Yom Tov Rosh Hashanha

The young toddler class has been busy learning about a Yom Tov holiday, the Jewish New Year called Rosh Hashanha. During this time we eat yummy, sweet foods – like apples dipped in honey- and wish our friends “Shana Tovah!”

We have been talking primarily about the colors of apples that we see – red, yellow and green. We got to enjoy pieces of the apples and even the sweet honey! Yum!

On Rosh Hashanah we listen to the shofar.

Toooooooo..tooo tooo tooo tooo…tooooooooooo!

We got to hold a shofar and tried to blow the shofar too.

Working in our fist grips, we painted a Rosh Hashanah banner. We first painted yellow using a big sponge brush. Then we “dotted” another color – red – with a shaving brush using an up and down motion. Finally we used our little fingers to stamp on the last color – green.

We rounded out the week making yummy apple honey cake.

SHANA TOVAH!!!

New School Year!

It has been a busy week for the Young Toddler class!!

We’ve spent our first week at school exploring the different centers and brand new toys!

We ended the week with our first class Shabbat party of the school year!

We felt the texture of the challah dough -it felt squishy as we poked and pat the dough!

We sang Shabbat songs and said our blessings and then enjoyed our grape juice and challah!

We can’t wait to share with you everything that we do this year!

Winter Fun!

Snow! We talked about snow before we got to go outside and play in it! We looked at what it looked like – the color. We looked at what it might feel like – cold? soft? hard?

We enjoyed getting to touch it, throw it and explore it!

Red, Orange, Green, Blue

We have been busy working this January on our big art project!

Our Art Unit focused on the study of colors. As we grow, we are learning many new things. We see lots of things in our environment and those things have COLORS.

We started identifying our colors in books. Morah showed us books with familiar object and showed us what each color was called. The more we looked at our books, the more we could find in our classroom and around school!

Everywhere we look there is color. We see RED in our lunchboxes and train set. We see ORANGE in our food, in our blocks. We see GREEN in the grass outside, and the paint on our art shelf. We see BLUE in in the sky and our water bottles. We see YELLOW in our yummy bananas in our snacks, and in our Legos. We see PURPLE in our books and in our sweaters.

We continued learning about colors through our art project. We each got our own plain, brown box. On each side, we painted a different color – red, orange, green, blue, yellow and purple.
We painted them in different ways. Some friends painted with slow, careful movements and some friends painted with quick, fast movements. We tried long, slow strokes. We tried short, quick strokes. We painted with small brushes and medium brushes. We also painted with big sponge brushes. Each movement and brush created a different effect and covered a certain amount of space

 

After the paint was dry, we added some more pieces to our boxes. We added some soft, flat, round, shiny, and rough pieces to the appropriate colors. This challenged our sorting skills, as well as our hand eye coordination. We used our pincer grips to pick up the small pieces and carefully placed them in the right colors. For some of the colors, we also started by gently tossing the pieces onto the box and seeing where and how they landed.

Art can also be interactive! With the color block Morah made, we played a fun game! We took turns “rolling” the block and waited for it to stop! We looked at the color that stopped on top and then we found an item in the classroom that matched that color! We found lots of things! We found Legos, trains, soft blocks, wood blocks, lunchboxes, shoes, and more!

 

We enjoyed having every one come to the Art Gallery Show to see all of our hard work!

Winter – Cold and Ice!

A new season has begun! Brrrrr! It’s cold!

We have begun to talk about the season of Winter. During the winter season, the weather becomes cold – we need to change the way we dress when we go outside! We wear our big jackets, our cozy hats, warm gloves/mittens, and sometimes our boots that keep us dry!

We also talked about ICE!  Ice is cold, just like outside! It is also hard.  When you take the ice out (of the freezer) into a warmer room, it begins to melt. We discovered this while holding it in our hands and moving colored ice cubes around on paper. As we moved them on the paper, we also noticed the trail of colored water it left behind! We couldn’t hold them for too long though because they were so cold! We had to take turns and warm up our hands before we could do some more!

 

Warmest wishes for the new year!

Chanukah PJ Party

Happy Chanukah!!!

This week we spent time learning about some of the traditions that are celebrated with the Yom Tov Chanukah

We play games with a dreidel and a gelt (sometimes they are chocolate coins!). We pinch the tiny handle of the dreidel and with a twist of our strong wrists we spin the dreidel and watch it spin! To practice our spinning we dipped the dreidels in paint and spun them on a blank dreidel to make swirls on the paper.

During Chanukah, we also eat lots of yummy foods cooked in oil!!! We helped ,ale doughnuts for our PJ party! We help pour and mix the dough! We are so glad everyone was able to join us for the party and had a good time!

Happy Chanukah!!!

Chanukah

A Yom Tov holiday is here! Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, is a joyous time that we spend with friends and family singing, playing games, and giving gifts!!

One of the traditions that we learned we celebrate during Chanukah is the lighting of the Menorah. The menorah has 8 candles (one for each night of Chanukah) and a helper candle – the Shamash.
As we leaned about the holiday – we put our skills to work and made our very own menorah!
We mixed the salt dough – an air dry clay, patted and rolled the dough flat, and then used a cookie cutter to cut the pieces out. After they were dry we used our fine motor to hold the paintbrushes and painted them!

This week are going to learn more about the games we play, as well as the yummy foods we get to eat!!
We are making something yummy for the pajama party this week!

Fall Pictures

During these fall months we enjoyed the fall weather as well as the things that fall brings.

We learned about pumpkins, gourds, corn, and pine cones.
We watched as the tree leaves changed colors – and have fallen to the ground. One of the fun activities we got to do was jump in the leaves! We helped Morah Kim, Morah Aimee and Morah Wendy scoop the leaves in to a giant pile in the playground and then we JUMPED!

These are some of the pictures from our fun time in the fall leaves

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the time of year that we reflect on what we are thankful for, and help others that may need help. For our class, we focus on helping Morah and our friends in the classroom, and saying “please” and “thank you.”

We listened to the story of Thanksgiving and learned how the Native Americans helped the Pilgrims when they came to America (on the Mayflower). We can help too! We help our friends when they are sad and give them a hug. We can help give our friends a ride on bikes. We can help Morah put the toys away at clean up time.

All of the things that we can do to help are good Mitzvot! We made our very own Mitzvot trees – that we can use to share the wonderful things we can and have done!

We also helped prepare food for our thanksgiving feast with our mommies and daddies! We made the yummy cranberry relish! Using our strong muscles and wrist control we were able to smash the cranberries and oranges needed for the relish!

Thank you every one that came to the Thanksgiving Feast, we hope you had a wonderful time! Happy Thanksgiving!

*I’m A Little Helper* (Tune – I’m a Little Tea Pot)
I’m a little helper, short and sweet.
There are two words that I can share.
When I need some help, hear me shout!
“Please” and “Thank you for your help!”

*Cranberry Relish Recipe*
1 unpeeled orange – cut in to eighths and seeded
1 12oz package of Fresh or frozen cranberries (we used fresh)
3/4 – 1 cup of sugar

The recipe calls for a food processor – for a smoother relish sauce you can use a processor – we opted for a chunky relish for our dish
Place half of the cranberries and half of the orange slices in food processor container. Process until mixture is evenly chopped. Transfer to bowl. Repeat with remaining cranberries and orange slices. Stir in sugar.

Fall: Leaves

This week we explored leaves – there are lots of  leaves to look at at school! We have been watching one particular tree on our nature walks to see how much its leaves are turning!

We collected some leaves from our walks to look at in the classroom. We look at their shape and their color. We also notice that after a few days, the leaves feel different than when we brought them in the classroom. (We also noticed that some of the other trees in the playground are turning other colors than red, like the one we have been watching on our walks – some of them are turning yellow instead of red!)

We have been painting leaves too! We have used fall colors to paint cutouts of leaves and we have also painted ON leaves – when we took the leaves off, you could still see the leaf!

We also celebrated another birthday! Happy Birthday Benjamin!