Hands on Learning!

The kindergarten has enjoyed many opportunities to learn through hands on experiences! After reading a book together called The Eggshell Garden, the children eagerly expressed their desire to make their own “Eggshell Garden”! So, after preparing our challah dough, we washed out the eggshells, and set about planting the seeds we had. As apples are readily in season, many of us have one for snack, and we saved the seeds. We also were lucky enough to have a cotton plant on hand, that a classmate had brought to school for “share” (our “grown up” version of show and tell). After the children planted the seeds, they decided to create signs for their plants in order to know which were apples and which were cotton! Every day the children check to see if they sprouted! We discussed what we would do when the plants start to grow, and we decided that we would plant them outside since the eggshells will not provide a lot of growing room!

As we work with numbers, the children have discovered that playing number games is loads of fun! Our class favorite is Number Go Fish. The game was introduced during math centers. The children had such a great time playing the game, they frequently choose to play during their “free choice” center time! We also enjoyed several other fun number games. One game required the player to add connecting cubes to create a “snake” and then compare the length of their snake to that of the other players! Another game used a spinner with numbers to 10, and a board that required the players to help the squirrel get to his peanuts! These fun games reinforce number recognition, one to one

                                                                                    correspondence, counting and measurement.

The children also had a chance to see and interact with a very special animal. Two special visitors (Morah’s daughter Becca and her friend Sarah) came to school with Sarah’s pet African Pygmy Hedgehog, named George! We learned that he is nocturnal, active and awake at night) unlike our pet snake, Roger Michael, who is diurnal (active and awake during the day). At home, George enjoys a meal of high protein kibble cat food and mealworms. In the wild, they primarily eat insects. George hides his head in his quills and makes a noise when he is scared! (we got to see and hear both!) We even got to see him enjoy some mealworms! After spending some time with us and the PreK class, the girls brought George to visit the rest of the classrooms! We then enjoyed the popular book by Jan Brett, Hedgies Surprise.

We have begun our study of Torah stories, and we began with Parsha Lech Licha. This story about Abraham and Sarah reminded us that Hashem wants us to fill the world with goodness and holiness, just like Abraham and Sarah did. We dialogued together about our individual journeys toward becoming our best selves. We discussed that in our quest to be our best self, we are each filling the world with goodness and holiness. The children offered these ideas: “to not say bad words”, “not laugh when we are meeting”, “not to tattle on people”, “not to be mean”. Working towards improving on these, the children felt they were developing their personal best self, and also bringing goodness into our world! Each child then retold the parsha story in their own words and made beautiful illustrations of the story!