Using Our Muscles

  

Many people don't realize that strong finger and hand muscles are one of the most important parts of preparing young children to be writers. Strong hands enable children to do the extended writing tasks of the elementary school years. Time spent in developing these hand and finger muscles reward us with coordinated movements.Today the Shemesh children showed their hand and finger strength as they picked corn kernels off of colorful cobs of dried corn. Vika demonstrated, "You use your fingers like this! It's hard!" Rose watched, and then used her thumb to carefully push the kernel from it's spot on the cob. Grayden and Vika were on a mission to finish the whole cob! What dedication!

Better than bananas

We made pancakes today.  We mixed flour, baking powder, sugar and salt with milk, an egg and a little vegetable oil.  Lily, Vika and Grayden helped make the batter.  Yesterday we learned about maple trees and maple syrup.  So - what better than pancakes with real maple syrup?   Bennett and Josh were enjoying their pancakes when Bennett said, "These pancakes are better than bananas.  Not as good as chocolate but better than bananas."  What a great complement to our pancake chefs.

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.

Grayden's Observational Drawings

The sensory table was filled with colorful Indian corn and Grayden and Vika were working hard to pry the kernals off with their fingers. (Hard work!) Grayden noticed Vika's beautiful observational drawing of the corn cob in a nearby table and wanted to try making one. He brought the corn cob to the table and got to work.

It was a long an complicated process from studying the cob to adding the final touches with paint, pastels, and marker. In his own words:

First, I drew with a Sharpie. I drew a rectangle. I drew long lines like hair. I put circles on the other end and on the two sides. But there's nothing on the back. I used red, blue, brown, blue, yellow, purple, green, green, blue, organge, blue, blue, blue. And yellow! And then, after, we cut it out.

Young children are usually very comfortable expressing their ideas through drawing. But most drawing experiences children have are centered on drawing from their imagination or memory. Learning to draw what you see is often a new skill, and with practice, can become an important tool for communication, understanding, and documentation before learning to write.

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. 

Jamin Josh

Shemesh had a lot of fun with Josh and his guitar. We sang Take MeOut to the Ballgame. Don't forget to wear your Red Sox gear tomorrow. 

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 . 

Shemesh Torah Honor

Shemesh had Torah Honor in Friday. At the beginning of the week, we asked the children what they were grateful for. Shemesh chose to be grateful for school and to illustrate that we each made a ray of a sun. The end was a beautiful picture of a sun with a center made of a yellow leaves. Sauci got to hold the Torah and we all got to close the Ark.

Guest Reader

Today Josh's Bubbie and Zaydee visited the Shemesh class. They are from Montreal. Bubbie read Pretzel and brought 2 dachshund stuffed animals. We liked seeing how the stuffed animal Pretzel was so long that he could fold himself into a pretzel!

Ilan's blog

Today Ilan played with the magna tiles for a very long time.  He made several complicated structures.  In fact one skyscraper used all of our magna tiles.  He took down his building and made this pyramid.  He carried it across the room and said "This is for the blog."  Who could refuse that request?  Magna tiles continue to be a very favorite creative toy. 

They encourage cooperative and imaginative play on many different levels.

Hayden and Lily Seashell

Hayden had a fun time with Lily Seashell, our stuffed elephant that goes home with the stick person every Friday.  We are learning about Fall in class now.  Lily Seashell learned about fall from Hayden when they played in the leaves together.  Thanks Hayden for showing Lily Seashell such a good time.

Miss America sees Jewish symbols in the world

Adorned with her patriotic cape, Sonia helped me read Caldecott-winning book A Tree is Nice.  This book is just a pleasure to explore and Sonia was a great guide to the illustrations.

On this page, she said the children were climbing an apple tree.  Then she corrected herself, saying the fruit had crowns.  She further explained that they must therefore be pomegranates.  I wondered, is it only in a Jewish school, so focused on the beauty of Israel's natural resources, that children see a ubiquitous fruit and imagine it to be a pomegranate?

It is hand washing fun

Today the Shemesh children finger painted.  This is an age old pre-school activity that children and teachers love.  The children feel the gushy (read slimy), cold and smooth finger paint.  The children worked on paper that was placed on trays.  After Ilan finished his paint project his tactile sensation continued.  He did a great job washing his hands and playing in the soapy water.

Finger painting is fun and clean up is fun too!

Guest bakers today!

Today the Shemesh were joined by Orr and Abby Bernstein. Everyone got a turn making challah with them. What a special    Shemesh Shabbat! Thank you Bernsteins!

Our favorite apples

The Bernstein family went apple picking last week.  They picked 5 different types of apples.  Ilan brought us one of each and we had a tasting extravaganza at snack.  Most of the children liked every kind of apple.  We noticed that the macoun apple was very white on the inside.  The jonagold were sweet.

We made a chart to show which ones we  liked the best.  Stop in to see our chart.

A special thank you to Ilan and family for bringing us all of the apples.

Hayden

This week Hayden is our stick person.  She is happy to be ringing the bell to bring the class in from the playground, leading the line, and ringing the bell again for clean up time.  Thanks for your help Hayden.  Way to go.

A beautiful work of art under our wheels and feet

What happens when the sidewalk chalk gets left out in the rain, then rode over and walked on? Shemesh learned the answer to that question on Tuesday. A "really cool" rainbow blob with "smeared colors" and bits of leaves.

A problem solved

We borrowed a fun toy from the Shemayim Class.  It is 5 plastic boards over which you stretch rubber bands or elastics if you're from Boston.  The problem is that there are a limited number of rubber bands.  The first day this toy was in our class several children needed more bands to complete their design.  Other children were using them and so some "He has more than me" ensued.  The next day  at circle we put the problem to the children and asked them how to solve it.  Bennett immediately said each person should get the same amount.  What a perfect solution.  

Shaving cream day

We have lots going on in shemesh this week. Today everyone enjoyed shaving cream play. We have been playing with rubber band boards, putting clothes on our paper people and doing some beading using pipe cleaners, pasta and buttons. 

The third stick person

Grayden got his wish today.  He said he wanted to be the stick person.  Lo and behold, his stick was randomly selected from the bucket.  We sure hope Grayden always gets what he wishes for.