Kindergarten Blog 4/8

Dear Kindergarten Families,

Kindergarten is ready for Pesach! We have been learning holiday songs and the holiday story, and we even have our own classroom megillot. This week we had our Family Museum, in which we invited our fourth grade buddies and other friends of kindergarten to see the children’s hard work on their family collages, model magic sculptures, and decorated homes of their families for our family unit. The kindergarteners made cookies for the museum cafe, and tickets for entry for the invitees. At the end of the event, the kindergarteners performed the song “Love Makes a Family”.

This week we also were visited by Moshe (Rabbi Menashe Wolf), traveling forward in time thousands of years to teach students how to make matzah, starting with picking the individual berries from stalks of wheat to grind up and make our own flour! The children impressed Moshe with their knowledge of his life story, and got to eat matzah that they made completely from scratch.

Last week in Science, the kindergarteners grappled with the question of where we get the things we need to live and grow, and made pop-up drawings of our own environments. This week, we learned about biomes, which are large areas of land with a certain climate made up of certain plants and animals. We looked at images of forests, deserts, and grasslands, and guessed at their climates and which plants and animals live in each. Then the kindergarteners had to sort through cutouts of different plants and animals to figure out which biome they belong to and glued them to class posters of these three biomes.

In Judaics this week, it is all Pesach, all the time! We are telling the story of Pesach and breaking down key aspects of the story, like the concept of freedom. The vocabulary for this: avdut, avadim, cherut. We also learned the song for the four questions, and have begun to break them down and answer them. This week, we talked about the difference between chametz and non-chametz. We will continue to break these down next week. We have been taking a close look at the seder plate and what each item’s significance is. The kids have been working on their own haggadot as well as creative depictions of parts of the story.

In Math we began exploring coins.  We studied the fronts and backs of pennies, nickels, and dimes, noting the people and buildings on the coins, the years they were made, and their values. We talked about the fact that there are two different ways to pay for something that costs five cents and the fact that you really can’t do much with a penny! Next we will figure out which coins to use to buy different items. 

In Writing we talked about the importance of being sure that your stories have a beginning!  You can’t jump in if the reader doesn’t know you’re at the pool and you can’t start packing boxes if the reader does not know you are moving. Children then went back to their stories to make sure they had a beginning.

One new development during Choice Time has been a new interest in block building. One group built a building with a school and a parking lot.  They included doors to get in and out of the building, stairs to get from one floor to another, a section divided into rooms, and a roof on part of the building. This has piqued an interest in block building in others. 

As always, our week concluded with Kabbalat Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom,

Atalya, Dawn, and Anat