Shulchan Shabbat - What Makes Shabbat Special to YOU?

At this week's Shulchan Shabbat, we first spoke about the different words relating to Shabbat that we know in ivrit! Then, the yeladim illustrated pictures using oil pastels to create images of their favorite parts of Shabbat. All of the responses were wonderfully creative and completed independently. Below you can view some of the wonderful illustrations and creations that stemmed from our sentence starter, "My favorite thing about Shabbat is..."

The yeladim from each of the Ganon and Gan classes all had the opportunity to use our iPads to take a picture of their own illustration. I simply can not wait for the "voice-over" activity of having the children tell their part of their class story about what makes Shabbat special to them!

The Main Characters of Gan Bet

Gan Bet worked on a very special project with Ms. Schneck's 6th grade English class. First, we visited the middle school classroom, and were each paired with a 6th grader. The older students interviewed the kindergartners, taking note of such things as family members, favorite foods and activities. The 6th graders integrated these notes into original stories, which they printed in book format online. This week, the children excitedly read their stories together, which have also been emailed home to enjoy with parents. A fantastic literacy project for both grades!

Gan Aleph's Amazing Apples!

If you walk down the halls of Yavneh and heard some children munching and crunching, it was probably the sound of Gan Aleph tasting apples! This week, Gan Aleph learned aboutapples through literacy, science, math, movement and of course it did not go without some special snacks (like apple jacks)!We learned about apple trees and how they change through the different seasons. After reading The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons, the children made their own apple tree seasons book! They used different art materials to depict what the apple tree looks like during the seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter.

We played an apple matching game in which the children had to match upper case and lower case letters to complete a full apple shape.

The children tasted red, yellow and green apples and decided which one they liked the best. We wrote about it and we used our math skills to graph their apple choice in a bar graph.

We predicted what would happen if we left a sliced apple out in the classroom. The children will soon begin to see the apple

changing and drying out! When the apple turns dry we will talk

about dried fruit and taste dried apples and apple chips!

We painted trees to go with our apple writings! We encourage you to come visit our outside bulletin board where you will see these beautiful apples!

As Gan Aleph sits down to their table to dip their apples in honey, they will surely be able to tell you some amazing facts about apples! What a delicious week this was!

Celebrating Dr. Seuss

Ganon Bet had a birthday party in honor of Dr. Seuss. While we enjoyed reading all his books, we liked Marvin K. Mooney so much that we re-wrote our own version! We voted on our favorite book so far and we had a tie between The Cat In The Hat Comes Back and The Foot Book. Do you have a favorite? We'd love to hear from you!

Literacy Night

Our first Kindergarten Literacy Night took place in the lunch room last night. The children had great fun greeting their classmates in the night time. They snacked on chocolate milk and popcorn, and began the evening with a life size game of Sight Word Bingo. Several tables were set up with interactive literacy activities for the children to enjoy with their families. To culminate the program, Mrs. Cohen read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, as the children listened for letters and jumped.

This was a great opportunity to display to parents the types of learning activities that their children engage in daily. It was also a wonderful reinforcement of the strong connections we make between school and home.

Next week, we will run the same program for Gan Aleph and Gan Gimmel.

Literacy Blocks

Literacy activities in kindergarten take place daily, in every area of the classroom. Literacy Blocks are times of direct instruction, provided in small groups according to the children's developmental levels. This group of beginning readers is using a new set of phonetically based, high interest books that we purchased this year. Each child uses a "star" pointer to read and follow the words and sentences. Morah Aviva is close at hand for support, encouragement, and for formative assessment to inform future planning.

The Last Day

We read the book "A Chanukiya for Dina" , by Floreva Cohen, and decided to make a potato chanukiah just like the little girl in the story. The children helped cut four potatoes in half, and left one potato for a shamash. Then they scooped the centers out and filled them with oil.

After adding wicks and arranging the potatoes on a tray, they lit their chanukiah and sang the brachot for the last time this year. This was a wonderful way to extend literacy into a genuine, relevant science experience, and bring closure to all the fun we've had during Chanukah.

An Interactive Map In Ganon Bet

We “mapped out” a terrific learning environment for Ganon Bet! After discussing maps, and looking at various samples, the children worked together with their morot to compose huge, interactive map of their hometowns, Fair Lawn, Teaneck, New Milford and Bergenfield.

Each child designed his/her own house, selecting shapes of various sizes. The houses are placed on the appropriate street on the map, and the children use toy cars to navigate and visit each other! They have used many skills to engage in this project, including math (spatial relationships, shapes, numbers): literacy (street names); and social studies (communities). In addition, knowing their address is an important safety skill for young children. To reinforce this knowledge, the morot call them to line up by addresses instead of their names. So much learning embedded in fun and games!