Chanukah Celebration Week

Hello family and friends,

What a busy Chanukah week we have had in the Aalva class. Last week we made our menorahs out of clay and this week we were able to paint them since they dried over the weekend. I was so impressed by their attention to detail and how much time they spent painting their menorahs. As we painted we talked more about the characteristics of menorahs and what some of our menorahs at home looked like.

This week during Torah time with Morah Devorah we made latkes!! We talked about the general concepts of a recipe. We discussed different types of measurements and how combining ingredients creates a new substance. We discussed the importance of reading and following directions so that we get the correct result from our recipe. The kids really enjoyed adding the ingredients and following the directions as we read the recipe. After we added all the ingredients and stirred the mixture, we took the uncooked latkes to the kitchen for some volunteer parents from the elementary school to cook. Our final result was absolutely delicious!! We really enjoyed eating our latkes for snack.

Another fun thing we did this week was continuing to add Chanukah decorations to our classroom. Monday morning we brought out our classroom menorah. Every morning we have added a candle to our menorah and said the blessings as a class! Last week we put up the sun catchers, Chanukah banner, and Jewish flag. This week we decided to make dreidels and hang them from the ceiling!  As we decorated our dreidels we concluded that since they would be hanging it would be best to decorate both sides so that it could be seen from all directions. Everyone was SO excited to watch us hang their dreidels in the classroom. One day as the air conditioning came on, one student noticed that our dreidels were spinning! Everyone talked in amazement about how the dreidels spun just like they do when you played the game. It was a great way to talk to them about the wind blowing and how even though we cannot see wind we can see it move objects and we can feel it when the air blows around us.

The most exciting thing this week was definitely our Chanukah play, put on by all the Morahs. We practiced every day this week and I truly believe they did a great job today! I am so proud of all of their hard work. We even got to sit down and watch the entire school play and they did a magnificent job staying in their seats and showing respect to all the other classes by watching their performances. I hope you enjoyed seeing their performance. If you didn’t get to see it I have placed some pictures at the bottom. It was a little hard to get a good picture since the lights were off but I think they still turned out great.

Have a great weekend. Love,

Ms. Michelle

 

Approaches to Learning:

• Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of actives, tasks, and learning centers.
• Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.
• Understand that a task can be accomplished through several steps

Social & Emotional:

• Stand up for rights much of the time.
• Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
• Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.

Language & Literacy:

• Retell one or two events from a story read aloud.
• Incorporate favorite parts of literacy texts into play activities.
• Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
• Make connections to prior knowledge, other texts, and the world in response to texts read aloud.

Mathematics:

• Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
• Begin to show an awareness of numbers in the environment.
• Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
• Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.