Yom Kippur

This week in the purple room we learned all about Yom Kippur.

On Monday we learned that on Yom Kippur many adults fast, but the children are not allowed to fast. Our friends learned that we wear white clothing so we look like angels.  We also don't wear leather shoes on Yom Kippur.  It is a special day to do teshuva and say sorry for anything we may have done wrong over the past year.  We daven to Hashem to write us in the book of life for a wonderful sweet year!

On Tuesday our friends learned about Kaparot, we take a live hen or rooster and turn it over our heads 3 times and say a pasuk.

In our math center this week, we played the game uno.  You can learn a lot from Uno! We matched colors, numbers, counted our cards and had fun playing a game while learning.

On Wednesday and Thursday we read the story of Yona and the whale.  We spoke about how he didn't listen to Hashem and was swallowed by a big fish, but he did Teshuva and Hashem forgave him. 

We discovered that we can use our math rods for building a maze! It was lots of fun. We tried to balance a pillow, a cup and a bell while counting our steps walking through the maze and trying not to drop the pillow, cup or ring the bell.  This was very hard and very funny.

In our out door play ground our friends had to clean up all the toys and help Morah move the stumps to create new seats all over our play ground, the stumps were very heavy but we learned that if we turn them over and work together we can roll them to their new spot.

Have a great weekend and easy fast.
Morah D

Building our own Shul

Rosh Hashana is almost here! In the purple room we learned all about the different names of Rosh Hashana, we ate green and red apples to see which one is sweet and sour and dipped sweet apples into honey for sweet new year. Our friends learned about teshuva, and tashlich, and what we say on Rosh Hashana.

SHANA TOVA
Our dramatic area was filled with pictures of a round challah, shofars for friends to feel and blow, candles for them to light and say a bracha, apples and honey for them to try and a machzors for them to daven with.

Our block area was filled with pictures of different shuls, so our friends built there own shul, an Aaron for the Torahs, and seats for them to sit and daven.  We even had Rabbi Tzvi come blow the shofar in our new shul. The next day in our block area our friends built an Aaron Kodesh next to Kitchen 18, and they only served meat-not dairy, because Kitchen 18 doesn't have pizza.

Thursday was a busy day with baking honey cake.  We filled up the whole school with a holiday smell, that reminded Ben and Shimmy that they made a lemon cake for their grandpas birthday.
Nosson said "that's cool, I will need a cake when I'm Bar Mitzvah'd".
Ben said "call us when it's your Bar Mitzvah and we'll make you a cake".

Shares this week
Vella brought in her blue stone that she loves "I can see the whole carpet when you look through it" and again it was hard.
Nosson brought a monster truck "The wheels spin, some of it is glass"
Ben brought an ambulance "It's white on top gray on the bottom" Nosson said "No it's silver".
Shimmy brought a butterfly "It's made of wood, it's smooshy ".
Nechama brought in her bobcat, the whiskers were made of strings and it's eyes were hard.

Have a good weekend & Shabbat shalom
Morah D

PS Please see the Facebook group for lots more pictures of our week!

The beginning of Rosh Hashana learning!

This week in the purple room we discussed what everyone did during the long weekend.

Vella said " I played and went to bed."

Nosson said " I watched a video, and played on my Ipad, and I went to the park with my cousins the Lipskers. "

Ben said " I went to a new park and we didn't see anything it was so dark."

Shimmy said " I went to snow."

Nechama said " i went to Target and bought a dinosaur."  which she brought on her share day.

Our friends are very excited that we finished  our calendar!  After so much fun and hard work we were finally able to put our calendar together.  While we were putting the calendar together we enjoyed remembering who wrote each number and letter. We learned the days of the week in Hebrew and English, and we learned that Hebrew letters are also numbers.
 

During our quiet time we are still have lots of fun while learning independently. Each friend wrote there full names in Hebrew and English using dry erase markers.  Later during the week we added writing Hebrew letters, upper case ABC, and numbers 1-10, learning that the number 10 is made of two numbers 1 and 0.

  

Rosh Hashana is close by, so our friends started learning about the different names of Rosh Hashana, why we blow the Shofar, why we eat apples dipped in honey, and much more. To have a fun discussion about the holiday Morah D hid objects that pertain to Rosh Hashana in balloons filled with water and froze them.  The next day our friends had to chisel the objects from the ice and tell us about why and what the object is used for.

Share day started last week. Each friend brings in something very special to them, they tell all our friends about it, the class is able to ask questions and have a chance to feel/touch what they brought.

Last week Nosson brought a sling shot that has many colors and he showed us how to use it.

Last week Vella brought in a hard-not-soft doll named Claudine " I pretend to play with it and I love it"

Last week Ben brought in his Spiderman that "He has a bottom which says 4 years and up."  Nosson replied "Spiderman wears leggings and underwear on top"

Last week Nechama brought a fluffy pilliow that she has had for a very long time and she sleeps with it.

Last week Shimmy brought in Dusty the plane and boat "it lands in water, it is red and black and white"

   

This weeks share.

Shimmy brought a ball and a Frisbee that is purple, the Frisbee was hard but the ball was soft.

Ben brought a tortoise that is sharp, sticky, and smells like clay, AND OF COURSE ITS HARD.

Nechama's share came all the way from target to visit us. He is very hard. Nechama also showed us the correct way the dinosaur roars.  

Vella brought her blue stone like the letter Ll and she really really really loves it.

Nossson brought in a snake that opens its mouth and its not hard on the bottom.

Shabbat Shalom Morah D

Calendar for the New Year!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
  In the purple room this week we worked on our Hebrew calendar. All of our friends wrote the Hebrew days, months, year and numbers. Look out for the official Purple Room calendar next week, made entirely by our class! 

  Mitzva was a big topic this week, learning what a mitzva is and how we can do more mitzvos through out the day.
Nosson said " To help someone, and say' please can I have'. If we do a mitzva Hashem gets closer."
Ben " Light candles"
Batya (Vella) "I put on my shoes and say Thank you to my mommy."
Shimmy " Say Thank you to my mommy."
Nechama " Saying Thank you."



Many mitzvos happen every day in our class.  Vella was running around in the classroom and Nechama said "Vella don't run it's the rule, you can get hurt. Stop I don't want you to get hurt your my best friend."

Our class room mitzva we spoke about this week is saying Hi and how are you when we meet new people and our friends.



















Our sensory bin this week has been filled with dirt and play food, our friends searched through the dirt to 'dig up' the food and told everyone the bracha for that food.











   Our math area this week has all been about numbers recognizing them and counting. We used our puzzle pictures to count the number of pictures and connect them to the right number

Our block area was filled with pictures this week of buildings, parks, castles, roads, and playgrounds.
Ben and Shimmy built a castle on a hill.
Ben said: "No it's not a hill it's a volcano"
Shimmy said: " Morah D all the blocks don't fit we need a screw driver."

It was another wonderful week full of learning and exploring.  Looking forward to next week when we will begin to learn about Rosh Hashana.

Shabbat Shalom!

Morah D

Welcome to Pre-K

Welcome back to another fantastic year at CJP! We started off the school meeting new friends and talking about our Summer.

Batya (Vella) Spent her summer "learning silly letters".
Nechama went to Bear-izona "I saw black bears, white wolves, and a fox".
Ben went to Disney "I went to downtown Disney, its a hotel. There was a monorail slide under."
Shimmy went to Disney too "We went to  snow and saw a wolf."
Nosson traveled all over "I go to the water park with my floaties and goggles, I lost a blue thing on my goggles, I went to NY on a flight and someone picked us up."  So if someone found Nosson's blue thing from his goggles please bring it to the Purple room!

All our friends were so excited to see our new room and all of the new centers.We have a library with many books and it is also a quiet space if anyone needs some time to themselves.  Dramatic Play is where all of our friends can dress up, cook, set up a Shabbat table and let there imagination take them away.
 



















Block and Circle time: This area is very special, during circle time we pray to Hashem and have very important discussions about our feelings, parsha, brachos, and many other lessons.  Our friends also use this area for blocks where they have been building parks, zoos, their own homes.



Math and Science: Our friends learn numbers using our new math materials like the spindle box. We also have 3 new friends in our science center: a tortoise named Shelly who loves lettuce and 2 Parakeets named Ricky and Lucy who loves to sing and play with toys.



This week we have been going outside to document the progression of our playground, each friend has been using a paper and colored pencils to draw what they see and add anything new as the build our playground.
When I asked them what they drew these were their answers:
"Nechama drew trees
Ben drew tire tracks
Nosson drew bike track and steps
Batya (Vella) drew the rainbow class " because I love Imie"
Shimmy drew the hose and bike track".

The purple room friends have been working on writing their names in Hebrew and English. We are also working on creating our own calendar.  We have been practicing writing each day of the week, the numbers 1-31 and decorating them with branches, buttons, glitter, sugar, cocoa, sparkles, and googly eyes. This has been a very exciting, imaginative and educational week.

Shabbat Shalom.  Looking forward to a great week next week!

Morah D

The Beginning of the End (of Preschool)

Documentation for the week of May 15-19, 2017 

Stumps did not Stump the Rainbow Class!

There was a very interesting situation that occurred on the stumps this week. It was truly impressive to watch the children negotiate and problem solve through it! At first, most of the Rainbow Class was hopping from stump to stump in a circle. Oree and Bayla were experimenting with jumping over one stump to the next one in the circle. They were very nervous about it, but also brave! Ariel F. and Lucy have mastered this skill, and were also attempting to skip stumps as they jumped. Imie, Hillel, and Leah were jumping from one stump to another without skipping. The challenge in this work was to make sure that the stump that one child was hoping to jump to was open for them without another child already standing there. This was difficult with so many friends on the stumps at one time! Everyone was able to use calm voices and ask their friends nicely to move so that they could reach their individual goals.

Several friends then chose to run away and play Elsa and Ana- a game they had previously started playing and forgotten about. Hillel and Eliya both wanted to be Olaf. They each tried to convince the other to be Christoph, but neither of them wanted to be. Leah and Oree took over and created a guessing game to decide who would be Olaf. Hillel won the game. Eliya tried again to convince Hillel to let him be Olaf. Leah suggested that there could be two Olafs since there was more than one Ana and Elsa. Both boys disagreed. They decided to play another guessing game. Leah led the game this time, and Eliya one. Once all of the roles were decided, they went into their imaginary play.

Lucy, Imie, and Ariel F. chose to stay on the stumps. They were able to negotiate their way around with fewer people much more easily. Then something interesting happened: Oree and Bayla returned to the stumps and wanted to sit on them. Since they had been jumping earlier, they understood that the children who were jumping needed a stump to be open if they were going to jump to it. Without much discussion at all, Oree and Bayla continued to move from one stump to another and sit so that their friends could continue their jumping work. This went on for several minutes. At the same time, Imie was afraid to jump from a certain stump, because the space in between was larger so she kept jumping all the way around the circle in one direction and then returned around the circle in the other direction. Lucy and Ariel F. were continuing to jump in one direction, but they were skipping some stumps and not skipping others. 

The children's ability to work through this challenge with such ease shows how much they have grown. They were able to plan, predict, and execute their personal work while having a vast awareness of the friends around them. The children respected each other and each other's work. There were times that the children grew frustrated, but they did not lash out or give up. They took breaths, calmed their bodies down, and used their words kindly when they asked a friend to move. 

Human Piles and Human Pyramids

On Tuesday afternoon the children were getting a bit rowdy. They were singing and dancing while holding hands. At one point they chose to pile on top of each other near the library mirror. They were having lots of fun until two friends got hurt in the human pile.

Morah Tara suggested that instead of a pile, they could try to create a human pyramid! They looked at a picture of a human pyramid together, and started to mimic the picture. This moved into an exploration of body types. Our friends who were very tall and strong needed to be on the bottom while our friends who were smaller needed to be on top. The children spoke to each other about what their bodies were like in relation to each other, and decided where each friend should be in the pyramid. Hillel really wanted to be on the top and Lucy really wanted to be on the bottom, but they realized that that wouldn't be safe for everyone's bodies. We built a few human pyramids after that!

End-of-the-Year Artwork

We began to work on an art project for the children to take home at the end of the year. On Monday we painted canvases and let them dry. 

Next we gave the children papers with boxes on them. Each box had the name of a child in our class underneath it. The children worked to draw a picture or write a message to each of their friends in our class. After that, they cut the boxes out and found a bowl with that child's name on it. 

Next week we will use mod podge to put the papers along with a class photo onto the canvases! We thought that this would be a great project for the end of the year, because it allows the children to express themselves, provide a caring gift to each of their classmates, and have something to hang on their wall at home to remember the Rainbow Class!