Baking with Ganon Bet for the ECD Bake Sale

                

Charlie's mom and



Willa's mom came to make rice krispy treats.

Preparing the  ingredients.

Measuring the ingredients

Making and decorating signs for the ECD bake sale.

We helped sell

the baked goods

at the bake sale

together with

the entire ECD.

WHAT'S BLACK AND WHITE AND SMILING ALL OVER?

Howie the Penguin

What's black, white and smiling all over? Gan Daled on Penguin Day! On Tuesday, January 7th, the children dressed in black and white and acted like penguins waddling on ice. They pretended to be Emperor penguins carrying babies on their feet.

Ethan, Akiva, and Seth enjoying the igloo

Gan Daled particularly enjoyed playing in our class igloo and making snow with insta-snow, an amazing powder that erupts into a fluffy white snow when water is added.

Let It Snow,  Let It Snow!!!

Alex and Leora with their penguin cookies

The children also enthusiastically prepared and ate special penguin treats made of Oreos, candy corn and chocolate chips.



Adult penguins come in different sizes ranging from 6 to 50 inches. We compared the heights of the penguins with the heights of our children by mounting the face of an Emperor penguin at 50 inches, chinstrap penguin at 29 inches and a Little Blue penguin at 16 inches. Each child was invited to see eye to eye with a penguin.

It was a very special day for all!!

Me And My Shadow

Gan Daled learned about the great artist, Rembrandt, who lived in Holland. He is known for his use of light and shadows. Rembrandt painted many self portraits. The children used charcoal to make their own self portraits which resembled Rembrandt's etchings. Even though charcoal is difficult to work with, the children used their fine motor skills to produce beautiful self portraits in Rembrandt's style.

Gan Daled became print makers and discovered that it is possible to make many copies from a single master. They engraved pictures into a piece of foam to make a plate and covered it with paint. Next, the children put a piece of paper on the plate and pressed down carefully. When they lifted the paper off the plate they had a lovely print of their work. The class noticed that everything on the print was reversed.

WASTE NOT WANT NOT

Gan Daled  was enthralled to learn that Native Americans did not waste anything and found multiple ways to use things.

 

Following this Native American practice, we used corn cobs dipped in paint to make corn prints on our Thanksgiving placemats.

 

Gan Daled used the husks from the corn cobs as paint brushes to make a colorful mural that reminded us of this year's special time which combined Chanukah and Thanksgiving.    

      

 

HALF IS BETTER THAN NONE

We have been counting every day since school began. On our 50th day of school Gan Daled celebrated with half of a party. You might ask, "What is half of a party?" It is the half way mark to the exciting celebration of the 100th day of school.
In honor of this great day we enjoyed half an Oreo cookie, half of a pretzel and half of a licorice stick.

Our snacks

In addition, the children were excited about counting to 50 by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's.

If the 50th day was so good, we cannot wait to celebrate the 100th!

Enjoying our 50th day snack

DOES IT MEASURE UP?

Tamar and Ethan using strips of paper

How big is a pumpkin? In our Math Center  the children had the opportunity to measure our pumpkin using various devices. The class quickly realized that they could not measure the pumpkin with a ruler.

Ella G. and Alex using paper clips

They were excited to use big and little paper clip chains, strips of paper and plastic links to measure the circumference. We can't wait to learn what else we will do with our pumpkin.

ONE POTATO, TWO POTATOES

While preparing our section of the Early Childhood Garden for the coming winter, the children unearthed a small treasure: several tiny sweet potatoes. These little potatoes are off shoots of a large sweet potato that was planted last winter.

The original sweet potato was placed in a container of water in the classroom to grow its roots. The potato and its roots were planted last spring and yielded the little sweet potatoes we found. We baked them and they were sweet and delicious!. Gan Daled also planted tulip bulbs and can't wait to see the beautiful colors in the spring.

Lions, Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

 
 
 
After learning about wild and domesticated animals, Gan Daled listened to "Carnival of the Animals" by Camille Saint-Saens. Saint-Saens is a French composer who lived about 150 years ago.

Although he was a serious composer, Saint Saens wrote "Carnival of the Animals" using animals instead of people. The children had a wonderful time dramatizing different animals to the music. Some of the students can identify the animals represented by the music.

WHAT'S A PEELING?

Gan Daled was very excited with the assignment of adjusting a cork so it would sink. Many children brought back their discoveries and the class predicted if the corks would sink when they were placed in a tub of water. Almost all of the corks did sink. The solutions were creative, innovative, impressive and fun.
Earlier this week we performed an experiment with oranges. We placed an orange in a container of water and it floated. When we placed a peeled

orange into the container, the class was surprised to see it sink. We rewrapped the peel around the fruit and when we put it into the water, the orange floated again. Gan Daled deduced that the orange peel contains a lot of air and therefore it is lighter than water. The fruit of the orange is heavier than the water so it sinks.

Piet's Primary Colors

Inspired by the beautiful colors of the rainbow, Gan Daled has been learning about primary colors. The children used red, yellow, and blue in different combinations to produce secondary colors.
  Piet Mondrian was a Dutch artist who used straight vertical and horizontal lines and primary colors to make rectangles and squares. We created masterpieces in Mondrian's style by using black lines with primary colors. The children were thrilled to see their completed artwork.

 

AN APPLE A DAY . . .

What's red, green and yellow and eaten in Gan Daled?           Apples!

Gan Daled had an apple tasting party. After tasting different colored apples, the children compiled a list of adjectives such as: sour, sweet, juicy, healthy, round and crunchy to describe them.

The class has been graphing the weather daily in a bar graph format. This time they learned to use a tally graph. Each child made a tally mark for their favorite apple.

The winner: green apples.

Mission Siddur Completed

Gan Daled is thrilled to have finished working on our siddurim. Today the children were in for a surprise. They were given their siddurim to use during Tefillah time.  The shrieks and sound of joy were heard in the room. They opened their siddurim and each child followed along  and pointed to each word as we sang the tefillot. The kavanot of the children were truly felt in the room.

Chag Shavuot Same'ach!

          We have counted 49 days until Matan Torah and are excited to celebrate Chag HaShavuot.
We  hope you enjoy the plant  that your children have taken care of and nurtured in our classroom to bring home in honor of Shavuot.

We made  and decorated Har Sinai.



We put the themes of flowers and Har Sinai together and made our own flowers and vase. The vase  was decorated in pretty colors to remind us of Har Sinai. Then the children wrote the Aseret Hadibrot that were given on Har Sinai. We hope that the flowers enhance your Shavuot table. Chag Same'ach!