We are always busy!

Zoey, Noor, Charlotte and Suri are having a picnic lunch for their baby dolls.  The dramatic play area provides the children with  the opportunities to cooperate with each other as they act out realistic situations.

Each morning  we place a variety of  manipulatives on the tables so that the children will build different skills.  On Tuesday, we had a clown with blocks that resembled small cylinders. In order to balance the clown, the children carefully placed the same number of blocks on each side.  What a fun way to challenge hand eye coordination.

Unifix cubes are always a popular morning choice.   Suri decided that she would build towers just like a stair-step.   Each time she made a different tower she made it one cube higher, using so many math skills along the way.....counting, sorting, and adding on are just a few!  Way to go Suri!

Amelia's big sister, Ellie, was in the Curious George class 4 years ago.  She gave Amelia a big hug and told her how much fun she had being a Curious George kid!

Govind showed us that blocks aren't just for building as he pretends to talk on a phone.  What a wonderful way to use his imagination and to build language skills!

Remember our eye color discussion?  This week we gave it a fun twist.  Each group of children got some blocks and one ping pong ball with an eyeball painted on it.  The challenge was to get the ball to roll down a block.  Alex and Emma used the sensory table to prop up their block.

Saul and Briana went into the dramatic play area,  using the chair for the base of the ramp and then experimenting with other objects in that center.

Jake, Suri and Noor have it figured out too!

Daniel and Zoey worked together so well.  They tried different things and talked about different ideas, but nothing  made that ball roll.  We suggested they look at what some of their friends were doing, and they immediately saw what they needed to change.   Zoey quickly added that vertical  block because "that makes the ball stop rolling and we won't have to chase it!" 

The next day the children were still involved!

When you think about all the times we as adults collaborate with our co-workers, and build upon their ideas, you have to admit our kids are getting an early start!

Another extension...googly eyeballs in playdough.

How many small eyeballs can you "dig out"?  Great for developing finger strength.

Same idea, different materials.  Here the children are pulling the nails out of the foam pieces.  Not as easy as it looks.

The girls are so creative!  Briana made an umbrella "in case it rains my hair won't get wet!", and Noor made a "double twirling star".  Pushing the plastic straws onto the connecting piece requires much eye hand coordination.

Zoey made 5 fairy wands because she said that when she is 5 she will be able to do cart wheels!

Alex and Daniel made a house using Magna Tiles.

Out in the gan using our sense of sight and touch. The children exclaimed, " This pumpkin is huge!"



Amelia was exploring an interesting  gourd!



Using our sense of sight and touch again, we learn about the differences between members of the gourd family.

The children are recording their discoveries.

Look at this incredible structure!  So nice to see both boys and girls working together with blocks. 

Simchat Torah!

To prepare for Simchat Torah, Rabbi Allenberg invited us to join him in the sanctuary so he could teach us about the Torah. As he holds one of the Torahs, he explains to the children that we don't use our fingers to touch the writing in the Torah. We use a special pointer called a Yad.

After explaining about the Yad, Rabbi Allenberg removed the crowns and the breastplate from the Torah. He explained that the crowns have bells and the breastplate is like a beautiful necklace.

The teachers unrolled the Torah as the children watched . They were amazed to see all the words in the Torah.  Rabbi Allenberg explained that the Hebrew words in the Torah were written with a special pen, so it takes a long time to make a Torah. 

Back in the room, we began to make our own Torah covers.  We gave the children the choice of  paints and different brushes to paint  their covers. The children enjoyed moving their brushes up and down with quick repetitive movements.  They also swirled the paint with long and short strokes.  As you can see in the pictures, each child had their own technique to make their beautiful covers!

As well as using the different strokes, several children decided that their designs should reflect symbols from our previous holidays.  Briana is making a sukkah.  She used a small sponge brush to create the three walls of the sukkah,

Saul used the same brush to make Rosh Hashana apples.

Charlotte painted a necklace on her cover to resemble the breastplate that Rabbi Allenberg had shown us in the sanctuary. Every child's cover became a unique piece of art.

After painting our covers, we dot painted our crowns. Daniel told Patrick they could share space while they both worked.   The children are really internalizing some of our "community building" words!

Zoey definitely had a plan before she started.  She carefully placed each dot of paint so that her crown would be filled with beautiful colors!

After the paint dried, every child twisted bells on pipe cleaners to their crowns.

After adding his bells, Jake tried on his crown so that the other children could see if  it resembled the crowns with bells that Rabbi Allenberg showed us in the sanctuary.

To make the final piece of their Torah costume, we showed the children a breastplate with the Tree of Life.  We gave the children a choice.  They could make The Tree of Life or the Hebrew letters from the Ten Commandments on their breastplates. Saul and Emma made the Tree of Life.  You can see how they are studying the design of the  tree as they make their own Tree of Life.

Amelia and Daniel are making the Hebrew letters.  We were pleasantly surprised to see how carefully they tried to reproduce the letters. Whether they made The Tree of Life or the Hebrew letters, all our children's breastplates were well done!

Zoey, Govind, Suri, and Noor were very proud of their Torah costumes!

Patrick, Saul, Alex, Govind, and Daniel are some happy Torahs!

Charlotte and her mom enjoy a hug as we celebrate Simchat Torah!

Everything Sukkot !

We added some vegetable counters to the playdough center, and before we knew it the girls had worked together to create a most unusual sukkah.

Craft sticks added another dimension to the play.



We read the book Tamar's Sukkah which is all about the many things you need to make your sukkah complete.  Noor and Daniel are carefully tracing and cutting fruit to hang in the sukkah. 



Suri chose to make grapes.  Small grapes from the dramatic play area helped her to understand that she needed to show the individual grapes in  one bunch.

More tracing and cutting.  The children practice holding crayons and scissors correctly,  positioning their hand to stabilize the pattern while tracing, and developing finger and hand flexibility.  These skills will eventually enable children to write and draw easily; that's why you will always see these activities going on in our room!

Amelia adds the first piece of fruit to the sukkah.

Emma made a pumpkin.  Can you suspend a large pumpkin from the roof of the sukkah? "  No way!" said Emma.  Good problem solving!

A  happy helper!

As we learned in the book, a sukkah is not complete without friends.  We asked the children how we could show that there would be people in the sukkah.  They had many creative responses from drawing (as you can see Jake's person above) to creating people from  paper and pipe cleaners, to cutting pictures from magazines.

The class decided that it would be nice to have everyone draw themselves,  and here's Patrick.

Briana is checking out the sukkah to see which friends still need to draw themselves.

Alex is counting...do we have 13?

Next, the children came up and counted how many of each fruit we had in the sukkah.  As we wrote those numbers down, there was a lot of conversation about which fruits had more or less or the same.  Suddenly, Zoey said, "That's a pattern!"  And sure enough the top row read 3, 4, 3, 4.  Great observation!

Our sukkah learning wasn't over.  In Gan, Heidi taught us about the first sukkah, so many years ago.  The children are dressed for the dessert and their jobs as either sheep herders or chicken coop cleaners.  After a hard day of work they were invited into the sukkah for refreshment....

...and rest.

Celebrating Sukkot at Shabbat with our own luluvs and etrogs.