First Grade News
We had special visitors from Malawi this week, Chipaza and Rephael. Rephael has worked for Yamba Malawi for ten years and Chipaza is one of the farmers developing his business through Yamba Malawi’s programs. First graders interviewed Chipaza and Rephael about their lives and families in Malawi.
We started our poetry unit this week. First graders explored the poetry books in our classroom and learned new things about poetry. They noticed that not all poems rhyme, many poems have verses, some poems have patterns, and poems can be silly! We learned about seeing the world through a poet’s eyes. First graders studies poems about everyday objects, and then wrote their own poems about objects such as binder clips, shells, and buttons.
On Tuesday, we had a busy day. We went to the aquarium in the morning and saw sea otters, sting rays, and sharks! In the afternoon, we had a mini publishing party to celebrate our realistic fiction stories!
On Friday, we celebrated Arbor Day by welcoming a new tree outside our building. First graders learned the history of Arbor day and discussed how it is a holiday for the future rather than a holiday remembering the past. We sang a song about trees and spoke about how to take care of the trees outside our school.
In Hebrew, we continue traveling through the state of Israel! As part of their stop in Jerusalem, each student made their own kotel (Western Wall) out of construction paper. We visited the Dead Sea (yam hamelach) and the city of Eilat. We spoke about and wrote sentences about what is so special about those places. At the end of our traveling the students made their own map of Israel. We look forward to sharing all of their work with you at our Siddur Ceremony.
In Parasha, we learned about Parashat Acharei Mot- Kedoshim. We spoke about the holiday of Yom Kippur and that God gives us a day to say we are sorry and to think about how we can be better people. We also learned that God tells the people that they are holy, and we spoke about what it means to be a holy person.
Shabbat Shalom!