Dear Families,
Happy Chanukah! We have had so much fun with the beginning of our study of Chanukah in the Owl Room this week. The major concepts that we focused on were the story of the Maccabees, who fought for the freedom of the Jewish people, and the fact that we celebrate Chanukah with our family and friends.
On Monday, we began our study of Chanukah by using a web to record what the children already knew and remembered about Chanukah. They remembered many details, including some of the songs that we sing. Perhaps not surprisingly, they easily remembered that on Chanukah last year they received chocolate gelt at school! Using a word web helps children to broaden and deepen their vocabulary and to see the way that ideas are related to one another. It is an excellent tool to help children learn to organize their thinking.
We have been very busy preparing for our Chanukah party that we had at school today! The children made cinnamon-scented Stars of David, using cinnamon sticks to draw on sand-paper. We even incorporated our study of Chanukah at the easel, where the children tried painting with Chanukah candles instead of paintbrushes. At the art table, the children used oil pastels to decorate paper dreidels. They then painted over the dreidels with oil, creating a beautiful stained glass effect. This was a great way to introduce the children to oil, a substance that plays a major role in the story of Chanukah. The children also built an exceptionally long paper chain. Making paper chains builds children’s fine motor skills and coordination, as they must try to coordinate both hands. In addition, the children explored important math concepts including patterns, measurement, and comparing objects of different sizes.
Chanukah provides many wonderful and fun opportunities to practice counting skills. One day at the math table, the children used index cards, each labeled with a numerical digit and a corresponding number of dots. They used that number to set up the Chanukiah (Hebrew word for a Chanukah menorah) for that night of Chanukah. For example, when they picked the number two, they would set up the Chanukiah with two candles (counting out two) and then add the Shamash (or “helper candle”). Another day, the children practiced counting out paper latkes and gluing them onto plates labeled with numerical digits from 1-10. We have even learned the fun poem,“Five Little Latkes” and have used felt latkes to practice counting backwards from five to zero. It is important for children to have many experiences counting objects both forwards and backwards before kindergarten to develop their number sense. Felt sets are a fun way to do this!
Exchanging gifts has become a very traditional way to celebrate Chanukah in the United States. The Owls have been very busy preparing gifts and cards for their family members this week. They take great pride in creating real things that adults can use. This nurtures the way that fourand five-year-olds feel independent and like “big kids.” The children were very excited to decorate an apron to create a Chanukah gift for Morah Kate one morning before she arrived at school. It turns out that there are some major security leaks among the Owls. Morah Larissa “hid” the gift in the teachers’ closet and as soon as Morah Kate entered the room, the children immediately starting telling her NOT to look in the closet. Luckily, Morah Kate delivered a performance worthy of an Oscar and feigned surprise when opening her present before the first night of Chanukah.
We have been having a lot of fun building phonemic awareness this week (the awareness ofthe many different sounds in spoken language). We are always listening for rhyming words in poems and generating our own rhymes. The children are often invited to line up or take a turn by using rhyming (for example, you may line up if your name rhymes with “Pashley”) or words that begin with the same initial sound (you may line up if your name starts with the same sound as “apple’). The children also have been using a fun new phonemic awareness set to find rhyming words, to count out syllables, and to match beginning sounds. Being aware of the different sounds that words make builds a great foundation for the children’s reading skills.
We are all so excited to welcome Noah Grossman and his family to our classroom. It has been so much fun to have him here! It is wonderful to see all of the children building their senses of empathy as they invite him to play, show him where to find things in the classroom, and explain their favorite games to him. His enthusiasm for school and joyful nature, make Noah a wonderful addition to our classroom community.
Shabbat Shalom,
Morah Larissa and Morah Kate
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