Creation

       We worked on Creation for two weeks. We began by focusing on the Day 1. We closed and open our eyes to give a concrete example of dark and light. As a fun activity we gave the children black and white finger paint and let them mix the colors to explore the different shades they create when mixing them. We also focused on opposites. We played a matching game by matching pictures of dark/light, up/down, short/tall, hot/cold, etc.
            
        For Day 2 we read the book Little Cloud, by Eric Carle and then we created a collage, using tissue paper, separating the sky and the water. We also learned about how clouds absorb the water from the earth and then produce rain.  In order to make the concept more concrete we conducted a science experiment with the children. We took a clear bowl of water and added blue food coloring to make it look more like ocean water. We dipped cotton balls into the water and watched the cotton ball absorb the water. When we removed the cotton ball from the water we squeezed and watched as the water emptied out of the cotton ball (looking like rain).

         We then moved on to Day 3, when Hashem created grass, trees and flowers. We created our own trees – we used our strong hands and fingers to squeeze glue onto the pages and place a tree trunk, tree branches, and colorful leaves into place. We decided how many branches to use by rolling a die, identifying the number of dots, and then counting out the appropriate number of branches! This is a game that you can do at home with different items to help your child develop and fine-tune his/her number sense and math skills. We additionally discussed the changing of the seasons. We reviewed the four seasons and what differentiates them from each other.   
         
         This week we also concentrated on the number 7. We reviewed and counted the days of the week, as well as discovered different ways to make 7 using the counting bears. For example:  if there are five bears, how many more would we need to make seven? The children all really enjoyed counting and adding.

        We continued our unit on creation. We began by focusing on Day 4, Hashem created things which give us light. To give us light during the day, Hashem created the sun. To give us light at night, Hashem created the moon and the stars. We enjoyed discussing some things we do during the day versus things we do at night. We took out our class globe and discussed how the entire world does not get to see the bright sun or beautiful stars at the same time of day. The children learned that while some parts of earth are waking up and getting ready to start their busy day the other side of the world is getting ready for bed. To make this concept more concrete we lit a flashlight and spun the globe. The children were able to see that as the globe turned the flashlight stayed in one place, like the sun, and was not able to shine on all the parts of earth. For our Creation collage the children used metallic paper suns and moons and foam starts to represent night and day.

         Day 5 was when the creatures of the sky and water were created. Can you think of some things which live in the water? Can you think of some things which live in the sky? What do fish have to live in the water? What do birds have so they can fly in the sky? We compared and contrasted these creatures and made a chart of which creatures live where. We also used feathers and fish stickers to fill in the page of day five in our collage. 
         
      On Day 6 Hashem created the animals that roam the earth plus people, mainly Adam and Eve. We concentrated on sorting the different pictures and categorizing them by where they live. Which animals live on a farm? Which animals live in the jungle?  Of course after Hashem worked so hard and created everything in the world, Hashem was tired, and so he rested. Hashem had Shabbat on Day 7 – a day of resting from work, a day of peace and quiet. To celebrate Shabbat in our classroom we had a special pajama party in class.

Song of the week:

Creation Song

(Tune to "This Old Man")

Hashem created the world so fine

He did it all in 6 days time.

How did he do it?

What did he do?

Each day he made something new.

Painting Class 1

We got introduced to Jackson Pollock and his “Drip Period.” We viewed various paintings of his and examined the different colors and techniques that he used. We then emulated his painting style by creating our own beautiful Pollock-esque work. 

Painting Class 2

We viewed a few of Wassily Kadinsky's paintings. We noticed that he used many different shapes. We especially noticed all of the circles he used and then made our own circle print artwork. 

Yom Kippur & Sukkot

With the upcoming holiday of Yom Kippur we decided it would be appropriate to focus our attention to the topic of friendship. This week our class discussed what it means to be a friend and what friends can do with each other. The children gave us answers, such as, “Sharing toys with our friends”, “going outside to play”, and “reading books with each other”. We learned that being a friend means having to sometimes share and work together. In a large group we read the children the book Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni we then paired the children up in groups of twos and had them create a collage with using blue and yellow materials. This allowed the children to interact with friends they may have not gotten the chance to interact with yet. 

  

 To continue our theme of friendship the children also got a chance to create friendship bracelets using beads. Each child got to choose two different colors and create a pattern for the bracelet. The children worked hard on their bracelets to make sure that their friends receiving them would enjoy them.

This week we have also started learning about the exciting new holiday coming up – Sukkot! We spent time this week decorating our class sukkah with colorful fruits and vegetables.  and paper chains. It is so beautiful!

For math we focused on shapes. We talked about all the different shapes we can find in a sukkah and then we made our very own, using various shapes. We used a square as our sukkah, a circle as a table, rectangles for bamboo, ovals for leaves, and triangles for chairs. We made our sukkahs in a large group, following step by step directions. Everyone did such a great job! We had even more shape fun by playing musical shapes. As we played music the children danced, when the music stopped we called out a shape and the children had to find that shape on the rug. We had a lot of fun!

Song: 

(Tune of Ole my darlin’ Clementine)

You take the Lulav and the Etrog and you shake it all around.

You shake it this way; you shake it that way,

You shake it up and you shake it down.

Painting Class 

This week we viewed Georgia O'Keeffe's Red Poppy painting. We examined the colors O'Keeffe used and we practiced our brush strokes.