Kindergarten enjoyed a special visitor, Dr. Kovtun! Dr. Kovtun taught us all about the tools a doctor uses. We got to look inside our ears with an otoscope, and hear our heart beat with a stethoscope! We learned about vibration and Dr. Kovtun checked our reflexes. One child remarked, “a reflex makes your knee move when you are not really moving it!” We learned that we could keep healthy, by washing our hands frequently and not putting our hands on our face! After the doctor left, we read a story about going to the doctor, and the children shared their stories about going to their own doctors! Many of them shared about how brave they were when they had to get a shot!

As we explore the fall season together, the children have been dialoguing about how nature sustains us and we sustain nature. The children discussed how we need water, air and food to live and that nature provides all of these. We also focused on how we need to take care of nature so we will have it forever! Nature depends on us to make responsible choices to respect, preserve and nurture it. Likewise, as one element of all that Hashem created, we must also respect and take care of ourselves. We talked about all the ways we can take care of our bodies: eat healthy, exercise and rest.

Our dialogue about trees led us to discuss all the uses for trees. We spoke about how we use trees for paper, books and houses. The children pointed out that we should not use all the trees, because they give us such important things like oxygen, air and shade! They suggested we could save trees by sharing books, instead of buying new ones and bringing in their unused paper products from home to reuse at school!

The children have been enjoying noticing the leaves on the trees change colors. We read the book, Why Do Leaves Change Colors? and then we took a walk outside and observed the different kinds of trees and their leaves. The children pointed out the evergreen trees and that they have needles, not leaves! They identified a maple tree by the shape of its leaf and a weeping willow by the shape of its branches and leaves! We found one tree that we could see from our classroom window and once inside, the children then drew a picture of this tree! We will continue to observe the same tree throughout the seasons and record our observations in their pictures!

During Literacy centers, the children enjoy using different materials to form words! Using letter cubes, letter tiles, and even play doh, the children form sight words, color words and their names. During math centers, we went on a number hunt throughout the building! The children wrote down the numbers they saw and we discovered many important ways we use number! The children had a blast, and we learned how important numbers are in our daily lives!

This past week we took some time to reflect on our past accomplishments, fun times and learning in kindergarten so far this year. As the children and I look back we are also discussing and planning ideas for future learning and fun. It is an important life skill to learn to take time to reflect on the past, evaluate our accomplishments and areas we would like to work on, in order to best plan for our future! The children enjoyed the process and we will set time aside throughout the year for these reflections!

Our exploration of Sukkot in kindergarten gave us a wonderful opportunity to also study nature. The children dramatized how they would feel walking, sleeping and eating in the desert .We used our senses to help us describe what it must have been like to wander in the desert for 40 years! Our discussions of Sukkot led us to decide to create our classroom sukkah with natural materials we could find in our own backyard! Together with some class parents, the children and I delighted in exploring our own terrain, and collected branches, leaves, acorns, pinecones, nuts and other natural materials. Our parents helped us to create one of the walls of our classroom sukkah using the larger branches we retrieved on our walk. The children then used more natural materials, as well as recycled materials to add beauty and their own personalities to our sukkah. We even enjoyed our snack inside! Naturally, we needed to create decorations for the beautiful sukkah here at Chabad, and the children worked well together to create a huge paper chain!

As Simchat Torah approached, the children spoke about how special the Torah is, because Hashem gave the Torah to us. The children knew the Torah contained stories, and we spoke about how stories are often used to teach us lessons. We recalled some Torah stories they knew (Noah was naturally a popular favorite!) In discussing the story of Noah, the children recalled that Hashem told Noah to build an ark even though it was not raining. I asked the children why did Hashem ask Noah to do such a thing? They responded; "because the people were not being "good", and Noah was the only one following the rules. Noah and the animals were safe on the ark when the rain came." This then led to a discussion about rules, and why we need to have rules. The children gave us examples of the rules they had at home. "Don't run on the stairs", "don't leave the house without telling someone", and "brush your teeth" were some of their ideas. "Why do mommies and daddies give us rules?" I asked. "Because they want us to be safe", "they want to take care of us", they responded. I asked the children if they had ever not followed the rules at home and what happend and they responed that their mommies and daddies were "worried", or that they had gotten hurt. Through this discussion, it was easy for them to conclude that mommies and daddies give us rules because they love us very much....just like Hashem.

Through stories in the Torah, Hashem teaches us many lessons. We decided to create our own story that would teach a lesson. Together we brainstormed different ideas about lessons that are important for us all to know, and then individually, each child “wrote” and illustrated their own story! We are creating a special classroom book containing their wonderful stories. We will begin to study Torah Stories this week, and in preparation, we closely examined our Torah and each child used the Torah as a model to create the front cover for our Torah Stories Book. After voting, the children elected to call the book: Torah Book. Each week we will add a Torah Story to our book.

Through our shared and guided reading experiences, the children are learning more new sight words, and becoming more confident in letter/sound recognition and blending sounds. Each morning our message contains sight words we have learned, and our daily journal writing reinforces their new reading and writing skills. At our morning meeting, we enjoy playing rhyming, letter/sound and guess the word games! As the children continue to develop writing and reading skills our “office center” in the classroom is gaining popularity! Writing and reading opportunities are always present in all our other centers as well!

In math, we explored the concept of “more”, “fewer”, and “the same”. We read the book Just Enough Carrots, by Stuart J. Murphy and the children enjoyed it so much, we read it again. Then the children broke into 2 groups. Each group was given small objects to sort by color. One group sorted into containers of the same size. The other group sorted into containers of different sizes. When we came together, we decided that it was easier to “see” which container held “more” “fewer” or “the same” when the containers were the same. Then we brainstormed ways to check which had more/fewer/the same, and the children said: count the objects, weigh them, or measure them! So we put the objects in a measuring cup! This led us to a discussion about volume. Then we decided to use different containers to compare how much water each held. First we filled different size containers with water, and guessed which held more. Then we used the measuring cups to check our answer! Math is so much fun!