

We are diving into the school-wide Shabbat unit! We will be learning about how we celebrate Shabbat, the mitzvot of Shabbat, and why Shabbat is so special to the Jewish people. All of this learning will culminate in the CJP Shabbat Party on 2/25.

Jewish Learning

To start off our Shabbat unit, we talked as a class about our weekly Shabbat Party. We want the children to feel that Shabbat is their mitzvah, and that they can come up with their own unique ways to make Shabbat special. We talked about what we do now for our Shabbat Party, and what we might do to make it even more fun. Here is the list of ideas we came up with:

Purple Room Shabbat Plan

• Use a shiny tablecloth

• Get nice dishes that we can decorate

• Use fancy kiddush cups, maybe with gems or sparkles

• Have more food, and make it ourselves. Foods we want to make for Shabbat Party: latkes, lemonade, dessert

• Make decorations and hang them up on Friday. The decorations should have sparkles

• Use REAL Shabbat candles and be so careful

• Play music when we put up the decorations

• Bubble machine!

• Decorate our door for Shabbat

• Keep all our Shabbat supplies in a special box that we decorate. It should have sparkles too

• Wear crowns

We are going to honor the children’s ideas to the extent possible! (We will need lots of sparkles.) This week, we worked on “nice dishes we can decorate.” We got real dishes and drew our own designs. These will be our Shabbat dishes for the rest of the year.

Literacy Learning

This week we did a sensory art project for learning letter shapes and sounds. We glued beans to large cardboard in the shapes of the letters. The children chose which letters they wanted to decorate and what patterns of beans they would use. When the glue dries, it is so fun to run fingers over the letter shapes as we say their sounds. This type of tactile activity turns learning into a multisensory experience: children can hear the letter sound and feel its shape at the same time. It is also fantastic fine motor practice, as they pick up each bean and carefully place it. 

Math Learning

The Purple Room is fascinated with “big numbers” and “going to one hundred.” We have been counting, using the abacus, and using the hundreds board to explore this interest. If your child is counting past 20 and mixes up the decade changes (29-30, 39-40 etc) please don’t worry. This is a big concept, usually not introduced until Kindergarten. The important thing is their exposure to these concepts and that they feel the joy of mathematical discovery. We are following the children’s interest in these large numbers, not expecting mastery of the concept.

Our classroom hundreds board has many different ways to work. It is a wooden board with small wooden tiles numbered 1-100, in rows of 10. One way to use it is to put a card inside the board with each number labeled, and then match the tiles to the numbers. A much more difficult way is to remove the card and try to line up the tiles 1-100 on your own (most of the Purple Room is not ready for this yet.) This week we came up with a new way to use it, for those who have mastered matching the numbers and want more challenge. The morah sticky-tacked a few numbers to the blank board and then placed the labeled card next to the hundreds board. Using these guides, many children were able to put the tiles in from 1-100!

Would you be willing to donate a learning tool to our class? This looks like it would suit our math learning perfectly. Please let Morah Shoshi know if you can.

https://www.learningresources.com/penguins-on-icetm-maths-activity-set

Social Emotional Learning

This is the most important part of our learning! When the children play, the Morahs observe to see how they are interacting, and what we can focus on to help them develop their social and emotional skills. This week we have noticed that some of the children say “no one wants to play with me” when they mean “no one wants to play what I want to play.” This gives us an opportunity to coach the children in explaining their idea to others, being adaptable and their idea, or deciding if they want to join others in a different activity or play their idea on their own. So many communication, planning, and self-regulation skills are contained within “do you want to play with me?”

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Shabbat Shalom, and have a wonderful weekend,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Athena