Squeeze it, Squish it, Wet it......

 Our study of trees has evolved into a discussion about forests. Today, the children had the opportunity to use clay and create animals, trees, etc. for our growing forest. They used popsicle sticks to smooth the clay and make lines,  their hands to make ridges,  and their imaginations to tell us about the  caves, rocks, bores, monsters, and porcupines that live in the forest. Tomorrow the clay will return for Act II.

Bingo

  
Jacob is the caller for the Picture Bingo game and the children helped each other  to match the cards.  This type of activity is a wonderful vehicle for children to learn how to take turns and it's exciting to watch as they learn how to play the game without adult support!

Do You Have Cutie Buns?

You never know where play in the imaginary forest will lead you.  Ellen brought us a tray filled with trees and mountains and pools and tiny frogs and turtles.  We have been creating some intense stories to accompany our play, including Rapunzel and magical turtles.   It turns out the Ruach class also has an imaginary forest.  When they discovered we also had one, their first question was "Do you have Cutie Buns?"   It turns out Cutie Buns are the special turtles in the forest.  During lunch bunch the Ruach children helped define the differences.  "Cutie Buns have spots," said Sophie S.  "And tiny heads," said Jack.  "And they are the most cute, and I love them" said Sophie G.  Sounds like a good starting point for some story sharing between classrooms!  Can you find the Cutie Buns below?

Special visitor brings us Mo Willems

Karen, aka Mom to Audrey, came in to read to the Ruach Class. She brought one of our favorite authors from last year, Mo Willems. She read Pigs Make Me Sneeze and Let's Go for a Drive. In Pigs Make Me Sneeze, Gerald (the elephant) is afraid that he is allergic to his best friend Piggie. You may want to ask your children if he was really allergic. In Let's Go for a Drive, Audrey and Karen invited the class to participate in the book reading. You might want to ask how they participated. Piggie and Gerald make a plan but things go awry. At the end of the story reading we heard: "Why did you only bring two books?"  Thank you, Karen for sharing your gift of time with us and letting us keep these two books for the rest of the week to continue to enjoy. Thank you, Audrey for sharing mommy with us. 

Outdoor discoveries

What do we know about trees?

 We laid our foundation for tree project and asked children to sit and just look around to observe what they saw and also think about what they already knew from their previous experiences of the outdoors. 

Jacob said :"Trees are here for a long time and get more taller." 

Josh said: " During fall and winter trees are different. After fall the leaves fall." 

Jack said: " Trees have branches." 

Eliana said: "Leaves are on the ground." 

Lilah said: " If trees stay on branches all of the seasons, there are branches to make it dark." 

Look what I found! Can we bring it in??

If we were to bring this tree in what do we need to have inside? 

Mia said: "We need the moon and grass" 

Olivia said: "We need the sun and sunset." 

Sophie Ganot said: "We need a morning and night sky." 

Then as we were coming in Reed said : "It could be G-d's Tree". 

Yes what wonderful gifts we have been given. Stay tuned as we continue to explore the wonderful world of outdoors in our inside environment. 

Real Children, Real Work

Young children are so very capable. When given the right environment, the right tools, and the right teachers, a task we normally think of as for adults becomes an incredible opportunity for skill building. As part of the Ruach class' tree project, children had the opportunity to use a real saw to cut a branch they collected from outside. They learned about safety rules such as wearing goggles to protect your eyes and standing back from the saw while others were working. And saw they did!

Imaginations Go Wild- Literally

Green playdough, pine cones, and colorful cobs of dried corn greeted the children at the table. These kinds of open ended materials invite children to engaged their imaginations, see themselves as inventors, and reach a more complex and challenging level of thinking.  As we worked, we added tiny baby frogs and turtles and a special treasure...real lights! Caves came alive and tales of lighting storm adventures were created. It was inspiring to watch as Audrey, Sophie Sherman, Reed, Sophie Ganot, and Mia created these imaginary worlds.

Thank You God

Each Friday morning, we add a new poster to our Modim Anachnu Lach prayer. We started by thanking God for sunshine and our families. The Kohavim class wanted to thank God for nature and illustrated so many items from nature- grass, trees, seeds, beans and more. The Ruach class was next and chose to thank God for God. They illustrated their concept of how God made the world and designed a detailed world from a huge variety of materials. And last week the Shemesh class said they wanted to say thank you to God for school. Since their class name means "sun" they made a collage of a sun and each added a painted ray. I look forward to seeing how our whole school prayer develops over the course of the year as each class takes turns adding to it.

Let me sing to you!

Reed and I were playing with the playdough and a selection of nature materials when one of the creations we made looked a lot like a sukkah. "Hey, that reminds me of a sukkah!" I said to Reed.

Well talk of a sukkah reminded Reed of Sukkot and he jumped up to get his portfolio binder. "I'll sing you a Sukkot song!" he said.

He came back with the binder, found the correct page, and using the pictures as a guide, was able to sing all the words of the song. What a prime example of how our teachers are teaching the children to use their literacy skills in everyday moments to make sense of the world around them. Thank you, Reed for that beautiful serenade and thank you Betty and Maria for setting up an environment where this kind of learning happens every day.

Tzedakah on Monday ??

The Ruach children children have been talking about Tzedakah as a Jewish responsibility of taking care of others who are in need of food ( or other items) We want to thank Sophie Sherman and her mom and dad for thinking of others when they went shopping for their food supplies. It is an act of chesed as well as Tzedakah! 

Musical Mondays continues ...

First we made some observations. What did we notice about about the strings on these two instruments?

Mia decided she needed to touch the strings to make her decisions, Olivia looked and decided to sketch her design before starting, Hayden noticed the strings were straight, Josh and Reed looked at the instruments ( guitar and Harp) and decided the wood piece they were given was definitely not long enough. 

Hayden was not quite certain how to proceed. She elected to observe what a peer was doing before proceeding. 

Aah the joy of accomplishments!!! Now the real test did we make music?? You might want to ask your children. 

How do you make a tree?

 During morning meeting, we discussed what we needed to make a tree. We needed "wood, branches, scotch tape, and glue." We went outside to look more closely at tree bark . The  bark felt, "bumpy" and the rubbings made lines on the paper. Some children created tree drawings. We looked in the  sky to see the different types of trees . Our research laid the foundation for our Tree Project!

Sharing space

Sharing is an important skill. The Ruach children share their space and materials with the Mayim classmates.  On Wednesday, the Mayim children used our sensory table where we had come cornmeal. Their teacher, Liron, encouraged her children to show their appreciation by dictating a note of gratitude. The Ruach classmates came into school on Thursday to a sign taped on the sensory table which read: WE really enjoyed playing with the cornmeal station. Thank you for sharing it with us! Ben was very excited to receive some mail from another class and dictated: Thank you for the note. WE really loved the note.  Reed dictated : Dear Mayim class. Reed wants to make a picture for you. Turn around there is more words."

Thank you Liron for writing to us. We hope to continue writing and corresponding.  What a great way to encourage communication.

Cooking 101

The Thursday lunch bunch boys and girls have been requesting a cooking day. We will be developing our own recipe book so stay tuned. Thursday however we made waffles. We followed our visual recipe making sure to measure and mix the ingredients. We used a heart shaped waffle maker but there was one problem. There were seven cooks, Ben, Eliana, Jack, Olivia, Reed, Rose, and Sophie Ganot but only 3 heart shaped waffles. What could we do ? We had a decision to make, we could eat in two different groups or at the same time. The cooks decided they all wanted to eat together. Ok well that still left us with a problem, we still just had 3 waffles. Rose thought we should cut them in half so everyone could eat . After we cut them in half we realized that made 6 and we had 7 children. It was quite amazing but one friend said it was ok he could wait for the next batch . 

Quotable Quotes from recent past

Audrey was going to use the bathroom and noticed there was a lot of toilet paper dangling from the toilet dispenser. She announced:  "Someone is waisting trees!!!" Ruach children have really embraced    the concept of taking care of our environment.

A Ruach Sampler

  We introduced pine cone math. Each player threw the dice, counted the dots, and  picked pine cones out to represent the amount. There were many lines of pine cones and discussions about, "How many." Book writing continues to be a popular activity in the classroom. Olivia cut out small pieces of paper to  decorate the cover of her book.  The music post is a wonderful addition to our playground. The children  carefully listen to see if all of the sounds are the same or different. It was a busy week, accented by beautiful fall days!

Some Chesed For Shabbat!

When the Ruach kids entered the room on Shabbat yesterday, they learned of a special Shabbat project. Each child reached into a bag and picked out the name of a classmate and then made that classmate a card. Everyone was excited to see whose name they got. They worked hard to create a card while thinking about what colors and designs their classmates would like, even if they knew that they personally didn't like the same color.  I was pleased to see that everyone was happy about creating a card for a peer even if it wasn't their best friend. Some children did pick classmates they were closer to and added an extra bit of love and attention as they created detailed drawings and sweet messages for their friends. Once they created their card, they used their great name-recognition skills to place their card in their classmate's cubby. Everyone was so excited at the end of the day to see who made them a card! Their notes were sweet and meaningful and children's buckets were filled by both giving and receiving Shabbat cards. 

The Ruach class has been talking about doing acts of Chesed, kindness, throughout their time at school and beyond. Creating a card for someone else is a great way of adding a bit of Chesed to anyone's day. The class worked together, and as a result every child both gave, and received a card creating a community that cares and supports each other. Such a kind class!

Color Everywhere!

 Today, we introduced our color boards and Jack and Sophie matched nature items on  the board.The matched the palette of fall leaves to the boards and tried to decide which was just the right color. At the easel, Ben exclaimed, "Look at the colors I made." The exploration  of color is an exciting theme for young children to investigate!

What could be in this box?

We were greeted with a mysterious box for Shabbat. What did it look like?  Could it be a present? Some children thought there could be play dough, candy, challah, cookies because the drawings looked like cookies, or Betty's present. Yes it could have been all those things, but it wasn't. It was the gift of the world. We uncovered the creation story inside. What a wonderful gift from G-d! As we moved forward with the story we asked what was missing it was clear the children had many things that was not represented in our box.  They were asked to reflect upon ways in which WE could say thank you to G-d  for this wonderful gift? Eliana said "Write Him a a message: We love your gift."

Audrey said, "Say modim anachu lach." Reed said "Make the story different!" Please stay tuned as we continue our journey of wonderment about this beautiful world we have been blessed with! 

The forest in the Ruach class

I wonder who or what lives in the forest. Children were free to develop their own stories while they manipulated the characters in the scene.