Musical “Beauty and the Beast,” Writing Fairy Tales and more!

Dear Kindergarten Families,

We had a wonderful week in Kindergarten! As part of our “Fairy Tales” unit, we learned more about “Beauty and the Beast” and even had a chance to see part of the 8th grade Musical on Wednesday morning!

In Math, we learned about counting by 5s and 10s. We also continued practicing using “tallies” and counting by 5. The children used craft sticks to create various amounts using tally marks. Ask your child to show you how to count using tally marks and how to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. We also learned about coins and the different presidents who are on them.

In English Language Arts, we learned the letter Rr and the sound /r/ it makes (as in ‘run’). We practiced forming upper and lowercase letters Rr using our Handwriting Without Tears books, wooden planks, dry erase boards, and finding words that start with R and drawing pictures of them.

In Writing, we continued our Narrative Writing – Fairy Tales unit. We brainstormed and wrote our own class fairytale, discussed how to divide the fairy tale into parts/pages and started to write our fairy tale books. We also have been working on writing strategies such as: using spaces between words, using uppercase letters at the beginning of the sentence (as a “Line leader”), punctuation (period, exclamation mark and question mark) and sounding out words and writing as many sounds as we can.

In Social Studies, we continued learning about American presidents in preparation for President’s Day. We talked about George Washington and his love for animals. We acted out the story from the book “George Washington and the General’s Dog” that we read together.

In Science this week we began our unit Exploring Plants and Animals. We talked about the difference between living and non-living things. The children were engaged in a fun discussion about what determines living and non-living things and sorting them out. We also went on a scavenger hunt to find living things.

In Hebrew this week we reviewed/ learned vocabulary and practiced strengthening the connection between letters and sounds. We sang the song “Yesh li bachatzer” and “Tu Bishvat Hegiah” in honor of Tu B’shvat and reviewed the names of fruits we like using the verb ohev/ohevet (like). Children formulated sentences such as “Ani ohev tapuz” ( I like oranges.), “ani ohev rimon”(I like pomegranates).

We continued practicing the verb lovesh/ loveshet (wearing) dressing up dolls and pictures of characters. We also reviewed vocabulary related to parts of the body such as: rosh- head, af- nose, enayim- eyes, oznayiom- ears, yadayim- hands, raglayim- legs, beten- belly , gav- back, seaar- hair as well as Chultza-shirt , michnasayim-pants, kovah- hat, simlah- dress, meil- coat, chatzait- skirt, Kfafot- gloves, naalayim- shoes, tsaif- scarf, magafayim- boots. Finally, we read the book “Hadvarim Sheani Hachi Ohev” by Shulamit Tzarfati.

In Judaic studies, this week we prepared for Tu B’shvat, the birthday for the trees. We colored pictures of fruits from the Shivaat Haminim, the seven kind of fruits from Ancient Israel. We sang the song “Eretz Chitah U’seorah” which is about the Shivaat Haminim. We talked about how trees give us many things such as shade, a home for animals, fruit, paper and oxygen. We read the books such as “A Tree Is Nice” by Marc Simont. Finally, we continued the project of the creation of the world and added animals to the students’ sixth day of creation illustration.

Shabbat Shalom,

Regina, Rachel, Irit, and Ilana

Our fun inventions!