Aalva Class 2015-2016: Yom Kippur and Sukkot

Hello family and friends!

The past two weeks have been spent learning about Yom Kippur and Sukkot. We have learned so much about these Jewish holidays and what they represent. For those of you who are unfamiliar with these holidays, I'll give a quick explanation of what each represents and how we have been studying them.

Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. During this time of the year we spend time in self-reflection of how we can improve ourselves and also in forgiveness of those we have wronged. In the classroom we focused on our feelings, and how they affect others, as well as how we can be kind to those around us. We started our study of Yom Kippur by reading the story of Jonah. From this story we learned that even when we do something wrong, we can change our ways and be forgiven. We felt like this was a story that could be applied to our classroom throughout the rest of the year. We learned that there will always be times when we wrong our parents, friends, and teachers, but the beauty of this story is that we can also be forgiven. We've been putting this into practice this week by talking through our differences with friends we've hurt and talking about appropriate ways to ask for forgiveness. After the reading of our story, we let this overflow into our writing workshop time. It was a great way for the kids to make connections to the story and extend their learning.

We have also spent a lot of time talking about being kind to one another. One way of showing kindness is the giving of tzedakah. This is when we give to those in need. Each child made their own tzedakah box last week and put their first penny inside it. We have encouraged them to continue to fill their box and give to others. As we've talked about being kind, we read "The Kindness Quilt" by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. We had originally thought about making kindness posters but after reading the story, the kids decided they would rather make a kindness quilt like the one in our story. We took time to talk about ways we have been kind to others in the past and we brainstormed ways we can be kind throughout this school year. After our brainstorming session, each child spent time drawing a picture of what they thought it meant to be kind. After drawing, they put a border on their picture and added it to our quilt. The quilt has been laminated and is hanging up in the hallway. We thought it would be a good idea to keep this quilt throughout the year in our classroom as a reminder to always be kind. We hope to add to our quilt as the year progresses.

Sukkot is a time of joyous celebration after Yom Kippur. It is a time of harvest and many Jewish families make a "sukkah" outside their home. A sukkah is a temporary structure that represents the huts the Israelites would have built as they wondered through the dessert after leaving Egypt. The sukkah built today has temporary walls and a natural roof covering in which the stars can still be seen at night. Families spend time in the sukkah throughout the week and even eat meals in them. We spent time this week exploring the sukkah outside our school. Even though it is not complete yet, we wanted the kids to see what it looked like and talk about what it represents. We spent some time in the sukkah reading a story about Sukkot and having snack. Once the sukkah is complete with tables and lights, we will be spending more time in it eating snacks and reading stories. As we explored the sukkah we talked about different ways we would decorate a sukkah. Some of our children who have sukkahs at home told about the different colors and decorations they use to make their sukkah at home. We then came in the classroom and made some decorations of our own. I love how the kids extended this into their play. They were making their own decorations in the art center and some were building temporary structures in the blocks center. We plan on extending our study of Sukkot in the weeks ahead by talking about harvest, the season of fall, and how these effect us and our environment.

I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

Love,
Ms. Rachael

Here is a short list of some standards we worked on this week:

Approaches to Learning:

Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.

Social & Emotional:

Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
Develop strategies to express strong emotion with adult help.
Participate in group life of class.

Language & Literacy:

Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
Begin to distinguish between real and make-believe in stories read aloud.
Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
Explore books independently.

Mathematics:

Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
Investigate solutions to simple problems.
Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
Understand and use positional words to describe the location of objects (up, down, in, over, under, behind, on top of and in front of).
Organize and represent data with real objects.

Making our tzedakah boxes...