WHERE DID VAN GOGH GO?

He went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Who did he see? He saw the children of Gan Daled who were there celebrating the culmination of their kindergarten art program.

The art program introduces our children to the works of famous artists and their lives. The students learn about each artists style, subjects and medium. The young artists are then given an opportunity to express themselves through projects in the style of that artist.

Some of the artists that we studied this year include: Rembrandt, Piet Mondrian, Mary Cassatt, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall and Georgia O'Keeffe. The children were very excited to see the actual works that they had learned about during the year. Passersby in the museum were amazed at the knowledge exhibited by our children.

Our trip ended with "Tuesday Afternoon in the Park". All around, it was a picture perfect day.

Leaping and Learning!

On rainy days, we move the class furniture to have an indoor-outdoor time! Recently we added a new activity to this time. These are sight word lilly pads. The children can jump from lilly pad to lilly pad reading the sight word that is written on each! It was a great way to move around, and practice our words as well!

Ganon Aleph Blasts Off!

After learning about all the planets and creating a mobile of our solar system, the children in Ganon Aleph donned their spacesuits and blasted off to outer space!  We visited the different planets around Yavneh and ended up at the moon, after which we returned safely to our own planet Earth.  What a fun way to end a fascinating unit on the solar system!

Ganon Aleph Celebrates Lag B'Omer

We had beautiful weather for our Lag B'Omer celebration on Monday.  All of the early childhood classes participated in some friendly competitive relay races organized by Heela and Atara, Yavneh's B'not Sherut Leumi.  We then had an outdoor picnic lunch, after which we played on the giant moon bouncers which were set up on the lawn.  We returned to our classroom where we invited Ganon Bet to join us for storytelling, songs, and s'mores around our "bonfire."  What a fun and busy day we had!!

Ganon Aleph Re-enacts a Lag B'Omer Story

In anticipation of Lag B'Omer the children in Ganon Aleph learned about Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son Rabbi Elazar who defied the Romans by hiding in a cave and continuing to teach Torah to Jewish children.  Ganon Aleph decided to re-enact this story with a make-shift cave, picnic blankets, and picnic baskets.  They took turns assuming the roles of the two rabbis, the Romans, and the Jewish children pretending to be having picnics in order to fool the Romans!

Butterflies in Ganon Aleph

All of the early childhood classes received caterpillars for their classrooms last week.  The children in Ganon Aleph watched intently how much they ate, and how rapidly they grew.  After each one formed a chrysalis, we transferred them into their butterfly habitat.  The children eagerly watched and waited in anticipation for all of them to turn into butterflies.  Sure enough, early this week they were excited to enter the classroom and see butterflies fluttering around their habitat!  We watched them for a couple of days, and then took them outdoors to release them.  The children called out, "Shalom parpar!" as each one flew away!

Jack's Dad Came to Ganon Bet

 Jack Kleid's Dad is an author and illustrator of comic books. He explained to the children that comics, books, TV shows and movies all tell a story. Then he showed how the panels of a comic book works. The children became authors and illustrators and created their own comic books. Thank you for coming into our class everyone had fun.

Counting the Omer in Ganon Aleph

Some of the children in Ganon Aleph  had fun dipping their feet in paint and creating footprints which we are using to keep track of the days between Pesach and Shavuot.  They are learning that each Hebrew letter has a numerical value, and are becoming quite proficient at counting in Hebrew! 

Ganon Bet Blasts Off

 Ganon Bet blasted off into our solar system yesterday. We created space capsules and astronaut gear for our journey. We even had rocket boosters, and air tanks attached to our space suits. Our trip took us from Mercury through the Asteroid Belt all the way to the dwarf planet Pluto. Ask us about the planets you'd be surprised what we know.

Ganon Bet Gardens

 The children of Ganon Bet were amazed how much their radish seeds have grown since Pesach. We hope to eat them soon.
This week we added to our garden our class pumpkin plant that we planted from seeds at Thanksgiving time.
We then added our potato plants that we planted at Chanukah time in our classroom.
When we came to Ganon Bet we enjoyed tomatoes from last years Ganon Class. Thus, lastly we planted tomato plants for next years Ganon class to enjoy.

Where can we find seeds?

Before planting, we wanted to know where seeds came from. 

The children were interested to see which fruits and vegetables had edible seeds and which did not. 

   

We cut up tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, strawberries, and apples to find and inspect their seeds. We also looked at some seeds from packets like carrot and broccoli seeds which are not seeds we normally see when eating the respective vegetables. 

We then took to the garden to get rid of some of the pesky weeds that have sprouted. The children were enthusiastic to remove the weeds that take water and space to grow away from flowers and other plants!

Ganon Classes Work in the ECD Garden

Now that it finally feels like Spring, it's a perfect time for working in the ECD garden.  Each class has a plot of land for planting flowers or vegetables.  This week the children and morot from Ganon Aleph and Ganon Bet were busy weeding and preparing the soil, after which we planted some radish seeds.  We also have some bulbs which should be growing into beautiful flowers very soon.  Come by in a few weeks to take a look!

Getting Ready for Pesach in Ganon Aleph

What a busy week we had in Ganon Aleph getting ready for Pesach!  We made matzah with Rabbi Grossbaum from Lubavitch, and we finished all of our Pesach projects.

We enjoyed many leftover snacks at our chametz party, after which we scrubbed our classroom to get it ready for Pesach.  We then did a thorough search for chametz with a feather, spoon, and candle, and then went outside to burn it.  We enjoyed our model seder in our classroom together with Ganon Bet.  After our seder, we skyped with some residents of the Jewish Home at Rockleigh.  One of the residents read a Pesach story to the children, and we all sang some Pesach songs for them.
We were so well-prepared for Pesach!  We hope you enjoyed spending it with your families.