The Mitzvah of Tzedakah

Included in the “top ten” early childhood Jewish values is the obligation to give Tzedakah, to help the needy. Judaism requires that we do good things and be good people. We give Tzedakah because it is a mitzvah to help other people. It is one of G-d’s rules.  Our Shabbat helper Samantha goes around the circle as each child puts a coin in our Tzedakah box and fulfills this very important mitzvot.

Alphabet Soup

Dylan and Hannah follow the
recipe for Alphabet soup.

Something delicious has been cooking in our dramatic play area this week- Alphabet Soup! The chefs have been referring to a recipe book and following the instructions to prepare the soup. Some children even developed their own recipes, such as, chocolate alphabet soup, fruit soup, and lemon alphabet soup. Using a recipe book in our dramatic play area provides a meaningful and real opportunity for children to interact with literacy during their play. While interacting with the wooden alphabet letters, children were identifying the upper case alphabet letters, finding their initials, and stringing letters together and asking teachers to sound their letter strings out. What a yummy way to develop our alphabet knowledge and interact with books! 

Jacob created his own Alphabet soup
recipe that had lots of different fruits! 

Parsley Planting

We got our hands dirty this week in the Kohavim class as everyone planted parsley seeds. Each child used a trowel to fill their individual planter with soil. They sprinkled parsley seeds on top and then pressed the seeds down into the soil. We gave our plants water to moisten the soil and placed them in the windowsill. We also made predictions about how long it will take for the seeds to grow. The children's predictions ranged from 7 days to 30 days. We can't wait four our seeds to begin sprouting! Hopefully, our parsley plants will be fully grown just in time for families to use at their Passover seders.

Move to the Beat

This week the teachers attended a storytelling workshop where Judith Black, storyteller extraordinaire, incorporated the use of a drum into the evening. Many of her methods were fun and interesting to explore with the Etzim children the next day! We took giant steps to a slow beat then increased the pace with a quicker beat and speedy baby steps. We took turns using different parts of our hand to beat the drum, and then relaxed our body from our head to our toes to a slow, steady beat. We'll definitely be incorporating the drum onto our activities more often. We loved it! The next day children made drums in the block corner and Josh lead everyone in a rousing rendition of "dreidel, dreidel, dreidel!"

A second visit from Yogi Jane

On Friday, Yogi Jane (also know as Rachel's grandmother) came to visit us and teach us more yoga! We prepared for her visit on Thursday by carrying all the mats from the community room to our classroom! It took lots of team work to carry those large mats! When Jane arrived on Friday, we immediately began getting our bodies ready for yoga by taking our shoes off and inhaling and exhaling. Yogi Jane led us through many different animal yoga poses, such as, cow, cat, and downward and upward dog. To end our yoga, Jane had us all slowly breathe in and then out as we said, "Shalom!" What a beautiful and peaceful way to start Shabbat! Thank you to Rachel for sharing her grandmother with us. And thank you to Yogi Jane for teaching us more about Yog

Ice Cube Paintings

Due to the snowy weather we had earlier in the week, the Levana children painted with ice cubes! They were made from water and liquid water colors, then put in the freezer. After retrieving them from the freezer, they became wonderful art utensils for the kids. They really enjoyed the different medium used! Normally, ice cubes are used to cool a drink or soup that's too hot, but for 2 days this week, they were used to make beautiful pictures.

Sisters!

We love it when big siblings come in to our class to drop off their younger sibs.  Sarah comes right into the classroom like any other parent, grandparent, or babysitter.  She helps Samantha with her coat and backpack, and always gives her a huge hug as she says goodbye.  We love seeing Samantha so happy with her big sister, and we always appreciate a visit from Sarah.