The Color of Our Eyes Sparks Curiosity and Learning!

Charlotte was very excited to discover her eyes were blue, just like Harriet's.  We wondered if anyone else in the class had blue eyes.  After going around and looking at her classmates' eyes, Charlotte realized she needed some way to know whose eyes she had already checked.  We gave her a class list and, as the girls gathered round, she circled everyone with blue eyes.

Jake got into the action, circling children's names with brown eyes.  You can see Emma and Saul are extremely interested!

One random conversation has sparked so much excitement and discovery.  Patrick is looking at Emma's eyes with the magnifying glass.  We had just introduced the words "iris" and "pupil".

We made a large graph of eye color, using cubes to represent each child....

...and a smaller graph where they wrote their name and placed it under the correct color.

Noor said, "I'm the only one with green eyes!"......

...and then her sister Suri added her name to the same column!

We did lots of counting and comparing

and learned just how much information one can gather from a graph!

Govind pointed out that the eye color labels at the top of the graph were oval shaped.

We went next door to compare our graph to their graph.  Which class had more brown eyed kids.....ask your child!  And please read the full documentation on our bulletin board.  We have some interesting eye activities planned for next week too!

A Literacy Lesson at the Sensory Table!

"I found my letter!"  Zoey was so excited to uncover a red Z in our sensory table filled with all things red.

Charlotte found her C.

Searching for those tiny camouflaged letters......

...so they can be placed on this chart.  Every child's picture and name is there.  It was a fun way to encourage letter and name recognition and working together.

The  children have almost found all the letters....what you can't see is that  much of the sensory table contents are on the floor!  Having fun and cleaning up after yourself is an important life lesson!

Now the chart is hanging up in the room as easy reference for those who might want to write a letter to a classmate!

Emotions! What Are We Feeling Today?

At Yom Kippur we talk a lot about feelings....

and how the actions of our family and classmates can cause us to feel a certain way......

angry.....

surprised.....

nervous.

sad  or.....

We presented several scenarios to the class, and they had to show us with their faces and their bodies just how they felt.

Learning to gauge how someone feels using only non-verbal cues can be confusing!

whatever age you are!

It's an important social skill to master

We are working on a display where you can see these pictures

and you can try to guess just why your child

has this expression on his/her face!

Sukkahs, Lulavs, and Etrogs!

The traditional time to begin building a sukkah is right after Yom Kippur.  Thursday, we went out to see how the Temple sukkah was being constructed.

Greg showed us one of the panels used for the ceiling.  The children were very excited because we had just talked about how we can look up through the top of the sukkah and see the sky.

In Gan, the class was part of the construction crew.  The kids were either carrying the panel over or using zip ties to hold the panel in place.  Being able to do the same kind of "work" as the adults we'd just watched was very empowering!

Back in the class we learned about the etrog.  Some kids wanted to just look.....

while others took a deep  sniff!

The children could easily tell us how the etrog and a lemon were alike and different.

We learned about the luluv and its three parts.

Alex really got into shaking the luluv and said it was like the wind.

Briana gave a much more subdued shake!

Whatever method the children used, shaking the luluv and etrog together in all directions is a reminder of God's presence all around us.

The corn was being used as part of the walls for the sukkah.  The children thought that it would be fun to hide under the corn stalks.  Mission accomplished!!

The volunteers for sisterhood explained to the class that they had to twist wire around all the fruits and vegetables that they would be using to decorate the sukkah.

 The sisterhood volunteers invited us to  check out the very large pumpkins and fall gourds for decorating the sukkah. We are very happy that the children were able to see and experience the building of the sukkahs at Temple.  We know that these hands on explorations enriched the children's learning of this very fun fall holiday!