Shabbat is Here!

Dear Families,

We have returned from the April Vacation week to begin a more in-depth study of Shabbat. We have spent some time engaging with some of the materials associated with Shabbat rituals, including candlesticks, a Kiddush cup and a challah cover. On Tuesday, we put them out on the art table for observational drawings. Observational drawings encourage children to engage in complex thinking about shape and scale, which provoke their growth not just in art but also in mathematics. They also support children in learning to slow down and carefully observe the world around them, a skill which many of us adults need to nurture as well! The children noticed the complex shape of the candlesticks when they slowed down to carefully look at them and tried to recreate them in two-dimensions. At school, we work hard to strike a balance between times when the children are invited to draw what interests them at the moment and times when they might engage in careful study of an object through observational drawing. Both experiences are valuable as they support growth and development in different areas.

The children also used verbal and written language to observe and describe aspects of Shabbat at Morning Meeting on Thursday. We turned off the lights and quietly looked again at our candlesticks, Kiddush cup and challah cover. The children took turns talking about their favorite objects or favorite parts of Shabbat, and used a word to describe them. Together, we built a poem with our words. This activity supported the children in thinking about language and building vocabulary, particularly in the area of adjectives, or “describing words.” At school, when we take the children’s dictations, we not only write their words, but also model how adults think about written language by doing a “think-aloud.” For example, when writing the word “beautiful,” Morah Larissa might say, “Beautiful…that starts with a /B/ sound. I should write the letter B, because that letter makes the /B/ sound.”

Our Shabbat Poem

Peaceful Shabbat,

Beautiful challah cover,

Beautiful challah,

Yummy yummy challah,

Funny songs,

Purple juice,

Thankful blessings.

Part of our study of Shabbat has included observing Havdalah in the classroom, which we do every week. Havdalah rituals separate Shabbat from the rest of the week; it is the way that we “say goodbye” to Shabbat. One of the children’s favorite parts of Havdalah is smelling the besamim, or spices, in the spice box. This week, at the Science Center, the children used their sense of touch, sight and smell to examine cloves and cinnamon sticks, the spices which are frequently used in the besamim box.

We have also spent some time this week counting out the coins in the tzedakah box. The children have worked hard to count the coins with one-to-one correspondence and sorted the coins by their various types. We have noticed the various sizes and colors of the coins and introduced the names of each coin. Parents are invited to send in coins with their children on Fridays to contribute to the tzedakah box. If any of you would prefer to keep a roll of pennies or other coins at school for us to distribute to the children weekly, please let Morah Kate or Morah Larissa know.

On Thursday, we enjoyed finding many of the places where we observe Shabbat and many of the things that we use on Shabbat throughout the synagogue. We used a checklist to go on a scavenger hunt. We found the bima in the chapel, a Kiddush cup, the Cantor’s office and many, many Stars of David.

We also made challah again! It was amazing how much the children remembered making challah in the winter. Repeated experiences baking challah at school give the children a deep and memorable experience that supports their joy in Shabbat and their understanding of this special day. Here is the challah recipe that we use at school, which is easy to do with young children as it occurs over two days. It yields about 16 small loaves of challah:

In a small bowl, mix:

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  2 packages of yeast – NOT fast rising


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  1 Tbs. sugar


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  ½ cup warm water


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  Let sit for 10 to 15 minutes

In a large bowl, mix:

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  1 cup sugar


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  ¾ cup oil


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  1 Tbs. salt


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  4 eggs

Next:

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  Add 1 ¼ cup hot water to a large bowl, then immediately add the yeast mixture. Gently mix together.


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  Mix in approximately 8 cups of flour – use as much as needed to make the dough not too sticky.


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  Dump onto a floured counter top and knead for 10 minutes, adding more flour if needed.


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  Place dough in a very large, clean, oiled bowl.


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  Tightly cover bowl and place in refrigerator overnight to rise.

The next day:

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  Take the bowl of challah dough out of the refrigerator and let sit for 30 minutes. Punch the dough down.


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  Dump challah out onto floured counter top and divide into 16 balls of dough.


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  To make a traditional challah, divide each abll into three sections, roll each section into a long snake and then braid the snakes. Use a little flour to prevent sticking.


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  Place each challah onto a greased cookie sheet and paint with egg whites.


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  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Alternatively, click here for the challah recipe that the children took home this past winter.

In our read-alouds this week, we have focused on the story of Creation in relation to why we celebrate Shabbat. We have read Creation, by Gerald McDermott as well as The Beautiful World that God Made by Rhonda Gowler Greene. Next week, we will focus further on developing a deep understanding of Creation.

We have also been working hard to teach the children appropriate and respectful behavior for Shabbat and other holiday celebrations both at school, and at the synagogue outside of school time. We have found that previewing the children, or talking with them about the expected behaviors, is particularly effective. We have also asked the children to think of some of their own rules for behavior during Shabbat. This has supported the children in feeling ownership over the rules and expectations.

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Larissa and Morah Kate

Passover is Here!

Dear Families,

It was a delight to welcome our newest friend, Cindy Huang, to our class this week. The children have all been very excited to help her acclimate to our classroom environment. It is with great joy that we observe the children’s growing sense of empathy and ability to understand what it is like for Cindy to be new. Many of them have begun to try to recall their own experiences with being new at our school.

One of the ways that we support children in building empathy at school is to do a lot of talking about what other children and adults might be thinking or feeling. The ability to understand and predict others’ emotions and thoughts is something that we take for granted as adults, but is exceptionally challenging to the cognitive development of four- and five-year-olds. At school we try to speak a lot about the perspectives and motives of others! For example, if a child is sad, we might say something like, “It looks like Joey is sad. Maybe he is missing his dad,” and then ask the children if they can think of a way to help.

The children have greatly enjoyed our final week of preparations for Passover. Thank you all so much for supporting the children in researching the questions that they wrote last week. They were all so excited and proud to share what they had learned with each other. Engaging in research (even simple research with the aid of a parent) supports children in beginning to feel confident in their ability to learn.

Late last week, we created a paper chain with the number of links corresponding to the number of days before Passover begins. Each day at Morning Meeting this week, we have removed a link from the chain. This supports the children’s counting and time-telling skills by making the passing of time more concrete.

We have engaged in several scientific explorations of parts of the Seder Plate this week. On Tuesday, we observed a few kinds of horseradish. The children each looked at and touched a fresh horseradish root. We made connections between the horseradish and the roots growing in the Root Viewer Planter that we use at the Science Center. The children all smelled some grated fresh horseradish, and noticed the deep purple color of horseradish jarred with beets. The children were then all invited to taste a tiny little bit of the fresh horseradish on a cracker, after Morah Larissa and Morah Kate determined that it was mild enough for a young child’s palette. A few of them tasted it, and some even liked it! We related the bitter taste of the horseradish to the bitter experience of the slaves in Egypt.

We also experimented with salt and water this week, as saltwater appears on the Seder Plate as a symbol of the Israelites’ tears. The children each started with a cup of salt and made predictions about what would happen when we added water. Many of them remembered the experiment that we did with baking soda and vinegar many months ago, during our study of bread. Some of them thus predicted that a mixture of salt and water with bubble and fizz, while others predicted that the salt would dissolve. We discovered that indeed, the salt did dissolve. We noticed that the saltwater was a little cloudier than regular water. The children then became curious about adding more salt. We did, and discovered that if we added too much salt, not all of it could dissolve in the water.

On Wednesday, we enjoyed another guest reader from the Temple Ohabei Shalom Sisterhood. The children loved meeting Margie Kahn. She read us two books about Passover, and we thanked her by singing one of our favorite songs, “Lotsa, Lotsa Matzah,” for her. We are so lucky to have volunteer readers in our school, as this helps to support the children in forming a deeper connection to the synagogue and its members.

On Thursday, we enjoyed spending the entire day with the Bears! It was great for the children to have an opportunity to engage in a larger group for the whole morning, as this provides them with more varied social opportunities. It is especially beneficial and enjoyable for the Owls to begin to serve as role models. We all enjoyed making homemade matzah together, which, to great surprise, many of the children enjoyed eating! This was a fun sensory experience, in which the children worked on fine motor skills by pushing the dough down with their hands, using a rolling pin and pricking it with a fork. The children also worked on sequencing skills.

We worked hard on decorating trays this week that the children can use for their four cups of wine (or grape juice!) traditionally used at a seder. The children used a tissue paper decoupage technique to carefully decorate their trays. We talked about how we drink four glasses of juice at a seder, and then asked the children if they could think other sets of four. Right away, the children made the connection the Four Questions asked by the youngest child at a seder. We also found many sets of four in the classroom – four legs at the Sand Table, four chairs at the Dramatic Play table, and four stools at the Snack Table. Being able to recognize a set of a number is an excellent way for children to build number sense (the understanding of what “four” is, for example). In the new Common Core Standards that will affect preschools not just in Massachusetts but in most states, there is a heavy math emphasis on building number sense in preschool. You can support this skill with children by looking for sets of a particular number in your home and as you go about your errands each day.

We wish you all the best for the vacation week and look forward to seeing you on April 26 when school resumes. Chag Sameach!

-Morah Larissa and Morah Kate

Passover Plays, Puppets and Ponderings

Dear Families,

We are enjoying our second week of study involving Passover. This week, we have reviewed and deepened our understanding of the story of Exodus. We have also begun to study some of the symbols of the story that are present on the Seder plate.

The children continue to enjoy “doing a play” of the story of Passover while Morah Larissa reads a book to narrate. This has nurtured and deepened their comprehension of the story. They enjoy taking turns being Moses, his sister Miriam, his mother Jocheved, the Pharaoh, etc. We pretend that the entire classroom is Egypt, creating the Nile River, the Red Sea, and even the mountains to where Moses was exiled by the Pharaoh.

Our deep understanding of the story of Passover has enabled the children to work on re-telling it themselves. We are working hard to record their words to create our own Haggadah, the book used at a Passover seder. The children have had the opportunity to look at several kinds of Haggadot. The children take turns telling parts of the story, and each part is recorded on a small strip of paper. Using smaller strips of paper allowed us to work hard on sequencing the story. This is especially appropriate considering that the word Seder translates to order, or sequence, in Hebrew. Learning to tell a story in the correct sequence is important to children’s literacy and language development, as well as in building organizational skills necessary to continue learning later in life. The children will bring home a class Haggadah next week, complete with their own illustrations.

Our dollhouse is now completely transformed into Pharaoh’s palace. The people that we use in the block corner are in the middle of their own transformation, as the Owls have been using fabric and pipe cleaners to create costumes for them so that we can pretend that they are the Israelites. The children delight in opportunities to use a variety of recycled and other art materials creatively. Besides being enjoyable, such opportunities nurture creative thinking, problem solving, and invite children to express their knowledge and ideas in a variety of ways. We are looking forward to using the decorated dollhouse and decorated people with the “Baby Moses” dolls that we made last week to re-tell the story using small props.

We have also begun to create puppets this week, representing Miriam, Moses, and even Pharaoh. The children spontaneously performed their own puppet show of the Passover story on Wednesday morning. It was impressive to discover how much they remembered!

On Tuesday, we learned about the word symbol, and explained that a symbol is a picture or an object that tells us something. We went on a symbol hunt in our classroom. We found symbols everyplace! There are symbols on the toy road signs in the block corner, on the recycling bin, and even on children’s clothes. Next, we read a book about the various symbols present on a Seder plate: Passover: Celebrating Then, Remember Now.

One of the symbols that we have focused on this week is charoset, or the mixture of apples, wine and nuts that represents the mortar used by the Israelites to build cities during slavery. We made our own charoset using apples, raisins, cinnamon and grape juice. It looked sticky just like the paper maché we were pretending was mortar last week when we created our pyramid! The children tasted the charoset with crackers for snack on Wednesday, and greatly enjoyed the treat.

We have also begun to enjoy some Passover music. A new favorite is “Lotsa, Lotsa Matzah,” about the many foods present at the Passover Seder. We have also enjoyed singing “Frogs Here, Frogs There,” about one of the plagues. Later in the week, we began learning the Four Questions as a song, which are usually asked by the youngest Jewish child at a Seder.

Asking questions and understanding the story of Passover are central values to the celebration of Passover. In honor of this value, and in support of the children’s increasing ability to ask questions and drive their own learning, each child was invited to write a question to take home on Thursday as “homework.” Please help your child to find an answer to their question via books or internet research. We encourage you to not directly give your child the answer, but to give them the tools to find the answer. The children can dictate their answer on the paper that they took home and bring it to school on Tuesday morning. We are looking forward to finding out what they learn!

Shabbat Shalom, Morah Larissa and Morah Kate

The Story of Passover

Dear Families,

This week, we began our study of Passover. Our focus this week was on learning the story of Passover. In the following two weeks, we will learn about some of the ways that we celebrate Passover, including seders and the symbolic foods that we eat.

We began learning about Passover by reading books, including Sammy Spider’s First Passover, by Sylvia A. Rouss. The children then created a Word Web about Passover. We enjoyed making our Word Web look like Sammy Spider’s web, drawing arrows to show connections between ideas! Creating a Word Web nurtures the children into having a focused conversation on a topic in which they can learn from each other and build on each other’s ideas. We have begun to use the phrase “big idea” with the children, to support them in building a variety of comprehension strategies.

We have also been hard at work adding some springtime into our classroom, with little cooperation from the weather. The children chose some seeds with Morah Kate to plant in our new Root Viewer. We planted carrot, radish and onion seeds. The Root Viewer is a slim, clear plastic panel which shows roots growing below the soil level. We also used liquid watercolors to blend reds, purples and pinks which we painted onto paper tulips.As with previous holidays, we have used multiple strategies to support the children’s comprehension of the story of Passover. On Tuesday, Morah Kate did a puppet show about Baby Moses. On Wednesday, all the children participated in “doing a play” of the entire story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt.

Multiple experiences with a story that include active participation support the children in understanding the story and beginning to feel some ownership over it. We include a variety of experiences because we have come to understand that all children learn differently – some children learn well from an auditory experience (such as listening to a story) while others learn better from a kinesthetic experience (such as acting a story out).

In the beginning of the week, we focused on the first half of story of Exodus – learning about Baby Moses being put into a basket in the bulrushes. The children each decorated a clothespin and wrapped it in a blanket to create their own Baby Moses. Working to decorate a small object (such as a clothespin, but also a small piece of paper) pushes children to use a pincer grasp as they try to develop more control over their work. On Wednesday, we made paper baskets for each of our Baby Moses dolls. Nicholas wondered how we could make a river to put the baskets in, like in the story. Morah Larissa found a long piece of blue felt, and we have added this to the Dramatic Play area.

We have also added a Passover Set to the Dramatic Play Area. The children are enjoying putting the seder plate on the table and collecting matzah to create their own pretend seders. We have worked hard to take turns with the seder plate. In school, our goal is for the children to develop more independence when it comes to sharing and turn-taking. A favorite (and effective) classroom routine is to create a waiting list. The children write their name on paper or on a wipe-off board to show that they are waiting to play in a particular area or with a special toy.

Another Passover theme that we have focused on this week is the building of the pyramids by the Israelites. We have tried building our own pyramids in the block area.

We’ve also begun building a papier-mâché pyramid together as a class! We are using shoeboxes and pretending that they are bricks. We have been making a mixture of flour, salt, water and shredded paper, and pretending that this is mortar. This hands-on project has been a wonderful way for the children to understand what mortar is and how it is used. This will be helpful to them moving ahead, when we learn about the charoset on the seder plate (which symbolizes mortar). We were lucky when we found some workers using mortar and bricks on the sidewalk on the way to our playground on Thursday. This was a wonderful (and entirely coincidental) learning opportunity, as the children were able to see real mortar used with real bricks.

We have also been exploring other parts of the story of Exodus. We noticed that Moses is raised in the Pharaoh’s palace, and we wondered what that palace might be like. We used tape, paper and fabric to decorate our dollhouse to make it resemble the Pharaoh’s palace. This enabled the children to use three dimensional art to represent and communicate their ideas.We also noted that Egypt is a desert, with much sand. On Thursday, the children used sand and paint to create their artwork at the art table. We have begun to learn a bit about the Ten Plagues, some favorites of which are frogs and locusts. The children have enjoyed trying to find some of our plastic bugs in the encyclopedia of real bugs that we have in our school.

On Thursday, we began doing some story-writing with the children. The children were each invited to go to the computer with Morah Larissa. They were invited to tell a story, and then dictated their words to her. Dictation teaches supports children in learning that written text communicates meaning. We have begun to take dictation to the next level of learning. From time to time, we will pause and “think aloud” about the sounds of a word and how they might be written. Sometimes we will even say a word very slowly, deliberately annunciating each sound, and invite the children to help us to use the sounds to write the word.

Shabbat Shalom,

Morah Larissa and Morah Kate