Baking Hamentaschen

Please enjoy a window into our classroom today as we rolled, cut, shaped, filled, and baked our wonderful hamentaschen cookies.

Happy Birthday Zach!

Today we celebrated Zach’s Birthday. His mom came in and together we sang and red stories. We even read Zach’s birthday book. It was great to see each child’s face light up as Rachel read each page out loud. The classmates were so proud to have their work in a real book and read to the class and Zach was so happy to have a book from his new class. We love this tradition just for these reasons and we are looking forward to celebrating every child’s birthday (even the summer ones!) at some point throughout our year together. 

An Artful Visit

 

Lucy's mother, Caren, visited the Levana class and  brought a wonderful art project involving two of our favorite things: paint and tape. The beautiful and colorful painting that Lucy and her mom had prepared contained a hidden message; when the camouflaged tape was removed, we were surprised to see our class name! The children then set to work on mystery paintings that had been prepared for each of them. We can't wait to remove the tape and find our hidden messages. Thank you Caren for bringing this fun activity to us, and for reading Dinosaurs on Shabbat. We had a great time!

Our Musical Guest

Sonia's mom, Marissa, joined the Levana class this morning and brought along her guitar and a great repertoire of children's favorites. She accompanied us as we sang our good-morning songs, and then led us in singing Puff the Magic Dragon, The Marvelous Toy, and There Was An Old Lady. These songs have familiar choruses and some sound effects that make them lots of fun to sing. Thank you, Marissa, for getting our day off to a wonderful musical start. Sonia was beaming with pride, and we all enjoyed your visit.

Over the Moon

Eliana's mom, Amy, planned some very engaging and fun activities for the Levana class, as we explored the moon. The moon is a topic close to our hearts, as our class name, Levana, is the lovely and poetic Hebrew word for moon. We began the morning by reading one of our favorite books, Goodnight Moon. Amy brought many copies so that the children could read along in their own books.

We also learned some new words to describe the phases of the moon, and had lots of time to color and draw our own moons. These included full, half, and crescent moons. Elias is reading one of the non-fiction books that Amy brought; these included interesting information about space travel and gave us another way to look at the moon. We were able to engage all of our senses in this moon fun, as we even made moon biscuits which we sprinkled with cinnamon, baked, and devoured for snack. Thanks, Amy, for visiting and bringing your ideas and imagination to our play today.

 

Yum Yum Cookies in our Tum!

This past Friday, Karen Cohen came and helped our Tel Aviv class make yummy Hamantashans to get ready for Purim! We made the dough from scratch and folded them into cookies all in one day! It was a big task and it was so wonderful to have Karen help us with it. Thanks again Karen! We hope you visit again soon!

Hannah and Eliza are expert orange peelers and juicers! Hannah peeled the whole orange and together the girls squeezed the orange juice to add to our Hamantashan recipe!

How we love science!

JB Royal, Sam's father, did an amazing job showing the Kohavim children how to use a microscope. He captured the attention of them all. In addition to bringing in the perfect kind of scope for them, JB brought in slides which he divided in to the following categories: Feathers, Little Creatures, and Grasshoppers. The children looked at turkey, chicken, duck, pigeon, and canary feathers. Little Creatures was divided in to plant louse, fruit fly, shrimp eggs, and silk worm larvae. We were also able to look at the antennae, leg, and wing of a grasshopper. JB also had some crystals which the children loved to look at under the microscope. At an adjacent table some of the children drew pictures of what they had seen with the microscope. We would love to have our own class microscope to continue our study of the world of small things. MANY thanks to JB and Sam for leading such an exciting and informative activity. It was truly great.