Winter – Cold and Ice!

Winter has come and the weather has changed! Brrr! It’s Cold!

As the season progresses, we talk about how the weather has changed! Snow! Sometimes it snows in the winter. We talked about how it might feel? – cold? soft? hard?

We also talked about ICE! Ice is cold, just like outside! It is also hard!
We also discovered that when you take ice away from the cold (this specific instance, the freezer) and in to a warmer place (our classroom) it begins to melt. We explored this while holding ice in our hands and moving them across a flat surface. We also noticed the trail of water it left behind!

Happy Chanukah!

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

One of the traditions that we learned during Chanukah is the tradition of lighting the menorah! The menorah has 9 candles – 8 for each night of Chanukah and 1 special candle – called the Shamash.
As we learned about the holiday, we used our fine motor skills to make our very own menorah!
To decorate the base of our menorah we had to use our whole hand to squeeze the handle of a water bottle to “spray” paint different colors.
The candle bases were pieces of wood dowels that we carefully dipped in to different water colors – some of us dipped them in to more than one color to give it a tye-dyed look!

Another tradition we learned about was the game of dreidel! This uses a lot of wrist control! We practice our wrist spinning while making art too! Dipping a dreidel in paint we spun it on a paper drediel – look at what they made!

Chaunkah is also a time to eat yummy foods! We helped make yummy chanukah cookies for our Chanukah party! We mixed the dough – carefully helping Morah pour the ingredients and mixing together, and then we got to add the decorations!! Yum!

Happy Chanukah!

Autumn Leaves are Falling Down!

The season of Autumn (fall) is upon us!
We have been talking about the season of Autumn and what kind of changes we see around us.

The leaves have started to turn colors! They are changing from green to red, orange and/or yellow! We are also noticing that they are falling off of the trees.

“Autumn leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down. Autumn leaves are falling down; red, orange, yellow and brown.” (tune – London Bridge)

Outside we saw the older kids put the leaves in piles and jump in them! This looked like fun and we asked to help! We took turns with a little rake (or picking up small piles in our arms) and piled them into a “big” pile. We then took turns jumping in to them!

We took autumn in to the classroom to explore some more! We filled our sensory bin with leaves from outside so we could look and feel them more. The longer they were inside, the more they changed. We squished them in our hands and they went CRUNCH! This was so much fun!

We explored different ways to paint with leaves too! First, we laid the leaf on the paper and painted the leaf with a paint roller. This was different than a regular paintbrush and it took a few tried for us to get used to it! We rolled over the leaf and when we were done, we slowly picked up the leaf to reveal the shape of the leaf underneath!
After we pulled up the leaf, we took the wet side with the paint and pressed it in to another sheet of paper and stamped it down. This left ANOTHER, but different, leaf shape.

October is also Fire Prevention month and we had a special visit from the local fire company! They talked to us about what to do in an emergency and showed us what they would look like dressed in their full uniform. After, they let some of us climb up into their bug red fire truck!

Sukkot

We have been busy learning about the Yom Tov day of Sukkot. Sukkot is the holiday that celebrates the end of the harvest season. During Sukkot, we spend time with our friends and family, eating meal in our Sukkah.

We enjoyed time with our friends in our Sukkah in our classroom, as well as the Sukkah outside.

 

We shared the holiday with our friends and families with supper in the Sukkah. Everyone helped to make a yummy treat for our supper! We helped make a gingerbread cake by helping Morah pour the ingredients, and then helped mix them together!

(Recipe can be found here : https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/gingerbread-cake )

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!!!