Tu B'shvat through our senses

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Ganon at Yavneh Academy is a multi- sensory experience. Each and every day the children use all 5 senses to navigate the classroom in all areas; including art, dramatic play, manipulatives, etc. This week in honor of Tu Bshvat, Ganon Bet used their sense of touch to create beautiful trees paintings. Instead of using paint brushes, the children used their arms to create the bark of the tree, their hands as the leaves and grass, and their fingers turned into fruit! To some the paint tickled, others said it felt funny, but all around everyone had a great time creating their masterpieces!

Seth's arm is brown to create the bark!

Joe's hands were the leaves and the grass!

Jesse used his finger to make a sun!

Kaila's fingers made yummy fruit!

So What, If The Snow's Melting!

We'll make our own!

Gan Bet mixed cornstarch and shaving cream....

...and were thrilled to have instant "Fluffy Stuff"!

"Hey, look! I made a snowball!"

"I'm a snow-monster!"

"We can even make it snow with snowflakes!"

We used this experience to reinforce Hebrew language related to winter, too!

What a fun and messy way to engage our senses at winter-time!

Learning About Our Five Senses In Ganon Bet

Ganon Bet continued the unit on their Five Senses by smelling and tasting various foods with their eyes covered. To culminate the activity we looked into five bowls filled with various white food. The only way we could figure out what was in the bowls was by smelling and tasting the different foods. Ask us what we tried.

Havdalah Pajama Party

This past Motzei Shabbat, the Pre-K students and their families came to school for a fun-filled Havdalah Pajama Party. Dressed in pajamas, and carrying a favorite teddy bear, the children put together mini-books about havdalah and the 5 senses. They snacked on popcorn and chocolate milk. Rabbi Penn recited Havdalah, and the children used the besomim that they had each made in class. There was singing and dancing to music provided by Binyamin of BaRock Orchestra, and Mrs. Cohen read a delightful bedtime story called "Hannah's Shabbat Dress". What a warm and wonderful way to end Shabbat and begin a new week!

Working With Our Sense Of Touch

As part of our unit on the five senses, the children fingerpainted, first with regular paint, and then with paint mixed with sand so that they could feel the difference in the texture. This was a real "hands-on" experience!

Ganon Bet Enjoys The Season

The children of Ganon Bet enjoy going outside and using their senses to experience the Fall season. We look at the beautiful foliage, we smell the clean fresh air, we feel the cold breeze and rain drops and we hear the wind blowing on the crunchy fall leaves. We collected colorful leaves and decided to make leaf print wall hangings on burlap. First we painted the leaves, then we pressed them down on the burlap and rubbed them with a paper towel. These beautiful fall projects will adorn our classroom throughout the season and then be sent home for Thanksgiving for you to enjoy.

Fall Leaves

The Yavneh playground is resplendent with the colors of fall, and the children are delighting in the beautiful foliage. They use their whole bodies and all of their senses to learn about the changing season. Fall leaves are collected, compared, examined, sorted, piled up high and tossed in the air. Watching the children, one is taken by the joy and beauty in Hashem's world.

Apples

It's apple season in Ganon Bet! We discovered that if you cut an apple in half it's wet, damp or slimy inside. We put lemon juice on half the apple and left the other half alone. We're going to see what happens. We cut different apples in half and counted the seeds inside, some apples had 8 seeds and others had 11. We had a tasting party! We tried a Macintosh apple, Red Delicious, Yellow Golden and a Granny Smith. the apples tasted: juicy, sweet, sour, and crunchy. We made a graph and decided the Granny Smith was our favorite apple.
We measured ourselves with a big apple some of us are tall and others are smaller. We discussed that being the tallest doesn't necessarily mean you are the oldest. Also being the smallest doesn't mean you are the youngest.
Don't forget to look at our bulletin board we rewrote the book Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr.Seuss!
We cut and peeled the apples to make apple sauce for Shabbat party it tasted so good.
Ganon Bet enjoyed acting out the poem Ten Little Apples!

Watch our children making apple sauce!!!