Floreva Cohen Visits ECD

The excitement in ECD was palpable on Wednesday when children's author Floreva Cohen visited the department.  She went from class to class to read her popular book "A Hanukkiyah for Dina."  The children had a chance to ask Mrs. Cohen many intuitive questions they had about how she got the idea for this book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and how to go about getting a book published.

After hearing the story, the children in Ganon Aleph went on to make their own chanukiyah out of potatoes, just like Dina did in the book!

Ganon Aleph's Potato Chanukiyah

After reading the book "A Hanukkiyah for Dina" by Floreva Cohen we made our own chanukiyah out of potatoes.  We scooped out the center, added olive oil and wicks, and lit it - just like Dina did in the story!

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!

We Love To Read

In Ganon Bet, reading is a big part of our daily activities. Children delight in sharing their love of books. The best part is that they do not really have to be able to read. Some children may enjoy looking at the cover and pictures, while others will pretend to "read" the book page by page. When they "read" a book in their own words, children are practicing important pre-reading skills such as using illustrations to make meaning out of text and new vocabulary to verbalize the story. We hope that with these skills the children will become life long readers !

Learning about Life Cycles in Gan Aleph

"Frogs here, frogs there, frogs were jumping everywhere!" Gan Aleph decided to learn about frogs and wanted to know more about where they came from. We began with an activity in which the children were presented with pictures of Morah Aviva, from birth until now. They were challanged to put these pictures in the proper sequence, bearing in mind the natural order of one's life. For example, the children knew that her kindergarten picture would be placed after some baby pictures but before her wedding picture. After putting all of these pictures in order (and laughing while looking at some of them!) we went through Morah Aviva's life cycle thus far. We learned that living things have stages in their lives which led us to explore a frog's life cycle.

The children were provided with more pictures, this time of the different stages in a frog's life. They worked together to put the pictures in the proper order, and learned that frogs start off as eggs. The egg hatches into a tadpole which then grows into a froglet and ultimately a frog!

We read the book If You Hopped Like Frog, by David Shwartz and recreated his book with our own ideas and frogs jumping off the page! Through this book ,we learned that frogs can jump a distance of 20 times its body length! We took turns jumping on a number line to see how far we could jump and compared it to a frog's jumping abilities!

Frogs here, Frogs there, Frogs were jumping everywhere...Especially in Gan Aleph!!!!

BREAKING BREAD WITH GAN DALED

Gan Daled read the book Bread, Bread, Bread by Ann Morris. The children were eager to learn about various types of bread from around the world. We continued to develop our geography skills by locating the countries represented in the book on a world map. After examining different shapes, colors and sizes of bread, came the best part - tasting the bread.

We left samples of the bread on our Discovery Table. The class predicted what would happen to them. We anxiously check the bread every day for any changes.

What is your favorite type of bread?

Bar and Bat Mitzvah Readers

Rabbi Aron Srulovitz' Bar and Bat Mitzvah students are engaged in a reading project this month. As part of the program, they prepared stories to read to our kindergarteners. The children were divided into groups, and paid rapt attention as the "big kids" read some popular children's books to them. The middle schoolers felt proud of their ability to lead a group of young children. The kindergarteners, who truly look up to the middle schoolers, learned through their modeling the value of reading. A fun and meaningul activity for all involved!

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!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!!

On Wednesday we celebrated Dr. Seuss' 107th birthday in Ganon Aleph. We sang happy birthday to Dr. Seuss and enjoyed a homemade Cat in the Hat birthday cake! All week long we read Dr. Seuss books which the children brought in from home.

Our Books Can Talk

The children delight in bringing books to class and sharing what they've read at home. We discuss their favorite pages, the main character and the setting of their stories. What books do you enjoy reading to your child? We'd love it if you would share your favorite author with us!

The March of Gan Aleph's Penguins!

Gan Aleph began exploring the fascinating world of penguins! We learned all about where penguins live, what they eat and how they surf and dive for fun! We focused on the emperor penguin, african penguin and macaroni penguin and learned what makes each penguin different from the next. We read the book If You Were a Penguin, by Wendell and Florence Minor, which we used as a springboard for writing. The children imagined themselves as penguins and wrote what they would eat, which kind of penguin they would be and even gave themselves a name. Vicky named herself "Oreo" while Matan named himself "Snow!" We then used water bottles, paint and many different materials to create our penguins... and wow, did they come to life! The children had to think about what features made their penguin different and then add that feature to their "penguin doll"(ex. the macaroni penguins have yellow hair!). Do you have any fun or interesting facts/stories that you would like to share with Gan Aleph about penguins!?

Gan Gimmel Prepares for our Bake Sale

In preparation for our Rosh Chodesh bake sale, the children in Gan Gimmel made delicious chocolate covered pretzels. All of the proceeds from the bake sale will be going to Keren Malki, an organization in Israel that helps people with differing abilities. The children read many books in class about people with differing abilities. Their favorite was Yossi and Laibel On The Ball which was about a boy in a wheelchair who wanted to play baseball with his new neighbors. Making a book about our own acts of chesed is helping us get even more excited about our chesed tzedaka project. We hope to sell all of our baked goods, at .50 each and be able to send a lot of tzedaka to Israel from Yavneh's Early Childhood Department.

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.