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?

Etzim Journals Day One

Today the Etzim class began working on their journals.  Through regular journal writing we are learning that our words have meaning, that we can tell a story, how to organize ourselves, words are written from left to right.  Most importantly, we want to foster a love of writing and storytelling.  Yesterday everyone made a page to put on the cover of their journal.  When Jacob finished he asked if we could hang it on the wall.  Soon most of our drawings were posted!  As you can see, journals are going to be an interesting read in the Etzim classroom.

Blowing the Shofar on Our First day of Kindergarten Enrichment

What better way to start off our year of Kindergarten Enrichment then by announcing it by blowing the shofar! Julian, Talia, and Evan each had their own shofar to practice blowing! We listened to the story, "The Announcing Tool" which is a story about how the shofar became the announcing instrument for Rosh Hashanah.

At the end of the day, Julian offered to help put up the blog for the families. Looking through the photos of our first day, he chose this picture above. Julian said, "It's all of us blowing the shofar and we loved it!"

Jack and the Beanstalk (really!)

Today Jacob came to school ready to share all he knew about the story "Jack and the Beanstalk.". His enthusiasm was contagious and before you knew it, we were making a beanstalk for our classroom. We played Esther and the beanstalk, along with other variations, which made our stories more silly than scary! Thanks, Jacob!

Noah's story song.

On Monday this week, Noah S. asked if he could sing for the class after lunch.  For his request, after we all cleaned up, we all excitedly headed for the rug to listen to what song Noah wanted to sing for us.  To our surprise Noah had created his own storysong!  Noah's song began about a dog that was running in the street and soon transformed into a whole story about a bulldozer, and dog and the funny things they got into together! Thank you for entertaining us Noah! We loved  your storysong!

A Shavuot Feast!

So even though it's been awhile, I thought I'd share about last Friday's Tel Aviv Shavuot feast! In my life I have never really known much about or celebrated Shavuot until I found myself in Venice wondering around a deserted Jewish quarter on Shavuot two years ago.  When I knocked on the door of the Synagogue I was confused on why it was closed. A religious man opened the door from the restaurant next-door labeled "Kosher Pizza" and asked me if I was Jewish. I saw that it was a Chabad house, an organization I was familiar with, and my friend and I replied yes and went on in. Inside there were Jews from all over the world studying Torah and eating Italian pizza and cheesecake. It was a feast!  We  ate and studied together and discovered we knew many people in common through Brandeis. This was a meaningful Shavuot experience to me and a story that I shared with the Tel Aviv class.

 Since Israel is the land of "MILK and honey" we celebrate Shavuot by eating dairy products. We made our own pizza and the sunshine class shared their cheesecake with us. We sat around the table and shared memories of the stories from the Torah we had learned about throughout the year. Together the class pieced together both the story of Purim and Passover. It was great to see how many details they remember! I also loved observing how one child would remember something that would trigger another memory for someone else. It was truly a group learning experience. Last but not least, Ezra proudly shared the story of Jonah, one that he knows well because of his own brother named Jonah.  
Through our sharing of sorties both past and present and our delicious homemade dairy treats I felt like we were true Torah Scholars and that meaningful Shavout experiences can be found everywhere, even in a four year old's pre-school classroom.  

We are Proud to Present the Tel Aviv Actors!

Last week Ezra brought in a very special book called Herman and Margerite: an earth story which is a story about the friendship between a worm and a caterpillar. Today we re-read the story but with a twist: we acted it out! Parts were chosen by choosing sticks. Eli was Herman and Dylan was Margerite and we had a forest of Ezra and Jacob trees filled with Molly and Lily deer. Max played the role of the wise grandpa worm and Hannah and Eliza were our dancing worms and played the role of the buzzing bees. Each child owned their role and said lines. I was impressed also how much the language of the story affected the body language of the children playing the characters. They make such great actors and actresses! For second circle we read Caps for Sale and the class immediately started acting it out! This class has a great love of acting and I’m excited to do more acting and storytelling as the year goes on!

Hannah's Mitzvah

Today we read Hannah's Sabbath Dress. It is a traditional story in which a little girl, Hannah, is looking forward to wearing her beautiful white dress, mommy made, to Shabbat service. Along her journey through the forest to services, she comes across a dog and a cow, and an old man carrying coal. As she comes across the dog and the cow, she tells them to stay away, because she has a beautiful dress on and does not want to get it dirty. Then comes the real challenge; she comes across an old man carrying a very heavy load of coal. He can barely carry it and has to rests. Seeing his difficulty she offers to help carry the sack. As she looks down, she notices her dress has been RUINED, and she starts to cry. The question becomes: Does she regret doing a good deed for someone else, even though she is disappointed that her dress was ruined?
This book will be coming home on Fridays, along with the puppets for your children to enjoy, and retell the story.

Take Two... Indoor Campfire!

Well, the indoor campfire was so much fun we did it again! We told spooky stories, funny stories, enjoyed delicious s'mores and had a lot of laughs!

Creating a Campfire in the Classroom?

Telling spooky stories and eating s'mores while sitting around a campfire is what I call creating Lunch Bunch memories! We all brainstormed as to how to make a "campfire" in the classroom. The children suggested cutting up red, yellow, and orange construction paper. Julia thought of taping the paper to a large circle and it was all down hill from there! We invited Tina and her Lunch Bunchers in to join us, turned off the lights, then one by one the children shared spooky stories with friends, as they ate yummy s'mores! Julia and I truely enjoyed listening to the children tell their spooky stories...Their body language and facial expressions were priceless!

Once Upon a Shabbos

Mary Ann read Once Upon A Shabbos with the Rainbow class today. The stick puppets that represent the characters in this story made a wonderful addition to the telling. The kids could repeat the lines of the characters they held and contribute to the storytelling themselves. It was delightful!

The Unicorns' bear hunt continues!

During reading time in the Unicorn classroom the other day, Drew led his Unicorn friends in a reading of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, a class favorite! The children all worked together to tell the story and to act out their favorite part, running away from the bear. Everyone had such a fantastic time reading one of their favorite books they so often have read to them!

The Unicorns' bear hunt continues!

During reading time in the Unicorn classroom the other day, Drew led his Unicorn friends in a reading of We're Going on a Bear Hunt, a class favorite! The children all worked together to tell the story and to act out their favorite part, running away from the bear. Everyone had such a fantastic time reading one of their favorite books they so often have read to them!

"I want to be Hamen!"

Some friends wanted to be their superhero, king "A", Mordecai, or Esther, and then there was the ever popular Haman. He looked bad and mean which sparked a certain interest. When we told the story at morning meeting, the children were emphatic when asked what they thought about Haman: Yelling "boo" and he should be in jail. As they played with the puppets it was easy for them to banish Haman put into jail or throw him about~thus banishing from his initial dwelling place. A certain joy was noticed as they banished him. Despite this joy, children seem to "desire" to be Haman in their role playing.
It was interesting to notice as well, that when a friend actually put on the mask excited to assume the role of Haman, and being "mean"he could not bring himself to tell the Jewish people to "get out and go away". HE could NOT be mean despite his desire assume that role. Perhaps it was his pride of being Jewish that would not allow him to really bring those "unkind" words toward his Unicorn friends. What do you think???

Jet Rockets

Today at All Star lunch bunch, Sam and Jay built jet rockets using magna tiles and geometric shaped tiles. They used two magna tile triangles and green, orange, yellow, white and red geometric shaped tiles. They connected the shapes on the magnetic board and they were done. The rockets are going to Chicago to save the blizzard and then they were going to Mars. Then they were coming back to Needham Center because that's were the Hess gas trucks were. Now we are done.
Sam and Jay helped write this blog.

To Australia!

We are making a story!  We are on a ship, headed to Australia. We are the Wiggles and we're going all around the world to have concerts. We love to go on adventures! I'm Jeff. (Jesse) And I play the guitar. (Daniel) and we love to sing the train song. That's our favorite.

The End. [Now can you write our story on the computer?]

by Daniel & Jesse