Bits and pieces



Getting the show and share bag is always a highlight for our children, but sometimes finding something for that focus letter is difficult.  Amelia was so happy she got an" E" since she could bring in a picture of her sister Ellie.



Zoey brought in an elephant puppet and had great clues so her classmates could guess what it was.  We can always tell when the kids have had some adult assistance in thinking of the clues and we really appreciate your help.  This is a chance to talk about the important characteristics of the object, much like being able to find the main idea in a story.

Building in the block center is a daily occurrence.  This class likes to incorporate MANY items from all the different baskets.  Patrick placed the Lincoln Logs like ramps to get into his hotel.

Here is another instance of a ramp and how Govind internalized the lesson from a few weeks ago.

The children are getting so much better at working together . These boys were very pleased with this building. At clean up time, they are also learning to work together.  We continue to stress the importance of returning materials to the correct basket!

Charlotte and Zoey are often in the dramatic  play area.  Are they getting ready to go to a concert?



Or maybe they are going to a wedding!





The children love to look and touch the giant gourd in our science center.  Daniel has traced and cut a paper gourd and is adding cubes to measure  its length.



Jake, Emma and Zoey are doing the same thing.  Depending on how close to the paper pattern the children were in tracing and cutting, their gourd measured anywhere from 10 -13 cubes.

Still much shorter than the real one!

We read Mrs. McNosh and the Great Big Squash, and are in the middle of making a class book based on this story.  Thanks again to Alex and his family.  This one gourd inspired a good deal of learning!





Jennifer's Torah lesson on the parasha of Noah was fun for the kids.  After hearing the story, each child got one animal card and then they had to find their match. 

After finding their match, the children came up and acted out their animals for everyone to guess.

At the shuk, inspecting the beautiful fall fruits and vegetables.

Emma, Briana, and Amelia are waiting for Charlotte to count her money as she makes her purchase.  The children enjoyed shopping at the shuk.

Saul is putting his extra money in the tzedakah box. We were very proud of his decision to use his extra money to help others!

The Ocean

The girls are fishing with magnetic poles for the many different ocean inhabitants, with scarves representing the ocean waters.  Some of the small pieces on the scarves were magnetic while others were not.  The children had to share space and the fishing poles. As they  wiggled their poles onto the magnetic fish, we heard lots of conversation and advice!

This time we are fishing at snack.  Pretzel rods, cream cheese with cheerios and raisins as the "catch".

What about the children who didn't like cream cheese?  Jake and Saul did some great problem solving.  Jake carefully balanced that cheerio right on the edge of his pretzel....we have no idea how he maneuvered it into his mouth!  Saul bit into the pretzel so he'd have a sharp edge and then fished his cheerios that way.

Some cheerful and successful anglers.

We learned about jellyfish and then helped the children think of some different ways they could make the bodies and the waving tentacles. 

Charlotte and Saul chose to use coffee filters, markers and water filled eyedroppers for their bodies.  Squeezing the eyedropper is great for finger strengthening.  When the water drops onto the markers the children get a chance to see color mixing in action.  Since each child's placement of colors was different, the resulting colors were different too....prompting interesting scientific observations.

Emma is adding bubble wrap tentacles.  We learned that when the tentacles grab onto a fish there's a substance in them that paralyzes the fish.  The children loved acting this out and freezing "like statues".

Alex is learning to tie knots in the ribbon so his tentacles will stay on.

Suri proudly shows off her completed jellyfish.  Did you know a group of jellyfish is called a smack?  Come in the room and see our smack of jellyfish hanging on the clothesline!

After reading Chris Butterworth's wonderful story, The Shyest Fish in the Sea , the children made seahorses. Amelia
decided to make "twin" seahorses!

Saul is cutting his big seahorse.

Daniel is choosing between tissue paper, torn construction paper and pipe cleaners in order to make the fins on the back and head of his  seahorse.

Here's Patrick with his finished project.  The seahorse bodies were made with watered down acrylic paint placed on top of an inch of water.  There certainly was some science involved in this process, but we are quite sure the children were more impressed with the magical movement of the paint as they swirled a knife through the water.  They were also quite interested in the life of a seahorse and how the baby seahorses are independent from birth.  You can read some of their comments on our ocean bulletin  board.

Our visit to the Dallas World Aquarium

Charlotte is feeding one of the birds.

The sea otters seemed to love our class (and vice versa!)  The kids sat and watched, mesmerized by the playful movements of the sea otters. The children did not want to leave the otters,but as you can see from the next few pictures, they really enjoyed all the exhibits!

Waiting for the bus to take us back to school.  Our first field trip was a big success!

What A Week !!!

Where did we get this giant gourd? What are we going to do with it?  Look for next week's blog to see the many ways we'll incorporate the gourd into our learning!!  Thank you to Alex and his family for buying (and carrying!) this very large gourd for us.

The children were trying to see if they were as tall as the unifix line they had all made together.  What they did discover is that Jake and Patrick are about the same height!

Every day  we count the number of days we have been in school.  Each tenth day  we get a visit from "Zero the Hero" who  always leaves us a zero surprise.  On Monday, when we reached the 30th day of school,  Zero left us "zero kisses".  You can see the children using the stickers to make unique designs.  Some children sorted by color while others had a different plan.  The children's hands and eyes  have to work together to peel those tiny  stickers off the page.  Zero helped us to have our fine motor workout that day! 

  During the past few weeks, every child was given the opportunity to tell us something they could see in our room.  Their answers allowed the children to express themselves orally and in print.  Every sentence began with the same two words, "I see......" On Wednesday, as each child entered the class, our literacy challenge was to find the words" I "and" see" somewhere in our room.  Govind found one of the words on our easel.

Briana found the word "I' in the dramatic play center!

Emma found the word "see" by the computer!

Charlotte shows us the word "see" that she found hidden under the circles on our board!

Noor found the word "see" and what she thought was the word "see" until she compared the two words.  She is using several important reading skills as she touches each letter and moves her finger from left to right.  The second word had the same letters, but not the correct sequence of letters. She said, "These letters are the same but they are not the right way"!  Great visual discrimination!

We had taken down the children's sentences.  Zoey read hers again and then we cut the words apart.

 Then we asked the children to sequence those cut apart words to make their original sentence.  Suri glued the words on a sheet of paper. The steps in this activity provide opportunities to develop several reading skills such as print and sight word recognition.

Oh no!  The Magna Tile tower kept falling over.  Why did this happen?  Maybe there was something making it difficult to balance the tower...like all the unifix cubes.  We asked, "Where could we build the tower so it won't fall"?

"This would be a better place to build."  Good thinking, Amelia!

We examined so many leaves in the gan, and noticed that each one has veins.

Back in the class we used glue to make vein designs on white paper.

Look at the concentration and strength it takes to squeeze the glue!

The children used watercolors to paint over the dried glue design.We had told the children that "magic" would happen when they added paint to their glue designs.  The paper absorbed the paint quite differently than the dried glue, so our art lesson became a science lesson too.    The next day we traced and cut a variety of leaf shapes from the papers.  These fall leaves look beautiful hanging from the branch in our room,  Thank you to Jason and Lauren for climbing on chairs and step ladders to do the actual hanging!!!

This week Heidi talked to the children about the life cycle of chickens.  She taught the children that a baby chick will hatch from an egg if there are roosters with hens.  If you only have hens as in our chicken coop you will get eggs for eating.  Heidi showed the children three different yolks. One yolk was from a store bought egg, one egg came from our coop, and one egg was from a duck.  She asked the children to compare the three yolks.  The children observed the three yolks. They answered Heidi's question by describing the color and size of the yolks

After we examined the yolks in the science room,we went to the chicken coop.  Heidi asked the children to observe all the hens.  She asked them to tell her what traits made the hens similar and different.  Using their sense of sight, the children talked about the hen's feathers, color and size.  Then Heidi and Kim told the children that they could see something very exciting in the hens' house.  She told them to use their eyes,but not to talk. 

Charlotte and Suri looked into the coop and they saw the hen sitting in the nest where she had just laid some eggs!

When Alex peered into the hen house , he was surprised to see that the hen left her eggs in the nest.

Kim brought the eggs for the children to see.  Did the one hen lay all three eggs?  After looking and touching the eggs, they all answered with a very definite "No"!!!

In the Curious George class, the leader for the day counts in the language of their choice before we say our blessings.  They have been very excited that Alex's mom is teaching us to count in Italian! Wow, we can count in English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, and now Italian!