FROM MS. KRISTINE
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful winter break. I would like to wish you all a healthy, happy and blessed 2026. I really enjoyed my time with my family. It was nice to not have a bedtime and have no alarm set, but I really did miss each and every child in TK. It is nice to all be back together. I look forward to the rest of our school year. We have lots of fun things planned to take us to the finish line. I would like to thank everyone for the thoughtful and generous card. It is always nice to feel appreciated. We started our new year with our January calendar. The class worked together to set up our number line on the magnet board, and then they successfully wrote their numbers for their take home calendar. For our art, we made cute ice skates with real laces and blades (well, popsicle sticks). The children were proud of their work and so excited to take them home. For phonics, we added another vowel to our list as we worked on the sound for /I/. We learned that /I/ makes two sounds, short and long, but we focused mainly on the short vowel sound. For our big books, we made funny iguanas with colorful backgrounds. They came out very bright and unique. We also built cool igloos as the children counted out 20 "blocks of ice" to form a nice dome shape, then added blue paint for the sky and sparkle glitter to make it extra special and fun. This was a great fine motor activity that also challenged their spatial awareness and counting skills. To finish off the igloos, I took pictures of the children to place them inside their icy home. The children love looking at their work on the walls, but it is extra exciting when their picture is inside. To conclude, we did our /I/ word match. For literature, we read Mañana Iguana by Ann Whitford. This is a fun book that teaches us some Spanish words while it also teaches a valuable lesson about how it is important to help out when work needs to be done if we want the rewards. It is also a nice story about friendship. For creative writing, I asked the children what they love to do when it is cold outside. Our kids did a great job talking about fun experiences they had in the snow. We have a few friends who recently went to the snow, and they had wonderful stories to share. From the Mammoth mountains, to New York, snow is magical for our children and for us as well. They also shared fun memories and activities that had nothing to do with snow. Most of their reflections were centered around family and great friends…. That is the real magic. They did a great job illustrating and describing their stories. As we begin our winter theme, we read books about igloos, teaching us that igloos used to be primary shelter a long time ago for the inuit people, but they are now mainly just for them to connect with their culture's history. We got to see really cool pictures inside real igloos along with how they are built. The children all agreed that igloos are really cool, but it would not be their first choice for shelter. Have a great weekend,
Welcome back! It was so nice to see the children after our break. This week we began the second of the five books of the Torah, Shmos! The children were excited to get reacquainted with the story of Pesach. In Shmos, we learn about the Jewish people multiplying incredibly! This made Paroah very worried, and so the Jewish people were tricked into becoming slaves. Oh no! It was terrible to be a slave. Slaves are not ever allowed to make their own choices. We learned about the birth of Moshe, his escape from Egypt, and the wondrous burning bush. The parsha ends with Moshe and his brother Aron going to King Paraoh and asking him to let the Jewish people go. Paraoh refused. More adventures await us next week. This week we began exploring the bracha of hamotzi. During circle time I told the children that when we say the bracha, hamotzi lechem min haaretz, we bless Hashem for bringing bread out of the earth. Have you ever seen bread growing on a plant? We followed up this conversation by reading the book From Wheat to Challah by Meish Goldish, which explains the entire process from seed to flour. We looked at dried wheat stalks and found wheat berries carefully hidden inside. On Thursday, we made our own flour. Using a special wheat grinder and upper body strength, the children helped grind up all of the wheat berries and we made nearly half a cup of flour! It was yellow compared to the white flour we use for challah. The highlight was making our very own challah dough. The children participated in a sequencing activity where they placed the bread-making process in order Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!
