Dear Families,
It has been another fun week in the Owl Room! We continued to prepare for Tu B’Shevat by studying trees. Using a felt board the children learned to identify the different parts of trees, including trunks, roots, branches, and leaves. We discussed how there are no leaves on most of the trees here in Brookline in January, but that in Israel, Tu B’Shevat comes during the time of year when buds and leaves are beginning to emerge again.
The children then created their own drawings of trees, and even labeled the different parts of their pictures. It was wonderful to discover how many details the children could include in their illustrations. At school, we often encourage the students to be sure to “do their very best work.” This helps the children to begin to reflect upon their finished projects. Even with a task as simple as a crayon drawing, giving children verbal support can help them to take their skills to a new level.
The children also had the opportunity to do a different kind of puzzle this week! On the yellow table, we laid out pictures of the life cycle of a tree (beginning as a small tree and ending with a fully grown tree), and asked the children to try to put the pictures in order. Sequencing activities such as this one contribute to children’s literacy and math skills. They learn to organize their thinking sequentially, which is important for telling and understanding stories. A sequencing activity with different sized object also helps children to build their mathematical vocabulary as well as size estimation skills, as they note the varying size of pictures and talk about them.
We also have been busy at work on a big tree for our dramatic play area. The children have painted paper green to create leaves for the tree. We are using a large cardboard tube (recycled from Morah Larissa’s new rug) for the trunk. The children suggested that their tree needed more than a trunk and leaves – it also needed branches! Luckily we found some smaller cardboard paper tubes (from rolls of paper towels) to tape onto the “trunk.” We are looking forward to painting the tree and attaching the leaves. Stay tuned for the fun ways we will use our tree…even after Tu B’Shevat! Collaborative art experiences such as this offer children a much different type of learning than when they work alone on their own projects. Working together encourages children to learn from each other, and to build on each other’s ideas and creativity. We enjoyed watching the children figure out different ways to work together to create and attach the branches to the tree.
On Thursday this week, we celebrated Noah’s fifth birthday as well as Tu B’Shevat! It was a wonderful day of celebrating. We enjoyed cupcakes for Noah’s birthday, and remembered to say “Toda Raba,” or “thank you,” in Hebrew, as we ate our yummy treat.
We observed Tu B’Shevat by having a traditional seder. Some of the children were even able to remember the last time they had a seder – on Passover last year! Like the Passover seder, we did a lot of reading, eating, singing, and drinking together. We drank four cups of grape juice, each of a different color (one white, one white with a drop of red, one red with a drop of white, and one red), to represent the four seasons. We also tasted fruits in three categories: fruits with peel that we do not eat, fruits with seeds or pits that we do not eat, and fruits that we can eat in their entirety. The children tasted oranges, bananas, apples, peaches, plums, mangos, olives, carob chips, grapes, and raisins. At school, we ask the children take one bite of a new food, even if they are sure that they will not like it. Some of the children were excited to discover new fruits that they like!
We have spent time this week focusing on a skill that is always present throughout our curriculum – learning to recognize and identify different shapes. A new toy, “Shape Finders,” has been fun to use for “Shape Walks.” The children each have a turn to carry a small wand with a shape attached, and look for their shape throughout the room. We have found circles, rectangles, squares, ovals, diamonds, and triangles. When we talk about shapes at school, we use both common vocabulary (corner and side) as well as mathematical vocabulary (vertex and edge) to talk about how we know which shapes are which. Pattern blocks and even unit blocks are great ways for children to explore their geometrical knowledge. One day, we even made a puzzle with the foam unit blocks. The teachers photocopied some of the blocks, and the children had great fun matching the three-dimensional blocks to the two-dimensional images.
We wish you all the best for the week ahead.
Shabbat Shalom,
Morah Larissa and Morah Kate
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