Yom Haatzmaut, Earth Day and more!
Dear Kindergarten Families,
We had lots of fun this week in Kindergarten! The children were very excited to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day! During the week, we learned many things about Israel: its cities, seas, history and more. We read a book “Our Jewish Dream” written by Helena Solomon and illustrated by Regina Katz. As we followed the book about Israel’s growth and development, we created our own map of Israel together.
On Thursday, we began our day with a Tekes about Israel’s history. We ate an Israeli snack of Bisli and chocolates, decorated our room with our own unique Israeli flags, and participated in stations with the 1st graders traveling from Northern Israel to Southern. We made grape juice in the Golan Heights, “played with snow” on Mount Hermon, visited “old Eilat” with its desert and experimented with sinking and floating objects in the Red Sea, and, finally, visited the beautiful hotels and colorful fish of modern Eilat. We had falafel for lunch and had a quiet reading time with our 4th grade buddies. We concluded our day with Shelley’s visit during which she told us about Israel, its cities, culture, food and even money.
On Friday, we celebrated Earth Day by making “I Love Earth” headbands and having a Publishing Party and reading our finished books “I Love and Respect the Planet Earth.” We concluded our Earth Day celebration by planting herbs with Anne!
In Math, we have been learning about parts of a whole. We practiced using unifix cubes, 10 frames, and other manipulatives to find parts of numbers between 5 and 10. We practiced sentences such as “7 is 5 and 2” and “how much more do you need to get to 10?”
In English Language Arts, we learned about silent e. We learned about long vowels a as in /ate/ and i as in /like/. We learned the saying “silent e makes the vowel say its name.” We also practiced reading words with and without silent e and the change it makes in the vowel sound (mad v. made, pin v. pine, etc.).
In Writing, we continued our Persuasive Writing Unit. We completed our final writing project: a book about how to help the world and protect animals, plants, people, water and air. We celebrated our published books by sharing them with each other at our Publishing Party.
In Social Studies, we continued our City Block Unit. We took a walk around the neighborhood, made observations and talked about the stores, street signs, subway stops, buses, cars, and garbage truck that we saw on the walk. We then came back and drew 2 things we noticed on the walk.
Hebrew and Judaic
This week we were busy preparing for Yom Haatzmaut shel Yisrael (Israel’s independence day) by learning about the Israeli map and what the different colors represent – Kachol ( blue) for yam (sea), yarok- (green) for trees- (etsim), tzahov-(yellow) for desert and sand, and chum- (brown) for harim-(mountains). Each grade in school picked a city in Israel and decorated the classroom like the chosen city. We chose the city of Eilat and the children were excited to work on turning our classroom into Eilat. The children practiced the word “yesh” – (there is) describing Eilat:
“beEilat yesh yam” (in Eilat there is a sea). The children drew pictures of Israel and the Israeli flags for Israel’s 70th birthday. We practiced Hebrew words through role play guessing games and miming and sang songs such as “Eretz Yisrael Sheli” and “Kachol Velavan.” In addition, we read the the books “BeEretz Yisrael” by Kaemit Gilaadi and “Pishpesh Mitlabesh” by Ami Rubinger.
This week we also started preparing for the Kabbalat Shabbat celebration by singing and acting out the creation of the world and Shabbat. The children started working on their Shabbat boxes. Thank you for the boxes!
Related vocabulary: , gamal- camel, bayit- house, etzim- trees, degel- flag, gesher- bridge, shir- song, matana- present, yam- sea, shemesh- sun, kochavim- stars. Yom huledet- birthday.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rachel, Regina, Irit, and Ilana
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Planting with Anne and Lisa!
Morning exploration
Learning about the Neighborhood
Creating the map of Israel together
Tekes for Israel’s 70th birthday
Learning about the desert, Red sea and the port of Eilat
Making a yummy “snowman” on mount Hermon
Reading with our buddies
We designed our unique Israeli flags
Shelley talks about Israel