Kindergarten Blog

Hello Families, Our days have pleasantly flown by over the past week as we discussed our hopes and dreams for the year.  We started by reading “Of Thee I sing” where we explored traits of amazing people and what we want to be like/do when we grow up.  We have a class of future astronauts, comedians, teachers, mothers, bus drivers, ballerinas, fire fighters, vets, nurses, and kids who want to make the world a better place!   We then read “Someday…” and discussed what our hopes and dreams are for this year.  We have quite a range from wanting to make... Read More

Hello Families, Our community is becoming increasingly comfortable and taking more risks during our morning meeting activities.  This week, we have learned to shake hands (no limp fishes!) while making eye contact, share though turn and talks and games like “just like me”, and learn names singing “can you guess the name?” and “Busy busy bumble bee”. This group is great at remembering details about other children! We have been exploring how we take care of ourselves and the community this week.  After reading The Quiet Place, we discussed our own quiet place (the place we think about that calms... Read More

Hello Families, We have had a whirlwind of activity this week as we settle into Kindergarten. We are getting to know one another and becoming more comfortable sharing about ourselves during morning meetings. We have sung songs, read poems and morning messages, and played games to become familiar with our classroom and friends. Students are now confidently choosing and caring for books, independently cleaning up and moving to the next activity, and reminding visiting adults not to play in the hallway and bathroom! As we slowly and steadily build our community, we discussed, explored, and shared about new tools in... Read More

Dear Kindergarten Families,  We are excited to welcome you to Kindergarten! We have a fantastic year ahead of diving deep into learning and play together at Hannah Senesh. The official first day of school is Tuesday, September 3rd! We will meet you in the school gym at 9:00 am. Please bring: labeled healthy snack (kosher and nut-free), labeled water bottle, change of clothes (labeled, in a Ziploc bag), jacket or sweatshirt for your child to keep in their cubby. **** If your child requires medication, please bring them directly to Rivky, the school nurse. As we are ending at 11:30 AM on the first day,... Read More

We have had an incredible last few weeks of school. On Monday we went to the Prospect Park Zoo and met many animals. We reviewed their names like קוף, גורילה, פרפר, כלב ים. This week we went in depth in our learning about Shavuot. Our sfirat ha’omer count is almost at 49, and you know what that means… We counted out seven full weeks from Passover to Shavuot. We read “Ten Good Rules,” a book that explains the ten commandments, then wrote our own rules for the world. We also learned a story that every Jewish person who ever existed... Read More

Dear Families, Our late spring days have been filled to the brim with learning new things in between our special events! In math, we have been strengthening our addition and counting-on skills by playing partner games such as “boxes” with dice and “double compare” with cards. We used 5 frames and 10 frames to add and practice counting-on as well.  Without counting, we are starting to recognize 5 and 10 groupings right away. We have enjoyed telling each other subtraction stories with and without our bead bracelets! In writing, we have been working on making our stories longer and stronger... Read More

Our days have been filled with very special events over the last two weeks. On Kesher Day we welcomed many grandparents and special friends and had the chance to mark on both maps and a graph the countries where they were all from. Then Kindergartners and their grown ups drew and colored the flags from those countries. What a beautiful display the flags created in color, design, and the diversity they represent. Undaunted by the rain, Kindergartners jumped right into the Rainy Day schedule and had great fun participating in a whole range of indoor games with their color teams... Read More

Kindergarten has been a whirlwind of events and industrious learning! We have been enjoying reading and discussing many of Kevin Henkes books to improve our reading and writing craft. We also enjoy comparing and contrasting the stories! We explored how he shows character emotions through pictures and words and are starting add feelings to our narrative sentences and illustrations. We also are noticing emotions in books we read independently. We have jumped into the world of surveys through thinking of topic, asking people what they like best of three things, recording, graphing, and analyzing the results. The office staff and... Read More

We’ve been hard at work in Kindergarten getting ready for some special events. When we returned after Passover we had a celebration for Mimouna, a North African Jewish holiday. We baked our own pitas and made special dill cream cheese for a big chametz feast. On Monday we visited The Painted Pot. Our class walked carefully down Smith Street to our neighborhood ceramics studio for a fun project: painting Kiddush cups for our Shabbat boxes. We learned about the kiln and glazing. This week we had another big celebration: Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. We celebrated Israel’s birthday by learning... Read More

Kindergartners were very busy with projects this week.  In social studies we have been representing the block that Hannah Senesh sits on in three different media after out trip outside to document what we see.  Some children are working on murals, some on paper collages, and some with building blocks. The goal is to represent the block accurately.  For example, not all the buildings are the same height, some show an address or name, and they all have different items out front. Children also learned about some of the fixtures on the sidewalk that help the city function such as bike racks,... Read More