What does Spring bring?

When the weather began to warm up at the beginning of April, the Shamayim children were excited to talk about some of their favorite spring activities and sights.  One of the common expectations was that the trees get leaves and flowers grow from the ground.

Because of this interest, we have been focusing some of our activities around flowers  - through science, art, reading and even math.

We read Planting a Rainbow by Louis Ehlert and planted our own rainbow of flowers.

 We have been watching our buds pop out of the soil and we have been diligent about watering our plants to keep them damp and in a sunny spot.  Soon we will begin measuring which plants are tallest and which are shortest.

We also made green playdough - since we see so many green things in nature this time of year.  We had to follow a recipe carefully and it came out perfectly!

Just recently, the children used water colors and coffee filters to make beautiful flowers for a classroom vase.

We attached the filters to pipe cleaners and it has become a lovely centerpiece on our tables.  Today, in small groups, we used the vase and bouquet of flowers as a model for a pasting project.  We used strips of construction paper and odd shapes to replicate our vase of flowers on paper.

Drawing What We See

Today the Haifa children came into the classroom to see some more flowers out on the table with different tools to draw them with! Today we put out watercolor pencils, which are amazing drawing instruments that can be used in a bunch of different ways. Today we decided to use them by first dipping our pencils in water and then drawing on watercolor paper.
We continued to use some flowers from earlier in the week, but we also added new ones to make today's paintings/drawings unique!
-Alison and Sauci

Capturing Spring

Today the Haifa children walked into class after a long vacation to find some beautiful flowers from Sauci's yard on the table! They were instructed to draw what they saw with the new markers. The girls at the table worked very diligently to make sure that their drawings reflected what they saw on the table. As you can also see, they added some embellishment, but hey, artistic license right?? Who knows what materials will be out tomorrow to capture these flowers???

-Alison and Sauci

Inspired by Daffodils

A fresh bouquet of Daffodils, water color paints, and cut water color paper was an inspiring provocation last week. Almost all of the children visited the science table where the daffodils were placed. Each child used the water color paints to represent the flowers on their blank canvases, each with their own variation. Come look at the wall of the children's paintings in the Kohavim classroom! We plan to continue bringing in fresh flowers as inspiration. Over the next few weeks, if you and your child are gardening or come across some striking flowers at the market, please bring them in to share with us! 

Who's singing in our springtime tree?

As we continue to enjoy the beautiful weather outside, we have been springing up our classroom tree.  Today we made birds using styrofoam balls, feathers, eyeball stickers, and pipe cleaners.  We discovered that it is pretty tricky to poke holes and get the feathers to stay in the bird's bodies, but with a little determination and hard work, we created beautiful birds.   It was very exciting to see the children demonstrate real pride in their projects.

The children picked feathers of their favorite colors and either added the finished birds to our "nest" (a basket that we will hang from the tree) or they put those birds directly onto the tree itself.

Since the pictures really don't do it justice, we invite you to come in and admire the tree in person!

 
 

Spring Time Apple Pie and Our 5 Senses

The Etzim class is exploring spring through the senses. Last week we looked and listened for signs of spring outside. Today we made an apple pie. We used our eyes to look at the apples and our hands to cut the apples into little pieces.
Tomorrow we will smell the apple pie as it cooks in the oven and taste it when it cools! Keep it coming spring. We welcome you in earnest!

signs of spring

We have been talking a lot about the weather lately.  It is warm one day and then snowing and quite cold the next.  The Shamayim children have said that they have had enough of the snow and want the sunny and warm weather of Spring.

We have discussed what Spring might look like.  The sprouts of green flowers - and even some colorful petals - polking through the ground, reddish brown leaf buds on the trees, snow melting, birds chirping and grass turning greener.  On Friday morning, we experienced a sign of spring that we had all forgotten about.  As the children played at the sensory table, a very loud and bustling noise came from the street.  We looked up and saw landscapers with blowers on their backs and landscapers pushing blowers like lawnmowers.  We are quite hopeful that the landscapers know something that we don't and that Spring weather is really here to stay!!

Signs of Spring?

Today the Etzim children took a walk searching for signs of spring. After seeing quite a bit of snow and brown leaves in the parking lot we were not encouraged. The Etzim children are a very optimistic bunch, however, and continued on to the woods where they spotted "sunshine!" and one lone tree with buds. We know Spring is out there, and we'll let you know when we find it!

Springtime Tree

Since it finally feels like the beginning of spring weather, we have been working hard in in our class this week sprucing up our classroom tree.  We learn that in springtime, trees blossom with beautiful flowers, so we first worked to remove some of the dried out pine needles, by breaking them off.

 

Then we used tissue paper and liquid watercolors to make beautiful paper flowers.  When they dried, we folded the flowers, attached them to branches to wave around, and stuck them to our tree.

all we need now...

is a sunny warm day and a nice breeze!

 Ava's mommy, Nicole, and her brother, Colton, joined us this morning to make colorful kites!  We enjoyed decorating our kite, using tape to hold the straw in place and choosing the perfect streamer for a tail.  Nicole let us decide  how long our tails would be.  We giggled as she said "Longer?  Longer?  Longer?"

Thank you Nicole and Colton.  We loved making the kites and hope that it was the push that mother nature needed to move the cold weather out and beautiful spring weather in...we've got our kites ready!!

First signs of spring

Now that it's finally March, the Levana class is ready to begin thinking about springtime!  We have been observing the first signs of spring -- the sounds of chirping birds, the sunshine streaming through the classroom windows, and the melting snow on the playground.  Soon we will see plants starting to grow, so we are using materials in our classroom that remind us of spring.  Today the students used seeds not only to plant, but also to make springtime art collages.

Some additional photos of Kohavim children working hard on their wreaths

Getting in to the spirit of Shavuot

There are many important concepts and traditions to teach the children about Shavuot. On day one of our classroom celebration we read the book, Ten Rules by Susan R. Topek, which is based on the Ten Commandments that G-d gave to the Jews on Mount Sinai. Our plan this week is to follow up with this and ask the children what rules they think are most  important for us to follow in our lives. Today we started making beautiful wreaths that the children could wear on their head during our PJ Shavuot celebration on Friday. The children enjoyed removing the petals from various flowers we had gathered, and decorating a paper plate that they had cut. Even though we only have pictures of the girls in this blog, the activity was just as much of a hit with the boys. The children also made beautiful flowers by dropping small amounts of different food coloring on paper coffee filters. Hopefully our room will look as green and lush as Mount Sinai by the time of our ceelebration at the end of the week.

Spring Is In The Air

The Rainbows became really involved with collage making using stickers and spring foam-shaped insects. Choosing which insects to stick on turned out not to be so easy. At first, all of the children were just choosing any insect at random. Then, slowly each child began choosing his or her favorite. Rose liked the ladybugs. Molly liked the dragonflies. Sophie liked the snakes, and Grayden liked all of them. All the children were very intent on the process of peeling off the paper backings on their own. Not one child asked for help. Way to go Rainbows!

Helping the adult B'nai Mitzvah students plant

 Thank you Ellen for the opportunity to do some planting of sunflower seeds today. We had a number of very enthusiastic planters, with Teddy Friedman leading the group. He would have planted all morning if possible. Our plantings will be in the window sill in the lobby of the Center until they are planted outside at the end of May. Hopefully we shall see much growth between now and then. Stop by and take a look.

So Much Fun Outside Time!!

The Tel Aviv class spent almost the first two hours of school today outside! Kids were loving the beautiful weather and thought it was so neat that all they needed were their sweatshirts! The teachers thought that the weather was so good that we should have a special outside havdalah. Rachel is our stick person this week and did a great job of holding the candle high for everyone to see. After a bit more playtime our friend Josh came to sing with us outside. It was so fun to have both structured and unstructured time outside. I noticed that the group was more focused and sang louder sitting in the fresh air. We are so excited to have such beautiful weather all week long! Yay springtime!