fbpx
(718) 858-8663

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

_____________________________________________________

Planting with Anne and Lisa!

IMG_6581 IMG_6582 IMG_E6583

Morning exploration

IMG_6597 IMG_6598 IMG_E6599 IMG_6604 IMG_6606 IMG_6607 IMG_6608 IMG_6609 IMG_6610

Learning about the Neighborhood

IMG_6613 IMG_6614

IMG_6629 IMG_6630 IMG_6631 IMG_6632 IMG_6633

Creating the map of Israel together

IMG_6615 IMG_6616 IMG_6617 IMG_6618 IMG_6621 IMG_6622 IMG_6624

Tekes for Israel’s 70th birthday

IMG_6634 IMG_6635 IMG_6636 IMG_6637 IMG_6638

IMG_6639

Learning about the desert, Red sea and the port of Eilat

IMG_6640 IMG_6641 IMG_6642 IMG_6643 IMG_6644 IMG_6645 IMG_6646 IMG_6647 IMG_6648 IMG_6649

Making a yummy “snowman” on mount Hermon

20180419_110945 20180419_111021 20180419_111037(0) 20180419_111130 20180419_111230 20180419_112202 20180419_112431 20180419_112443

20180419_113623 20180419_113723 20180419_114636 20180419_114711 20180419_114857 20180419_114905 20180419_115114

Reading with our buddies

IMG_6650 IMG_6651 IMG_6652 IMG_6653 IMG_6654 IMG_6655 IMG_6656

We designed our unique Israeli flags

IMG_6659 IMG_6660

Shelley talks about Israel

IMG_6661