FROM MS. KRISTINE
Thank you to everyone who came to our Generation’s Day celebration! Your time and efforts are always appreciated by everyone. It is beautiful to witness all the love and support our children receive from all the people they are blessed to call family.
We started our week setting up our calendar for the new month by transferring all our numbers back to the white board. Everyone loves to get a turn to go up and find the correct numbers. We are getting so good at this, so we have challenges where they take the numbers out of order and they need to figure out where it belongs. They love this and everyone feels successful.
We made our February calendar by writing our numbers, and for Tu BiShvat, we made our favorite trees for the art. We used really cool stencils of bare trees to paint the trunk and branches. They were so amazed when they lifted up the stencil to see what they made. Once that dried, they painted their leaves with very tiny brushes to get very delicate leaves. They finished by making blossoms for their trees with tissue paper. They carefully took tiny pieces of colorful tissue and did a little pinch and a twist to get a nice 3-D effect. They came out so pretty and they were so excited to take their calendars home.
They loved making them so much, they wanted to make another. This time, they had a more detailed stencil, making the tree more challenging. I was on board with making them again, because I was happy to have them to hang up for a while. They will probably make their way in their books.
For phonics this week, we worked on the sound for /Y/. We mainly focused on the beginning sound we hear in yak, yo-yo, and yellow, but they learned Y has other jobs and can make other sounds . For our books, we made yaks. The children painted and cut out many parts to assemble their very unique yaks. Each yak had its own personality, making them so much fun for the children to look at once they were hung up. We also did our word match.
For fun, we explored yellow play dough and used yarn for some creative art.
We did swim this week, so our next swim day will be February 18. Please bring your child’s swim gear and towel before this date.
FROM MORAH RAIZEL
We had such a lovely Tu B’Shvat celebration at school on Monday. The children made special Tu B’Shvat hats and joined us in singing songs in honor of the trees. In the classroom, we tasted olives, figs, and dates, three of the seven species of Israel that are customary to eat on Tu B’Shvat. We did a reflection where the children shared why they appreciate trees. The Parsha of the week is Yisro, Yisro, Yisro, The Parsha of the week is Yisro, That is the Parsha of the week! This week, we learned all about Yisro, Moshe’s father-in-law, who decided to join the Jewish people based on the miracles that he heard about. Yisro brought Moshe’s wife and children and blessed Hashem. Yisro noticed that Moshe would sit from morning until evening, answering the various questions of the Jewish people. Yisro suggested that Moshe appoint people to help him so questions could be answered efficiently. And that is exactly what Moshe did. We read about the giving of the Torah in the Parsha this week! We learned about the special mountain, Har Sinai, and the unity that occurred as the Jews gathered to receive the Torah. We learned a song about the Ten Commandments. Here it is! 1, Hashem, that’s all there is, So 2, make no images. And 3, be careful with Hashem’s name, 4, keep my Shabbat flame. 5, respect your mom and dad. 6, don’t kill, that would be bad. 7, to your spouse, stay always true, 8, don’t steal, it's not for you. 9, when you testify, don’t tell a lie. 10, what you have is best, so don’t go after someone else’s share. After singing the song, we discussed what each commandment means. Wishing you a wonderful Shabbos!
