Dear Purple Room Families,

Something exciting is happening in the Purple Room! Every day for the past week, we have entered a “state of flow” in our classroom. “State of flow” is a term coined by the pioneering Hungararian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This is a sense of concentration and engagement that a person feels when completing a self-chosen task which is challenging but not overwhelming. When a person enters a state of flow, they feel focus, enjoyment, and a general sense of well-being. Have you ever felt this way when doing an enjoyable but difficult task, with elements of creativity, curiosity, and challenge?

In early childhood education, creating an environment that encourages a state of flow is paramount. Children who are able to choose their learning work, set their own challenges, and work until they have completed a self-set task, develop internal motivation and are more likely to succeed academically in the future. They connect learning with a sense of joy and calm. When you enter a classroom that is in a state of flow, there is a buzz of activity and purpose as children work and talk to each other and their morahs. There is a sense of joy and involvement. In the Purple Room, we have been observing children’s interests and abilities, adapting the materials available in the classroom, and extending the time they have to work. The children have learned to make choices, follow their interests, and extend their learning with guidance from the morahs. 

In the Purple Room, a state of flow can look like...

...working together to measure and compare lengths of classroom objects

...using an alphabet chart and talking to a morah to compose a letter, discussing letter sounds and shapes

...returning each day to the art center to build and expand a dollhouse made out of found materials, measuring and planning each step

...spending almost an hour(!) working together to build a block house for Turtle, testing construction ideas as they go

...building a bridge out of the outdoor construction blocks, conferring and adjusting until it is just right

...carefully arranging a beautiful table in the dramatic play area, discussing with a morah how to invite guests to a party, and then hosting a dinner party!

This is such a special time in the development of our classroom, as the students learn to trust and test their own ideas. It is such a joy to be able to guide them in this journey!

Thank you so much for joining us this week in Parent Teacher Conferences. Please remember that you can always reach us by Brightwheel if you have any questions about our class!

Shabbat shalom,

Morah Shoshi and Morah Shaina

 

 

Hello Purple Room Families,

What a wonderful week! So much learning is happening. 

Jewish Learning: Hachnasat Orchim

In this week’s parsha, Vayeira, we learned about Avraham and Sarah welcoming important messengers from Hashem to their home. This teaches us about the mitzvah of Hachnasat Orchim: welcoming guests. The Purple Room practiced Hachnasat Orchim in the Dramatic Play center, pretending to prepare food for guests and invite them in, just like Avraham and Sarah did.

 

We had a chance to practice hachnasat orchim! We invited the Peach Room to be our guests. The Purple Room talked about how we would welcome guests and prepare for their visit. The children agreed we should prepare a snack for the Peach Room and put away any items that would be unsafe for toddlers. We used kid chef knives to cut fruit and vegetables (real-life fine motor skills!). We put away scissors and loose parts, and covered up shelves that we didn’t want our Peach Room guests to touch.

 

Finally, our guests arrived! We served them our snacks, said a bracha together, and enjoyed each others’ company.

 

Aleph Bet Learning

We started off the year with an aleph bet circle time, but the Purple Room students like to MOVE! To meet their needs, we have incorporated a lot more full body movement into our learning. Here Morah Shaina leads an aleph bet racing game. The children run as fast as they can to match the letters! 

 

Math Learning

This week we introduced the ten frame: a math tool with 10 boxes divided into two sections of five each. This tool helps students visualize the relationships between numbers within 10, a necessary foundation for working in the base-ten system. Our ten frames are sturdy fabric ones to withstand outdoor learning. The Purple Room collected beautiful rocks that they were very excited to use for these lessons. The ten frames allow us to easily differentiate learning for many different levels of understanding. Using the same tools, one student might be working on one-to-one correspondence while another is learning to visualize addition within 10.

 

Board games are a wonderful way to incorporate social-emotional and academic learning. This is “Count Your Chickens,” a cooperative game. Students learn turn-taking and good sportsmanship while practicing their math skills. As they play, the morahs can observe students’ progress with counting, subitizing, and simple addition. Who understands that lining up the counters is a more efficient way to count? Who can glance at a pile of counters and say “that’s five” without counting? Who lands on a “plus one” spot and immediately knows how many chickens to collect without counting?

Literacy Learning

The Purple Room is having a lot of fun learning letter formation using the Wet-Dry-Try method. This method was developed by Handwriting Without Tears, a fabulous OT-created program that promotes multi-sensory learning. In Wet-Dry-Try, a teacher first writes a letter with chalk, saying the letter formation aloud (This being CJP, we sing it!). Then the student erases along the same lines with a wet sponge, dries along the same lines with a paper towel, and finally tries on their own with a small piece of chalk. This reinforces the letter formation sequence because the child is going through the motions several times to erase, dry, and then copy the letter. This also provides strong visual cues and builds confidence, because you can always see a faint outline of the letter. Using tiny bits of chalk or sponge promotes a “tripod grip” in a gentle way.

Doing Wet-Dry-Try for English and Hebrew letters.

This is just a small sample of what we do each week. There is so much learning happening in the Purple Room! When you come in for parent teacher conferences next week, you will be able to see our Documentation Board detailing our investigation of dragonflies. We look forward to seeing you, and hope you have a peaceful shabbat.

Love, 

Morah Shoshi & Morah Shaina

 

Hello Purple Room Families!

This week we learned about Parshat Lech Lecha, in which Avraham and Sarah followed Hashem and traveled to the land of Israel. This prompted discussions of travel, and how travel in the desert long ago would be different from travel now. Avraham and Sarah would have to pack all their food and water and belongings on camels and donkeys, and pitch tents to sleep in at night! We also continued our learning about insects, and began work on our own insects to hang in our classroom.

Fine Motor Learning

 

 

We learned about how Hashem promised Avraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, and created our own starry skies using tiny glass beads and buttons. Fine motor skills are such an important part of pre-K learning. Developing the “pincer grip” (grasping with thumb and forefinger) and the small muscles in the palm of the hand help build dexterity for handwriting, shoe tying, buttoning, and all the other life skills small children must learn. 

 

 

 

Other ways that we developed fine motor skills this week included play dough work and creating three dimensional art works by twisting wire. 

Jewish Learning

 

 

We had a very special treat this week-- we had the opportunity to go into the shul to help Rabbi Deitsch take out the Torah, and then look inside! We saw the actual parsha we have been learning about, and the children found Hebrew letters that they know. 

 

Learning about Avraham and Sarah’s travels to the land of Israel prompted lots of play and discovery. The children prepared food, packed up the playground cart, and hauled it around the playground as they pretended to journey through the desert. The children repeated and deepened this play over the course of the week, adding more provisions and discussion about the travel-- is the camel as big as a plane? How many people could ride on a camel?  

Science Learning

 

A dragonfly alighted right in front of us and stayed still for a long time! The children have been seeing these fascinating flyers darting past for weeks, but the chance to see one up close was truly mesmerizing. They noticed that the wings were translucent, the eyes are so big, and its mouth could move! After seeing our dragonfly and looking at others in books, we worked together to draw a diagram of a dragonfly. The children drew and labeled the parts of a dragonfly, and started gathering materials to build our own dragonfly.

Literacy Learning

 

 

The Purple Room enjoyed using a felt board this week to retell a current classroom favorite, Not a Box. The children could retell and expand on the story using felt pieces. We also stocked the library with books about insects as there is a lot of curiosity about this topic. The children learned how to mark interesting pages with sticky notes, and how to understand a diagram (no, the arrow and words are not a part of the insect itself!) In this way, they are learning how to reference books for knowledge.

We hope you are enjoying this marvelous weather, and that you have a great weekend.

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Shoshi & Morah Shaina